SpilkaBilka

Subtly change character's names.

Hank Solo.  Lou Skywalker.

Oh well, the manual for my BD player says it only supports FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32.  But I will see if I can stream it from my laptop to my BD player.

Infinity said:

You can use mkvtoolnix to easily remove audio tracks.  The only problem you may run into is if your BD player can't read ntfs formatted drives, as fat32 only supports individual file size of up to 4gb.

Thanks for the tip.  I'm not sure what my BD player is capable of- we'll see what happens!

How would I go about removing some audio tracks from the MKV?  I've been playing the movie on my laptop, connected to my TV with an HDMI out.  It would be much easier if I could put the MKV on a USB drive and stick it in my BD player.

Unfortunately, the biggest USB drive I have is "16GB" (actually 14.9GB in real life), and the MKV is 16.06GB.  I'm hoping if I strip away enough of the audio tracks I'll be able to get it under 14.9GB.  Thanks.

CatBus,

Interesting.  Those are good points, but I actually see the AVCHD as possibly being the MOST important release.  I'm looking at this from a "spread HD restored SW to your less tech-savvy friends" perspective.

While it won't look as good as the BD or MKV, it'll still look pretty amazing.  And I know plenty of people who have BD players, but I literally know no one (save some people on internet forums) who has a BD burner (I don't have one either).  I think for most of us trying to spread the gospel of an HD, restored SW, being able to get near-BD quality with only a DVD burner is essential.

The MKV is great and all, but to me is the least convenient, and probably not very useful to our less tech-savvy friends.

Just my opinion.

edit: whoops, everyone answered this much more quickly and succinctly than I did :)

AntcuFaalb said:

I now own a brand new copy of the 1995 THX Widescreen set.

I have lots of fond memories of this set.  I really started to get into SW in 1993 when X-Wing came out, and was very excited when this set came out in 1995.  I must have watched it hundreds of times, in addition to watching the Death Star assault nearly every day for over a year.

I threw it out when I got rid of my VCR a few years ago.  I wish I had kept it.  I love the packaging.

Just finished watching this on my 50" plasma... there are no words to describe how amazing it is.

And I actually caught something I had never noticed before, which is pretty rare when I watch SW these days.  After the DS has been destroyed, and it shows Luke getting out of his X-wing, focus on the upper-right part of the screen, and you can see Han and Chewie WAY in the background getting driven around on one of those cart things.

Cool, I will wait too.  Thanks Harmy!

Prog5000 said:

Mine keeps failing during encoding. Trying to make avchd.

Are you trying to use AVCHDCoder?  I can't get it to work.  After it converts audio 100%, I immediately get a message saying "error converting video."

djchaseb said:

Got my AVCHD done and it looks amazing. Left out most of the audio options just for personal preference. All I need is Hairy Hen's, the 2 channel and mono 77' audio. I can't notice any shift in video quality from the MKV on my 720p TV.

EDIT: For those wanting to do the same. I used a program called AVCHDcoder (a quick google search can yield the download link). Load the MKV file into the program, select which audio streams you want to use, select the output size (I chose Dual Layer), select the output folder and let it do its thing. Mine took around 7 hours to finish but the results are very nice and can be burned to dual layer dvd.

I'm doing this right now.  It's a shame that the max # of audio streams is 3- ideally I'd have the Hairy Hen mix, 77 stereo, 77 mono, 93 stereo, the 2 isolated score tracks, and the 93 commentary track.

Amazing stuff, Harmy.  I can't believe how much more detail there is inside the sandcrawler.

Myspleen copy works fine for me as well.

Happy birthday, dude!  Thanks again for all your hard work!

Harmy, you are the man for doing all this.  I'm blown away by all the quality work you've done.  You're making a lot of SW fans very happy.

I can't wait for the BD.  Are you definitely going to have an isolated score?  I humbly request its inclusion, as well as the 1993 laserdisc commentary.

Thanks again, and good luck on your exams!

I don't know anyone who has a D-Box (they're thousands of dollars), but I wonder if it would be possible for someone to create a D-Box program that syncs with the Star Tours DVD.  I'm surprised Lucasfilm hasn't done this.

I remember back in the day some people thought Luke was talking about the "Kallone Wars" or "Colonial Wars."

Hal 9000 said:

I'd prefer silence for non-scored parts of the film for the isolated score track. If I wanted other sounds, I'd switch to another track. I'd vote for music only.

I agree.

russs15 said:

In that case, I vote for the recently posted Schorman13: 1993 Commentary Track (Mono) Definitive Collection from the Star Wars Laser Disc Audio Archive thread.

That would be awesome!  I'm sure a lot of people, myself included, have never heard this.

<p>Wow, how did they get Tim Heidecker?</p>

"Thanks for the espresso, George.  But next time, I'd like it faster and more intense."

My vote would be: go with whatever it actually looked like, whether it sucks or not.  Preservation.

This looks absolutely amazing, Harmy.  Thank you so much for everything you do in restoring Star Wars to its original glory.  I can't wait for this release.

I was wondering, what are your plans for the audio track?  Stereo, mono?  An option to choose between the two?  Any thoughts on doing an isolated score?

Thanks again!

Harmy said:

http://youtu.be/dBM7i84BThE

That. Is. Amazing.

I love Red Leader's contributions (he's my favorite minor SW character).  They just seem to stand out the most to me (I think I can recite the entire Battle of Yavin in my sleep, backwards).  Knowing that "I just" comes from "I just lost my starboard engine" is hilarious.

Regardless of when it happened, I always thought it was an unusual excuse for Han to use to leave the Alliance.  Sure, you've got gangsters trying to collect a debt on you... but now you're in the military.  If the bounty hunters want you, they have to fight through the Rebels first.

I get that he ran into a bounty hunter while on a mission, but any mission he goes on for the Rebels is inherently dangerous anyway, because of the risk of encountering Imperials.

Besides, he should also be worried that Darth Vader would be hunting him just as fiercely as the Hutts, since he helped blow up the Death Star.

Rieekan says, "a death mark's not an easy thing to live with."  But as resistance fighters, all Rebels are essentially marked for death.

Does that make sense?

Bingowings said:

Why the Jedi should deploy this brainwashed slave army based on the confirmed bodyguard of their enemy leader, implicated as he is in the attempted assassination of a prominent senator (morally and ethically this is odd but strategically it's suicidal) and continue to do so for the full duration of the war is wonky beyond belief.

Mind.  Blown.  These prequels have all sorts of problems, but this one never even occurred to me until now.  Unreal.