Pagz

I'm nearing the end of my edit now. I am currently editing the final battle sequence. Once that's done all that will be left is some audio finessing, subtitles and dialogue replacement, a final good render of my opening crawl and some additions to the end credits. Fingers crossed I'll be able to post it on fanedit.org sometime in March.

That dialogue was from one of the "tone poem" commercials that ran during the marketing campaign for episode I. They're available on the special features disc under trailers and TV spots.

For some reason Vegas seems to get glitchy when I render out videos with a lot of cuts in them. It seems to be including the very next frame after where the cuts are supposed to be. It makes the video look jittery. If anyone knows why this is happening I'd sure appreciate some assistance. Anyway, here's a little experiment in editing. Needs a little refining, but not bad for a first pass. What do you all think? Should I pursue this path?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZGvPKm8ZKU

Fair enough. I'm willing to allow that sidious might mean something else in the Neimoidian language so it doesn't concern me all that much.

One of the conceits of the OT I loved and which was lost in the PT was the notion that everyone understood each other despite language barriers. It's something I wanted to recapture in the PT by way of having aliens speak their own languages but still be understood.

Bingowings said:

Watching some of Pagz TPM clips gave me a few ideas but I'm not sure if they are suitable for his project so I'm putting them here.

Going with the conventional start up wouldn't it make more sense if the Feds didn't show their battledroids to to Republican Ambassadors?...

That's always bothered me. The Jedi seem to have no problem seeing battledroids milling about when they land, but as soon as they see them in the hangar bay suddenly they're concerned? If I had the ability I would remove the droids from the hangar bay entirely. Alas I'm not that talented :p

Now that I have my video files sorted out properly I have some more progress on the edit. For some reason the video coming out of Vegas is a little on the dark side, and the positioning of the subtitles isn't matching up to what it is in the preview window in Vegas, but these are minor issues which I can fix later. So, here's the rest of the trade federation command ship sequence. Hope you all dig.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SnpZLqzYP8

It's cool, my genius often goes unappreciated ;)

I've always been unhappy with the ship design of the prequels. Not that I think they're unappealing or ugly, I don't. In fact the jedi Starfighter of Episode III is pretty slick I think. The problem is that, with very few exceptions, most of the designs tend to look like they come after the OT and not before. I've always felt that what we should have seen in the PT were the ships of the rebel alliance in "pristine" versions (By which I mean clearly new and well maintained). X-Wings with proper body casings to cover the greeblies, Y-Wings a la the animated clone wars, and such like that. That way when we get to A New Hope it's even clearer that the rebels are using what amount to hand me downs. They've pillaged old ship salvage yards and the like and are using old out of date vehicles.

Classic BSG is a pretty decent source for Classic Star Wars-esque designs. I often think a halfway point between a Viper and an X-Wing would have made a far more believable precursor to the X-Wing than those ridiculous things they came up with in RotS. Something akin to the Battlestar's themselves are what I pictured as precursors to the Star Destroyers.

And will be done by at least one more ;)

Well, I'm not completely sure. I would love for the community to be able to download and burn it so they can check it out. So I imagine I'll offer a dual layer dvd iso of the project when it's all done.

I'm using Vegas for the editing and After Effects for the sfx. I have noticed with after effects that my test render of my opening crawl (available on pg.3 of my edit thread) that the quality left a lot to be desired. I'm brand new to After Effects, the last time I used it was back in 2001, so I'm a babe in the woods now. Assuming my final destination is a dual layer ntsc dvd are there specific settings in Vegas and After Effects I should set before I start?

Let us hope that the quality of the snapshot will be indicative of the quality of my edit. ;)

Alrighty, here's the snapshot from vdubmod:

So I guess it's all good eh?

Hmm, My pillar boxing is significant. Here's a screencap of mediaplayer playing the AVI in fullscreen mode:

Versus how it displays fullscreen from the DVD:

Hmmmm...

I was converting the whole movie. Previous AVI efforts landed me over 100 gigs, this AVI is 47 gigs. Also, the AVI I get can`t be played on VLC, it apparently doesn't support LAGS:

No suitable decoder module:

VLC does not support the audio or video format "LAGS". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this.

That doesn't bother me much, it plays fine in Mediaplayer and it looks very nice, no interlacing. One other thing that concerns me though is aspect ratio. It looks fine, but when I view it in fullscreen on my 16:9 display I get pillar boxes in addition to letterboxing. I would expect an anamorphic image to fill the screen side to side.

So what have I done wrong this time? ;)

I`m getting a little anxious as the projected file size of my AVI is considerably smaller than I would have anticipated...

I don't know if this idea has been floated before, but here goes:

I've been toying with the idea of pulling together space battle footage from other sci fi movies of the late 70s/early 80s for use in the PT. Things like Battlestar Galactica, Battle Beyond the Stars, Galaxy of Terror and the like. In addition I've also been looking for Star Wars knock-off scores like Stu Phillips' Galactica score (though I think it's unfair to call such a good score a knock-off... let's call it inspired by instead).

What I have in mind is replacing special effects scenes with footage that would be more in line with the visuals in the OT. Just a thought. What do you all think? Any suggestions for source material?

Yup, forced film in DGindex. I think if this all works out I might post a step by step just for Ripping to lossless AVI to help those as clueless as me ;)

Sweet Merciful Shatner! I think it's actually going to work this time around! I have my fingers crossed. I'll report back in about 45 minutes when it's done rendering.

I just need to create a lossless avi file from my M2V file so I can start editing in Vegas.

Here's the download site for the update:

http://us.playstation.com/support/systemupdates/ps3/

So presumably I write my own avs script in notepad? Is there a guide I can follow for that? I wouldn't know where to begin in writing an avs script. I'm also curious what the point of AVIsynth is if it's better to just write the script yourself.

dark_jedi said:

Pagz said:

 

Okay, so I made a new script in GK

Ditch GK, your script is way to cluttered for what you are doing, M also said to ditch it, but you still use it, we can't help if you don't use our suggestions.

Yeah, maybe finish reading the rest of the post first? I ask specifically for that clarification since M's post could be read 2 ways.

So, how does one get an AVS script without using GK?

Moth3r said:

Ditch the Gordian Knot script, it's causing all your problems.

The reason why your motion is jerky is that you are using "force film" in DGIndex, then performing IVTC in the script. You only need one or the other, not both.

The reason your aspect ratio is wrong is because you are cropping the black bars (GK is designed for Xvid encoding), but then upsizing what's left to DVD resolution. You don't need to do any cropping or resizing if you're going from DVD to DVD.

(Also, regarding the error you mentioned in post 11 - VirtualDub has been able to decompress YV12 since about 2004, it no longer uses the Xvid codec for this. Are you sure you got this error with the latest release?)

Okay, so I made a new script in GK and didn't alter anything. When I try to open my .avs script in VirtualDub (64 bit, version 1.9.11) I get the following error: AVI Import Filter error: (Unknown) (80040154)

If I try opening the script in VirtualDubMod (based on version 1.5.10) which came with GK, the video gets super tiny and super pixelated.

When you say to Ditch the GK script do you mean I should ditch GK entirely and get my AVS script in some other fashion? or just to drop the altered script I had made and just take a straight avs script from GK?

That was awesome Bob! One suggestion if I may? When Padme says she's glad to have met Anakin, use the line "That name no longer has any meaning for me"

Just a thought ;)

So, my AVI is done. It appears to be tall and squished, like an anamorphic picture on a 4:3 monitor. Is it supposed to look like that? Further, it feels a little herky jerky, quite noticable during the crawl and during pans. Could that be because of the squished picture? or possibly from the forced film in DGIndex? Or something else I'm not even thinking of.

Here's my avs script this time around:

# Created with Gordian Knot
#
# http://gknot.doom9.org

#  PLUGINS
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\GORDIA~1\DGMPGDec\DGDecode.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\GORDIA~1\AviSynthPlugins\decomb.dll")
#LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\GORDIA~1\AviSynthPlugins\KernelDeInt.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\GORDIA~1\AviSynthPlugins\UnDot.dll")
#LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\GORDIA~1\AviSynthPlugins\dgbob.dll")
#LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\GORDIA~1\AviSynthPlugins\Convolution3d.dll")
#LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\GORDIA~1\AviSynthPlugins\FluxSmooth.dll")
#LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\GORDIA~1\AviSynthPlugins\TomsMoComp.dll")
#LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\GORDIA~1\AviSynthPlugins\VSFilter.dll")
#LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~2\GORDIA~1\AviSynthPlugins\SimpleResize.dll")

#  SOURCE
mpeg2source("G:\PHANTOM_MENACE\VIDEO_TS\the gathering storm.d2v")

#  TRIM
#trim(startframe,endframe)

#  IVTC
Telecide(order=1,guide=1).Decimate()
#  or use
#IVTC(44,11,95)
#GreedyHMA(1,0,4,0,0,0,0,0)

#  DEINTERLACING (1)
#FieldDeinterlace()
#FieldDeinterlace(blend=false)
#TomsMoComp(1,5,1)

#  DEINTERLACING (2)
#KernelDeInt(order=1,sharp=true)
#  or maybe
#DGBob(order=1,mode=0)

#  DEINTERLACING (3) - special requests
#GreedyHMA(1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0)
#Telecide()
#SeparateFields()

#  CROPPING
crop(0,60,720,360)

#  SUBTITLES
#VobSub("FileName")

#  RESIZING
LanczosResize(720,480)

#  DENOISING: choose one combination (or none)
Undot()

#  1) little noise
#Temporalsoften(2,3,3,mode=2,scenechange=6)
#mergechroma(blur(1.3))
#FluxSmoothST(5,7)

#  2) medium noise
#Temporalsoften(3,5,5,mode=2,scenechange=10)
#Convolution3d("moviehq")
#FluxSmoothST(7,7)

#  3) heavy noise
#Temporalsoften(4,8,8,mode=2,scenechange=10)
#Convolution3d("movielq")
#FluxSmoothST(10,15)

#  BORDERS
#AddBorders(left,top,right,bottom)

#  COMPRESSIBILITY CHECK
#  !!!!Snip Size now has to be 14 for use in GKnot!
#SelectRangeEvery(280,14)

#  FOOL CCEnc
#empty = BlankClip()
#AudioDub(last,empty)