MJPollard

Omigod!  I just noticed something totally horrible!  In the scene where they discuss the Millennium Falcon's disappearance, Piett's rank insignia moved 0.008mm higher between one shot and the next!  Adyway, you need to get on this major, glaring continuity error right away!  The film will be forever flawed unless you fix it!

The other thing is that the file layout of DVD Video versus DVD Data discs is relevant.  Block sizes, IFO/BUP gaps, file placement, etc. are very important with video discs, so much so that many DVD players will refuse to play burned discs if they aren't just right (which is why you can't simply burn the disc as DVD Data).  Authoring programs simply create the necessary and compliant files; it's the burning process that does the job of writing those files in a way that's compatible with the DVD Video spec.

Fortunately, ImgBurn takes care of all that for you.  It'll take your already authored folders, combine them with your specified DVD-ROM folders, and create a DVD Video disc that's totally compliant and ready to go.  (Nero is crap at it, even with DVD-5 discs, mainly because it doesn't do the IFO/BUP gaps and block sizes correctly.  You're just as likely to get a coaster with Nero as you will a usable video disc.)  Given that, and the points raised by Adywan, you've made the right choice in going with ImgBurn.

Asteroid-Man said:

So wait, you create the AUDIO and VIDEO_TS folders using Architect, and then you burn it using another program with the additional folder? Would I burn it as "DVD DataDisc" and drag in the AUDIO_TS, VIDEO_TS and DVDRom folders and click Burn?

You'd want to burn it as a "DVD video disc," actually. As you probably already know, a DVD video disc is essentially a data disc, but with its structure altered appropriately (and specific files in specific folders created in a specific way) in order to be used with DVD players, thus you can include extra folders as long as they don't interfere with the *_TS folders (and if they fit on the disc!).  The computer will see it as a data disc, and you can access the extra folders as you would any other disc (commercial discs are the same, though the data files in the VIDEO_TS folder are copy-protected).

Some programs need to be explicitly told to burn a DVD video disc, but ImgBurn -- one of the best out there for burning discs and creating ISO files (particularly for dual layer DVDs) -- will notice that you're burning a VIDEO_TS folder and automatically make the appropriate adjustments to create a proper DVD video disc.  (I think it'll even create an empty AUDIO_TS folder if you don't include one, but I'm not certain about that.)  Just add the folders, click the fancy "write" icon, and your disc (or ISO image) will be created with no muss or fuss.

FWIW, I use ImgBurn for everything, as its author has spent years writing and perfecting burning software (I believe he used to be the author of DVD Decrypter; ImgBurn is a spin-off of that now-defunct software).  I never rely on any software's built-in burning functions (including DVD Architect, which I also use) because ImgBurn just works.  That's about the highest compliment you can pay any software application, really.

I don't believe this.  You're equating removing visible wires (which doesn't alter anything one little bit) to what Lucas did to create the SEs?  That fixing mistakes that don't make one single bit of difference to the film is some sort of "blasphemy"?  Please tell me I'm wrong before I start accusing you of being out of your goddamn minds.

TV's Frink said:

You are right, I'm not required to agree.  Neither is IMDB, which calls it a Drama/Thriller.

 

We'll agree to disagree, then.  Peace, m'friend.

TV's Frink said:

I don't buy it.

*shrug*

You're not required to, but that makes no difference to the fact that it's classified as sci-fi (if only barely).  Acceptance not required, you will not be assimilated. :-)

Sci-fi fans will remember two of Mr. Chaykin's most visible roles: Matthew Broderick's hacker friend ("Mr. Potato Head... Mr. Potato Head!!!") in WarGames, and the Goa'uld Nereus (the one working for Ba'al; he had a bottomless appetite) in several episodes of Stargate SG-1's final seasons.

Tons O' Fun said:

Alright we'll what i'm thinking is:

1.   I've found a website that says all the song's and artists.

2.   If I can find or get copy's of your Dvd's MJPollard, I'll know exactly what clips to pull from Full song MP3's and put those into the Sweet Video source from the Official DVD's.

Looking at the website I'm gonna have my work cut out for me, with 9 to 15 song clips in each episode.

If you guys have any other suggestions let me know.

Sadly, I don't have them anymore, thanks to a crashed hard drive.  I have to recapture them all over again, which will take quite a bit of time.  Fortunately, I still have my old Pentium 4 box, which contains the ATI AIW tuner/capture card, so I'm not TOTALLY screwed. :-)  (I still plan to do this, but now at a more leisurely pace.)

BTW, is this website called Outpost Daria?  If so, you might want to take a close look at the name of the webmaster... ;-)

I've been wanting to do that myself, seeing as I have all the taped episodes from both MTV's and The-N's runs of the show.  Unfortunately, they aren't perfect; some of the commercial bumpers from the MTV broadcasts faded to black quickly, and there were audio dropouts on a couple of episodes.  Add to that the fact that the Season 5 end credits were replaced by MTV advertising and other garbage, rather than the standard credits/alter-egos, making things even more challenging.

That's where the The-N broadcasts come in, of course.  Much of their audio can be spliced in to make up the difference.  Naturally, there are problems here, too, not the least of which is their editing of episodes (read: brainless censoring), and skipping entire episodes altogether, in order to shield sensitive minds (think of the children!) from "objectionable" material that their Degrassi broadcasts were already indulging in!  (God, don't get me started on this topic...)

The good news is that I'd already done virtually all of this work when I captured the episodes and converted them to DVD-R years ago, so I know what kind of challenge to expect.  The bad news is that I lost the raw source files in a hard drive crash; the project files that I have left aren't really in an editable condition, meaning that I'd have to re-capture the audio all over again.

A more immediate project might be to preserve the original broadcast of "Is It College Yet?", as the versions on DVD are the edited-for-time ones (MTV claims they lost the source tracks for the full version, without which they could not replace the original music), as well as other Daria-related special material (such as Behind the Scenes: Daria, hosted by Janeane Garofalo, and Look Back In Annoyance, the D/J-hosted retrospective that aired the night before the IICY premiere).

Asking this crowd that question is kinda like asking the Pope if he believes in God: it's the mother of all "well, duh!" questions.

C3PX said:

I too have been interested in reading the later books by Timothy Zahn, but haven't made up my mind to do so yet. Pollard's post has definitely piqued my interest. How about Zahn's latest Star Wars book, Allegiance? Has anyone read that?

If you want an opinion that isn't infused with a metric buttload of PT hatred, I'd say that Allegiance is at the bottom of the list of Zahn's SW novels (i.e. it's okay, but not great).  It's set early in the OT and features Mara Jade and the Imperial 501st (fanwank alert!), but IMHO Zahn does better when he's writing outside of the OT.  If you're still interested in reading it, I'd recommend checking it out of your local library or finding a cheap used paperback edition.  Otherwise, you aren't really missing anything by skipping it.

For the record, my ranking of Zahn's novels would be: The Thrawn Trilogy, The Hand of Thrawn, Outbound Flight and Survivor's Quest (tied), and Allegiance.

If your plan is to read both, go with Outbound Flight first, as Survivor's Quest is essentially its sequel.  You can probably read the latter before the former, as the story stands up well enough on its own, but Outbound Flight fills in the details that are only alluded to in Survivor's Quest.  Additionally, if you read them in that order, it's interesting to see, in Luke's time, how much information has been lost to history over the decades due to the Clone Wars and the rise/fall of the Empire.

As for the Hand of Thrawn two-parter, I definitely recommend them.  In addition to being a great read, they do a good job of tying together events from previous novels and comic books (specifically the Dark Empire comics), mainly to get Luke "back to his roots" and lead him away from being the All-Powerful Uber-Jedi he was often portrayed as in previous novels.  (There's a great scene where Mara forces Luke to confront the past 10 years of his life, and makes no bones about where he went wrong and where he was headed if he didn't get his head out of his ass PDQ.)

Oh, and a word to the wise: the two books about Outbound Flight do incorporate PT elements (especially Outbound Flight), but IMHO there's not too much to worry about (YMMV, of course).

captainsolo said:

Exactly-they were like the guys who came up with the sequels to Planet of the Apes.

The problem with this film is simply the fact that it claims to be Bram Stoker's vision, much like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein did two years later.

I thought I read somewhere that the reason why it was called Bram Stoker's Dracula was to avoid legal issues with Universal, which had the rights to the title Dracula.

From what I've read about Tron Legacy, the explanation for the different look is that the ENCOM mainframe has been evolving independently since the time of the last film.  Hence, the drastically updated landscape, lightcycles, recognizers, etc.  I don't know how close the final film is going to look to the concept trailer shown last year at SDCC (and, now, officially released by Disney, URL below), but if it's anything similar to it, it's going to kick ass.

The URL for the officially released trailers: http://www.flynnlives.com/media/video/0xendgame.aspx (two are downloadable WMV files, the rest are regular and HD QuickTime).  They definitely blow away the bootleg FLV that's floating around the net, but by the same token, they don't have the excitement factor that it had (mainly, the reactions of the crowd to the knowledge that they're seeing the Tronverse and to the appearance of Jeff Bridges).

CO said:Feel pretty bad for the guy now, as he seems he regrets doing Episode I. Ford and Guiness hated SW years later because the fans loved them so much and thought of them as Han and Obiwan, but it sounds like the fans mock Jake Lloyd for being a young, whiney Darth Vader. I blame his parents because I don't believe any kid actor chooses that path, and most kids end up screwed up because they can't deal with the fame. Lloyd got the opposite as he got the fame of being in a movie hated by many diehard SW fans.

I feel bad for the guy, too, but I mainly blame the "fans" for it.  I'm sure that most of us here can distinguish between the actor and the role being played, but many others apparently cannot.  These are the a**holes that Jake Lloyd apparently kept running into, so I don't blame him for having a negative opinion of his experience.  "You know, Mr. Lloyd, I didn't much care for how Anakin was portrayed in Episode I, but I realize that you did your best with what you had to work with" is a lot different from "God, I hated Anakin in Episode I, you really suck, you know that?!"...

My only reaction regarding the remake of "V" is: why?  I mean, yeah, the 1984 miniseries has effects that, compared to today's standards, are pretty cheesy (how many times did they reuse those shots of the fighter and the tanker/transport, particularly during "The Final Battle" and the series?), but the story still holds up well to this day.  Unless they plan on doing something additional with the Visitors' motives other than "steal the water and harvest humans for food," I don't see where they could do anything fresh with the concept.

Perhaps it'll surprise us, like BSGv2 did, and I'll give it a fair shake, but as things currently look, I'm of the opinion that it's going to wind up being a remake-for-the-sake-of-cashing-in-on-a-familiar-name flop.

Nanner Split said:

Maybe he won't use it for EVERYTHING like they've had him doing up to this point. :P

Hell, I don't mind that so much as I'm sick and tired of seeing the Daleks in practically every other episode, to be perfectly honest.  NewWho is threatening to do to the Daleks (and, to a lesser extent, the Cybermen) what Star Trek did to the Borg: turn them from a genuinely scary threat into yet another "ho-hum villain."  They're tying themselves into knots coming up with ways to resurrect them after their latest "ultimate defeat," and IMHO it's getting monotonous.  David Moffett needs to give them a rest; let "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" be the end of it for a while, please!

Ady's using Sony Vegas for editing, as I recall, thus I'm pretty sure he's using Sony DVD Architect for authoring (DVDA is bundled with Vegas; it isn't sold seprately).  I use the same suite myself, and it's trivial to make menu buttons out of text in DVDA.

When Worlds Collide

Logan's Run

The novel of the latter has an epic scale to it, one that I'd love to see translated to the big screen (rather than confined to a couple of cheesy domes outside of a junglefied Washington, DC).  The former is the great-granddaddy of Armageddon and Deep Impact, but is so hopelessly dated (effects- and science-wise) that it almost screams to be remade.

Maybe the point of the scene was to show something dramatic, rather than be 100% anally-retentive nit-picky correct about every little detail right down to the last goddamn fraction of a millimeter. *wink*

Theory:

Based on all of the information gleaned so far, we already know that Nero went back in time (as explained in the "Countdown" comic) and wiped out the USS Kelvin, an event which altered the timeline.  Not drastically, but enough.  When Starfleet finds out about the Kelvin, they assume that they're facing a Really Big Bad (I'm pretty confident that Nero lays low for now) and go on a technology upgrade tear to fact this new threat.  Hence, the alternate USS Enterprise looking a lot more technically sophisticated than the prime USS Enterprise.

(As I said, it's only a theory.  I'm just glad to see that we'll be getting some good Trek to take that horrid Nemesis taste out of our mouths...)

Well, if it was your goal to alienate people and piss them off with exclusionary rules and an attitude of superiority, I'd say you're off to a fine start.

Over 25 years ago, a 5 megabyte hard drive for the Tandy TRS-80 cost several thousand dollars, and came in a box the size of today's mid-tower PCs (due to the size of the circuit board, which was notoriously flaky).

Today, I can go down the street to my local Micro Center store and pick up a 16 gigabyte USB flash drive for less than $30.

I feel very, very old.

HotRod said:

Oh man not you too!....C'mon guys, wait untill you've seen the film before slamming it.

Sadly, I think you'd have a better chance of convincing a brick wall to spontaneously crumble into dust than to turn some people away from their hatred and premature conclusions.

Here's the bottom line:

It's Adywan's edit. He's made it known that suggestions are always welcome. BUT...

Once he's made an absolute, final, no-going-back decision, have the good grace to SHUT UP about it. You're not required to like everything he does, but IT'S HIS PROJECT, NOT YOURS. Badgering him in the hopes of "making him see the error of his ways" is only going to piss him off. Get him pissed off badly enough, and what happens? NO MORE FAN EDITS.

Christ Almighty. It's really not that hard to figure out, y'know?

Now, can we please go back to discussing more important matters, like that crucial snowflake that keep sticking to Chewbacca's foot like it's being held down by Krazy Glue? :)