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Vidmaster

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Join date
7-Dec-2019
Last activity
13-Mar-2024
Posts
71

Post History

Post
#1581979
Topic
An <strong>Info &amp; Help Thread</strong> for the '<strong><em>Fan Edits and Projects for Other Properties</em></strong>' section... (Searches, FAQs, 'Where can I find x?', 'Is there an Edit of film x?', Myspleen, and more...)
Time

I am interested in Spicediver’s glorious edit of Dune (1984), which was rebuild recently, as seen here:
https://ifdb.fanedit.org/dune-1984-the-alternative-edition-redux-special-1080p-edition/

Does anyone have it?

Post
#1490345
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Time

All of the up-to-date changes sound awesome and I am glad that some of the more “radical” suggestions have been disagreed with, although I must admit that I wished we could keep at least SOME of the extended space battle.
Note that I absolutely understand the argument about the editing but I especially liked the new arrival of the TIEs and how the upcoming dogfighting situation is properly introduced visually now.
Not sure if this ever reached you, but I offered (via Facebook back then) to extract same voice-lines from the RogueSquadron-GameCube-Games to enable you to have some dialog-lines from Wedge and “other” pilots to avoid making the new scenes so quiet and avoiding the artifical feeling. Still thinking this could have worked out, but alas, I suppose that ship has sailed.

So, back to topic.: I am very much looking forward to ANH Revisited 1080p.
Thanks for your hard work. A cooler version of one of my favorite movies of all time, what is not to love?

Post
#1472155
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one!
Time

EddieDean said:

Vidmaster said:
Overall, I found the watching experience weirdly choppy from a framerate level. The files I have seem to be encoded at 23.976 frames per second, which is pretty normal and my screens framerate of 120Hz divides evenly enough. Yet, the footage seems very uneven (I also compared to some other files encoded at that framerate), I wonder if your export is buggy. Are you re-targeting the framerate by accident?

I’ll check this but I’m pretty sure that it’s all tight from my end.

I rechecked, everything is fine. I had a driver-problem, for some reason my Windows decided to eliminate the AMD driver from the system, I was running with the stock generic display driver for the last week. Ignore this.

EddieDean said:
I’m as frustrated as you are that the opening of the original show was so weak, and that due to necessity I have to include some content that’s also weak. While I want to be outputting content that’s as good as possible, what I have to work with doesn’t always lend itself to meeting the standards of good, so I have to simply settle for better than the original. I’ll always look to improve those episodes, especially the very first where TCW:R remains weakest.

This is totally understandable and we all appreciate your hard work. Nobody here is a wizard.

Post
#1471532
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one!
Time

The total noob here. Started with this. Watched:

  • TCWRefocused - s01e01 - The New Padawan (v2.4).mp4
  • TCWRefocused - s01e02 - Malevolence (v2.4).mp4

This is still within the scope of TCW that I actually watched. I was forced to take my sister into the pilot, which ran in the cinemas in Europe, and watched the couple of first episodes before giving up on this childish show. Years later, this project caught my interested and I mentioned that I could watch this with the untainted fresh eyes of an old school Star Wars fan.
So, my first merciless per-episode feedback, then general feedback.

The New Padawan

Not too much to complain about “The New Padawan” overall, bar its weak first third. It is, in essence, a forgetable pilot episode meant to introduce everything and it gets the job done. Many dialog scenes are still cringeworthy but that is the material that is there. It is still much more watchable than the original stuff.

The opening text is a mess in my book, because it seems to paint the picture that various things have happened, especially the retreat to a medical station. Yet, the episode actually opens with the retreat and we see ships arriving later.
I also think the first third does not work as a story: If there is a blockade in place, how is anyone being dropped off through that? Why is the Admiral talking about dropping Ashoka off personally but is actually not?
I think the entire first third should be restructured, with the fleet getting driven off at a later stage (probably after Ventress and the invasion force landing), which would also allow a reduction of the opening text. Causality in storytelling is really important to me, but this episode only comes together in the second half when it comes to that aspect.

Furthermore, I found a few of cuts a little too hard and disjointed, the very first one is a good example. We see the ships seemingly retreat (which is okay, because we got the opening crawl for context), then we cut to the Jedi. No etablishing shot, no sense of what is going on or sence of connections. Granted, that cut is particularly bad, but others are very distracting as well: some in tone, for example the 5:52 one from “prepare to march” to “our cruiser must be back”, and some in simple execution, like 14:16 one from space the ground. The biggest base-challenge for every fan edit, making a cut feel like it belonged there.

Malevolence

I was looking forward to that, I remember this to be a three-parter about a giant evil dreadnought. But the fan-edit version was rather disappointing for me.
First things first, we never see the enemy super weapon. That is a big mistake in my opinion, establishing the thread visually is critical. But in the edit, we only see the aftermath of such a firing. This robs the finale of its dramatic tension. I mean, I have absolutely no idea of what this weapon does. Maybe it is totally harmless, just disabling the station? On the other hand, the Malevolence could blow that station to bits anyway, since it has practically no defenses as the episode states… Also, Grievous orders the retreat way after we see his giant vessel turn away and veer off, which I found weird.

Considering this is supposed to be about the Malevolence, I find it strange that only about 50% of the runtime is actually dealing with that vessel. Instead, we get lots of debris-field action. I do not remember what was in the original episodes but I find the focus of the episode strange.
Story-wise, I find it strange that Ashoka has been doing “a great job” according to Anaking (26:30) when, at least in my book, she really did not do too much. Anakin wanted to search for survivors on his own (and R2 found them) and during the battle, no of her actions was that noteworthy. Not sure if she even fired a single shot. From what I watched, she was out of line and then along for the ride, nothing more.

There is the obvious problem of Anakins strange ship, which is, if I recall correctly, some freighter they picked up during the original pilot. No idea how to deal with this, but it sure is weird in that episode. What ship is that? It looks very un-republic…

Stylistically speaking, there were some fades-to-black (seemingly always to a Hyperspace Scene), which I found to be totally out-of-place. No idea if they were there in the original but to me, they felt super strange.
Maybe this episode has an expectation problem from my end, but while I found the first one to be simple and generic, that second one just felt broken somehow. Pretty sure that first fade-out is partially to blame, as I was totally out at that point.

Also, from watching this second episode, I get the impression that the retreat to a medial station in Ep1 is something you added to introduce some continuity. However, I think that is misplaced. This information adds nothing to Ep1 and in Ep2, we learn from the station by Dooku anyway.

General Feedback

I really liked the pseudo-concept-art approach in the credits as a call to the live action shows, but I think the filter is a little bit too agressive and simple. But alas, that is really not the focus.

Overall, I found the watching experience weirdly choppy from a framerate level. The files I have seem to be encoded at 23.976 frames per second, which is pretty normal and my screens framerate of 120Hz divides evenly enough. Yet, the footage seems very uneven (I also compared to some other files encoded at that framerate), I wonder if your export is buggy. Are you re-targeting the framerate by accident?

Gonna continue watching, but I must admit that I probably had unrealistic expectations of what could be achieved with TCW. So many people say there is good Star Wars in there, so I am going to keep looking for a while longer.

Post
#1453733
Topic
Godzilla vs Kong (Titan Truth Cut) (Released)
Time

Movie was a disaster, which hurts because both previous Godzilla movies made by that studio were awesome (each in its own way). The King Kong movie beforehand was… weak. Editing the movie a lot might improve that one though.

When it comes to “KONG (and also Godzilla)” (let’s face it, much more accurate, Godzilla barely features), I am not sure if it can be saved. I am willing to give it a try if your edit is finished though, but I doubt that we ever get a good movie out of this one.

It is similar to Rise of Skywalker, there are so many fundamental problems with the story being told here, it is hard to remove anything since the bad stuff is everywhere…

If you manage to do the impossible, count me in.

Post
#1453732
Topic
The Hobbit (M4 Book Edit) (Released)
Time

sidshady12 said:
Keep in mind that the VFX downloads don’t have any grain or color changes 😉 so those files will be identical to original movie visuals and you can apply your own color grading on top of them. It’s only if you tried to take stuff directly from my MKV

That is what I needed to here, perfect.

By the way, could you PM me a link? I would like to watch your cut at some point, I am very curious.

Post
#1453101
Topic
Babylon 5 reboot
Time

I am really happy about it, with JMS being back at the helm. How often does one get to re-make something you made half a life ago?

Obviously, this could also be really lame. JMS wrote plenty of awesome things but also plenty of shit, one must not forget Legend of the Rangers 😉
However, I think a lot of the problems post-B5 came from the fact that B5 left little on the table for a great ark, with the Shadow War over. Biggest one were the Drakh and thus Crusade obviously had a good hook, but that one got burned with that show’s early demise. Leaving Legend of the Rangers with nothing.

So, I am looking forward to it. The old one still holds up and if the new one is not to my liking, it can be ignored easily enough. But I am ready for some nostaliga-free re-interpretations of a thing I love.

In contrast to Star Trek Discovery, Discovery and the what, which panders to old-Trek all the time while not understanding anything about what made that actually good. Do it truely differently or be a sequel, not 50/50.

Post
#1453095
Topic
The Hobbit (M4 Book Edit) (Released)
Time

sidshady12 said:
If you want to borrow footage that’s fine, but just remember to give credit

Don’t worry, if it ever comes to that.

sidshady12 said:
I also have a subtle 35mm film grain/my own color correction (for best quality to edit, download the Blu-ray ISO version).

This is the bigger problem. But thanks anyway, that download is much appreciated (arrows removed and GREY stone dust around the dragon). I take all you got there…

Post
#1453053
Topic
The Hobbit (M4 Book Edit) (Released)
Time

I absolutely envy you. I have been working on my Hobbit Edit for over two years now and constantly bang my head against shitty shots that are still somehow essential to the overall story. You simply have access to resources I can only dream of, like replacing a son with a piece of wood 😉

Honestly, I should start stealing shots and ideas from you…

Post
#1446482
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one!
Time

Hey everyone, me again, the CloneWars-noob here. To recall: I have never seen much of the original CW and am only tangentially aware of a small percentage of the plot points (I reckon at least, since I have no idea about how much plot stuff is there) and I got this deal with Eddie to eventually provide a no-prior-contact perspective on this project.

I am looking into this thread on a three times a year basis. It seems like some polishing effort is currently going on, but since I avoid most of the thread, I am out of the loop. Could somebody inform me via PM once S1 is in a state considered “ready” for the noob?

My original statement for Eddie was, I believe, “Just ping and share once you feel comfortable with the result”. Just wanted to make sure that was still on the radar.

Post
#1419066
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one!
Time

EddieDean said:
That’s perfect buddy, unspoilt newbies will definitely be really valuable. Once I start releasing I intend to do one weekly- it’d be great to have your feedback as it airs “live”.

Sorry for the necro but as mentioned, I am not really looking through this thread to actually remain “detached”.
Given that you seemingly have taken me up on my offer, can I then expect a PM at some point or how exactly will I be contacted once it is time?