adywan

Savage said:

In order to get a sense of isolation, all that needs be done would be to remove the extra officers and insert a different matte background.  The actual stairs and hallway need not be changed.  As is it looks almost like a small hallway between rooms, so why in the hell are three officers just standing around?  Regardless, I'm not bothered by the existing shot.  If any changes are done, it may be easiest just to isolate Piett and replace the entirety of the background.

i'm actually in two minds about this now. i'm starting to like the idea of having it a bit more isolated. hmmmm, what to do. lol

Monroville said:

DarkFather said:

You seriously want to tell me that Vader would be perfectly okay with a bunch of random-ass Joes having such a chance to glimpse him without his helmet on, or to have regular sneak peeks on the private meetings going on within?

Who said he would have to walk that far to get to the action of things anyway? It could be an extra room separating the main decks from his private chamber. It's not like it has to be a mile long corridor or anything.

Vader could just be a few floors down in the command tower.  I would still think that there would be an airlock of sorts being that Vader would have to have something akin to a pure oxygen environment due to his physical damage and need of the suit.

WAMPA ATTACK:
I understand the CGI blood thing, but you could still add sound FX like breaking bones, and the eyes on the Taun-Taun could be done using the same program you used on the cantina creatures.  As far as having the "Taun-Taun" spin its head to the left in the scene with Luke getting hit, you could use some of the other shots with Luke and Han on their Taun-Tauns, since the heads are pointing to the left.

The whole idea is to make the Taun-Taun act more like a living creature.  Be it deer or horses, usually when a predator, person or loud noise occurs around most animals (including us), we all tend to see what it is.

The extra Wampa hand and arm could be done by copying the arm and flipping it.  The thumb may have to be repositioned.

Adywan said:
The mountains don't need to be changed. its the canon that's throwing out the scale in this shot. i may change the contrast of the background to give it more distance

I have to disagree with you on your statement here.  It is not the gun tower that throws it off, but the mountain range which is part of a used backdrop.  If you look at that "hill", it is the same or similar to alot of the distant mountain shots in a lot of the AT-AT attack sequences.  Being that you can see 2 snowspeeders coming over the "mountain", either those snowspeeders are HUGE or that is a tiny mountain range.

it isn't as easy as taking the head off the Taun-Taun from a separate section to make him react. the two shots have to match and with all the movement its virtually impossible

The snowspeeders don't come over the mountain at all. take a look at the first few frames and you'll see that the speeders come in from the lower left side of the screen. i might add some smaller speeders coming from in the distance which will give it the scale it needs

EDIT: i see you edited your post while i was writing my reply

Monroville said:

In this scene (with the first fly-over of the snowspeeders over the hill);

Maybe you could change the hill to something more appropriate, such as a snow mound as opposed to what looks like a Lilliputian mountain range.  Also, would we see the multiple shadows of the snowspeeders on the ground as they fly overhead 

No we wouldn't see any shadows from the speeders because they are not close enough to the ground in this shot. The mountains don't need to be changed. its the canon that's throwing out the scale in this shot. i may change the contrast of the background to give it more distance

Monroville said:

Also, in the Wampa attack, would it be conceivable to add a bit of blood to Luke and the Taun-Taun (maybe even show blood fly out of Luke's mouth when he is hit), be it in the initial impacts of the Wampa claw and/or when they fall down into the snow.  An extra or alternative could also be to add some sound FX to indicate Luke's jaw breaking from the hit as well as the Taun-Taun's neck being broken (celery is a good stand by, if not sampling other movies that have some bone breaking sound FX).

Could also consider adding some bass to the Wampa's claw impacts (nothing too Michael Bayish) - just something to indicate a creaure with the power of an 18 wheeler behind it, and it's hitting Luke and his steed full force.  Maybe you could show BOTH of the Wampa's arms and hands as it is choking/breaking the neck of the Taun-Taun.  When we see the Taun-Taun (at 3:42) you could show 2 hands grabbing onto the Taun-Taun's neck and twisting (or at least manipulate the Taun-Taun head to violently turn to the right with a sudden SNAP sound FX)

You could also show the Taun-Taun's eyes get wider when it starts freaking out from smelling the Wampa, and/or even see if you could have the Taun-Taun spin it's head quickly to the left (at 3:40) to face the Wampa when Luke gets knocked off (to look at the sudden movement coming from its flank)

The problem with adding blood to a scene is that it can end up looking really fake. i've attempted to change the position of the claw as it strikes luke but the way he rolls as he is hit makes positioning the claw to strike his face impossible. plus his body hides most of the claw in that shot so i couldn't move it to in front of his head to accomplish this.  Turning the wampas head or widening his eyes again may look good on paper but you have to remember i can only work with what is on the screen with things like this. But has anyone noticed that the wampa is actually backhanding luke in this shot. I guess they only made a right arm when it should have been swiping him with its lefts arm when he knocks him off

Monroville said:

You "could" change the footsteps in the background to go from the the center to Luke, as opposed to directly behind him.  That would give us a better indication of how far he has walked.

I also noticed at the (3:54) scene in the youtube.com link, the entrance of the rebel cave is somewhat different that the one we see in the rebel transport scene.

 

the footsteps don't need moving. if you look at the video for that section you can clearly see which direction Luke is walking so moving the footsteps would screw this up.It's something that doesn't need to be done.

Also the problem with this scene , that has been mentioned before, isn't the fact that Luke turns his head too soon but way he follows the path of the falcon. I'll be doing something to fix this

The entrance to the rebel cave isn't different in that shot at all. its taken from a different angle and further  away from the entrance

vaderios said:

Something I always bothering me was the the scene when vader puts his helmet.

We see Piett enter the room and from the outside we see officers walking around and same set from different angle

Maybe vader's chamber suits a place more silent and deep to executor, not in a place when he can be visible.

i don't think this needs changing. wouldn't it make better sense if his chamber was close to the bridge instead of being deep within the bowels of the ship? I can't help thinking of the scene in spaceballs if Vader needed to get to the bridge in a hurry if he was so far away from it in his chamber. lol

vaderios said:

a common misconception about the atmosphere of a planet. the atmosphere would only be visible around the light side of the planet and not the dark side.

Angel Blue01 said:

Hello there everyone.

First of all, like everyone else I want to thank Adywan for his spectaular work on ANH and I'm looking forward to ESB.

While I realize it's much too late for this to have a real effect on the project, I'd like to call your attention to an interesting Web site on lightsabres, specifically the page on ESB errors: http://www.thelightsaber.com/web/Goofs/ESB/esbgoofs.htm

While Adywan's ANH edit addressed some, but not all, of the problems mentioned there in ANH, I was hoping these problems with the lightsabres could be taken into account for ESB and ROTJ.

i'm pretty sure that all those errors on that site were fixed in ANH:R apart from the one shot of the length of Vaders sabre. All those errors are being fixed in ESB:R

Sojourn said:

Also, out of curiosity -- why did you flip the Executor bridge shot (minus the section in the middle, with Vader)?

it was for a couple of reasons. Piette kept changing sides of the bridge in the original so i have fixed this and he is now only on the one side throughout that sequence. i had to flip the last shot for continuity and also because the added visual reference of the control centre in the background

well the new fur came today and although its the correct colour the length of the pile may not be long enough for the wampa, but this was the longest pile that is available so i'm going to have to enhance it with some hair from party wigs. i guess that's what comes from living in such a crappy country. i can't seem to get anything i need over here

I found this one online. Is this any good?

There are some more hi-res pictures HERE

Bingowings said:

This is a lovely motorised model, it might have saved so much time doing certain shots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34tgu7ULkeM&feature=related

If i could get hold of that there is so much i could do with it for this edit.

Just added a new set of screenshots to page 1.

Savage said:

I've been geeked up over this since the last preview and have a couple requests:

Could someone provide the link to the ESB:R clip archive?  The member's name escapes me at this moment (005, maybe?), but someone was keeping an online database of all the clips to this point.  I only have a couple of them and have turned a few more friends onto the project and they'd like to see the previous clips as well.  Ady's got a number of them linked in his first post, but I know there's more.  Plus, the "Revisited Repository" (that should be trademarked :) ) had the dates attached to each clip, which is very nice, too!

Also, I would like to request a split-screen of the Ion cannon shot again.  This is something I would like to do myself, but I'm running an ailing 2.4 GHz Pentium II with a scant 512 MB of RAM and my machine would certainly not like that.  Now in a couple weeks, it may be a different story (c'mon Dell!)....

And put me down for not knowing what the hell I'm looking for in that SD gif, too! :)

i've added all he videos i still have to the first post

This stardestroyer issue has me stumped. I can see what you mean in the XVID i posted but it isn't present in the master file so hopefully it is just an encoding problem

doubleofive said:

Amras Felagund said:

Oh, and doubleofive, I will be sending you a PM regarding my civilian identity (wow, do I sound like a super-hero or what?) for inclusion in the credits for ESB:R. I want to see my name in the credits for a Star Wars movie.

Yes, I guess I should be the target of the secret identities...

can you put the forum name next to the real names then please so i can keep track. thanks

ImperialFighter said:

Adywan, just a thought, but would it be possible to add a hint of RED lighting to your excellent new shot of the 'Tyrant's' Bridge?  Perhaps into just a couple of the lights on show, even?  It might just give an additional little 'something extra' to the shot, and would reference the touch of red that was in the original one too.

I've posted a shot of the 'Avenger's' Bridge in the following post as an example of a 'standard' Stardestroyer Bridge shot.  During the shot of the 'Avenger's' evasive action, some RED light's  actually 'blink-on', on this upper section  (Note:  the very front of the 'Avenger's' Bridge can fully be seen in the shot where the Millennium Falcon 'swoops closely upwards' past it's windows, but I can't remember where I previously posted it) -

the red lights aren't visible on the section that is showing in  new clip as they are just out of shot. if i move the windows upward so you can see the lights then it throws the scale out. Plus the red lights only blink in that one shot when the stardestroyer is on alert. if you look at the other shots of the stardestroyer bridge (including the executor because its the same set) the lights never blink.

any luck finding the cause of this Jay? I've cleared out all my cache and tried about everything but its still happening . just seems strange that it doesn't happen all the time

ImperialFighter said:

Wow!  It's been years since I saw that, and had forgotten this was in it.  I really like the look of this one too,  and those are indeed wonderfully 'gnarly' horns!  (and 'lop-sided' ears)

yeh i like the look of this one too. i've noticed that the horns are actually part of the wampas cheeks instead of ones protruding from the side of its head. this would explain why, when they added the extra fur to the cheeks, that the horns became hidden as they couldn't tuck the fur underneath them.

Ganamae said:

Thanks for noticing, well from the last posted film clip with The Tyrant speeding towards Hoth ( just before we see Lt. Cabble and Capt. Lennox, there seems to be some distortions or squares on and below the command tower that seem to slide over the ship, you can see it quite well on a bigger screen, try looking from where the engines are and up to the command tower.

Has anyone else noticed this, did you see it Ripplin?

 

Might just be that my vlc player is acting up..? it its always the same at approx time stamp 00:10 seconds into the clip.

It's also a tiny bit visible just before the 2nd ION bolt his the Tyrant in the command tower, it's like an "invisible" live slowly moving down the command tower from the top at time: 00:30 and when the rebels transport passes the you can also see these "lines" on the side of the Tyrant as well as by the engine area.

there is also spot on the camera lens following the 1st ION bolt when it hits the destroyer, its as its most visible just after the bolt hits, tiny spec that it is :p ( this is knit picking I know )

i can just see what you mean on the approach shot. and i now know what this is. This is another transparency issue that plagues the FX work in ESB. i have moved the planet slightly over and what you are seeing is the transparency of the stardestroyer with the original planet placement showing through the stardestroyer. i'm not sure what i can do about this because i have changed not only the placement of the elements but also the movement

i've noticed  the spot that moves across the towers right hand dome as the bolt hits but i'm not going to bother about that. it could be space debris. lol

i've gone though the next shot frame by frame and i can't see any problems like lines in the shot where the transport passes at all. you'll need to post a screenshot pointing out exactly what you mean

DuTwan said:

Is it possible Adywan that we could know what scenes you are workin on at a certain time? Might be easier than a big list that people make and wanna see, would rather see everyone's focus into one scene/clip. Also any chanc we could know what you maybe workin on now Adywan?

i work on different shots usually out of sequence so i don't really work on specific full scenes as i go along. at the moment i'm working on removing the background in the shot where we see the troopers in the trench get ready for action but the background has the turret already destroyed before the Imperials even fire a shot. so far its taken me 4 days to mask out about half of the troopers

doubleofive said:

If you don't want to go through the thread for names, I could do it for you.  You have better things to do...

That would be very helpful if you could do that for me. thanks

Amok said:

I just noticed something about the interior of the SD shot. The two officers standing that much apart... dunno if that really works. Somehow the way they stand just feels like they should stand closer together. you know people restrain their body movements more, the closer they get to others. I am aware that in the military this is standard protocol, but something about those two officers just doesn't feel right yet. What was your reason for putting them further apart?

It was mainly due to framing.  having the officers in their original positions didn't look right with the new background windows & the planet. i couldn't move the officer that comes from the right hand side of the frame so that only left Captain Lennox. There was also the issue of the walkway around the windows. if i moved the windows to the left so i could keep Lennox in his original position then it would look like the officer had walked over the pit. at the end of the day i was more concerned about eyeline than body stance.

Knightmessenger said:

I've been watching some of your updates on youtube and I'm pretty impressed as usual. And I got to see the entire Star Wars Revisited on youtube. It was interesting seeing my name in the credits, even though I don't remember giving any suggestions for that edit.

If you do the same thing with Empire, do you want our real names?

Oh god you reminded me of the huge task i have of collecting all the names from this thread and now its reached over 6000 posts thats going to be a daunting task that i am not looking forward to. If anyone wants their real names included then you'll need to email me with your real name along with your forum name so i can keep a track on things.

Ganamae said:

I noticed something, when we 1st see the destroyer shoot towards Hoth you can see some squares and some odd shadow on the command bridge, copy paste!?

Perhaps this will be smoothed out?

which shot are you talking about? can you be more specific about this please?

ImperialFighter said:

 

I wonder if the slightly 'lop-sided' ears of the 'puppet' version will be part of Ady's version or not?

I always liked them, myself.  :)

I'm still debating about the ears but they'll probably end up included.

I noticed something interesting when i was watching SP FX: The making of the Empire Strikes Back today. They have a brief shot of the puppet and its slightly different than the one used in the movie. The film version has more hair added to its cheeks and this covers up the horns. so it was nice to see the puppet with its original horns.

rcb said:

hey adywan, i was wondering if ur using any new music in any of the scenes. not PT music just stuff from the OT

no, there will be no new music in ESB:R

sgdelta1771 said:

Now that Ion Cannon sequence was simply beautiful!  But I'm feeling a bit hyper today...

Maybe add... a few TIE fighters coming from the star destroyers and a bit more battle from the X-Wings and Transport, possibly even a bit of damage on that transport as well.  Make it seem like the Imperials really do want the rebels.

That would make everything so much more exciting than it already is :D

the shots are all very quick and adding too many elements into them would turn them into a mess.

guitarfan01 said:

The X-wing being blown up does look just a tad dodgy.

After watching the clip a few more times, I think I know why; it's because there are no evasive maneuvers or any sort of reaction to being shot at -- the X-wings just fly in a straight (or slightly curving) line and there's no return fire or anything (I know that there's not much point in shooting at a Star Destroyer if you're in an X-wing, but it still looks odd).

Otherwise, it looks really, really good.

As you said any returning fire would be pointless. as it stands at the moment the xwing is racing to get in front of the transport so would take a straight line but also  adding any manoeuvres in such a quick shot wouldn't really be noticeable anyway.

AuggieBenDoggie said:

Just watched the new clip ady, brilliant Job! My only concern is that the X-wing that gets destroyed; I had to play it a couple of times to catch it. The problem is that the x-wing and it's destruction is somewhat hidden amongst all the ion cannon and star destroyer fire, and it doesn't help being so close to the rebel transport ship either which is titanic in comparison. I showed it to a couple of people an they didn't catch it at first either.

Its actually the kind of thing i am going for with revisited. many of the additions you won't notice on first viewing. There is a tendency in many films that all the fx seem to be in your face when it doesn't need to be. i always loved watching the OT and noticing different things upon each viewing which is something that the PT seemed to be lacking.

Deckard2 said:

So right after the generator is destroyed,when Han and Leia are running through the passage ways to the millenium falcon shouldnt the hallway lights not work? Or are we assuming that this generator was only for the shields protecting the base?

the generator is the shield generator only so not the bases main power supply. we do see the lights flickering so i don't think anything needs to be done here.

Sumguy21 said:

I like the scene, everything looks very good. Very natural. However, I don't like the "lightning" effect on the ion cannon. It makes it pretty obvious what software you used and distracts from the scene.

Ok, i've just got to call you on this one. lol. So what software or plugin did i use for this effect then? and don't just say after effects because i clearly stated that i used this program for many of the fx shots from the start.

Ok a few updates...

The fur for the wampa came the other day. I was so excited to be able to start work on the new puppet but that soon changed when i opened the package. The fur looked perfect in both the description and the photos on ebay. this wasn't the case though. It was supposed to be white fur but instead it turned out to be white with deep black roots, so totally unusable. gutted. Luckily the seller refunded all of my money without question. I've ordered some more and i'm hoping that this batch is going to be ok. I can't believe just how difficult it is to find white fur with a decent pile length and that even looks like real fur. I'm working on the design at the moment. I will be going for something between the original first seen wampa and the SE one. After seeing some close up pics of the SE wampa I'm surprised that the face was very close to the original puppet but that it looked so different in the movie. The main differences between the two are the head shape. the original has a short brow and flatter skull whereas the SE wampa has a larger skull which was possibly due to accommodating the actor inside the suit. Plus the original puppet had a very short neck

I'll post a sketch of the new design once i have completed it

seven said:

Just a quick link

http://www.starwarz.com/modelshop/

he has a great site of how-to-build models. He also takes commissions if time, scale, and detail is a factor. I only mention it as Ady said he wanted to build several models for new shots. it might come in handy for scratch-building some models.

thanks for the link. a very interesting site.

Monroville said:

I guess one extra little bit to add:
on the very opening shot of the rebels outside the mountain hanger opening, the mountain is bluish compared to the white foreground.  I understand this is (1) the matte matching with the live-action shot and (2) a way of making the 2 stand out (though the mountain could be more whitish-grey than bluish), but also, there is a patch of white around the left gun tower.

i haven't done anything to that shot yet. i'm hoping to do a new digital matte

Sojourn said:

5) There appears to be something of a continuity error. At 00:31, when the shot changes, the crackling has pretty much subsided from the two blasts we see hit the SD in the first, frontal shot; but when it changes to the rear three-quarters view, there's some electricity going on the left side of the ship that wasn't there before the angle changed. Since there wasn't another blast coming, and the crackling down that side of the ship seemed to have subsided, the cut doesn't flow right, at least not to me. Perhaps continuing the electrical activity down that side a little longer in the first shot would fix this?

6) I like the flickering of the engine lights on the SD as it's going down, but they seem to be flickering in a pattern. It works, overall, but I found myself wondering whether they would do so in such an organized way, or if the flickering would be more random (I realize, however, that as the camera pans, the pattern allows for more engine flickering to be seen as the SD disappears offscreen).

I did fix that error that is in the original but me being too quick to get this clip finished & uploaded i omitted a few layers. the continuity will be correct in the final version

The flickering of the lights were like that in the original. there wasn't much i could do about that because it started to look odd when merged with the original elements.

Ganamae said:

1, Should there perhaps be some of ground activety when the transport and Xwings shoot up? like some small base or small ships or the ground? just a hint of something?

 

2, When the ION cannon controller keeps looking at her controll screen whilst waiting for the destroyer to get in range, shouls there perhaps be added soem animations to the screen? it looks abit inanimate.

1. These ships are pretty high up in this shot and the scale of everything wouldn't allow you to see anything on the ground. You definitely wouldn't see the hangar entrance or any ships on the ground.

2. this is another shot that i will be working on

Octorox said:

Awesome clip Ady. However, I feel that in the "first catch of the day" shot, Hoth should probably get bigger faster.

not really because  the ships are just in orbit at this stage. they are just waiting around in their various positions. speeding it up would make it look like they are racing towards the planet.

i thought i'd better post this clip as there has been a lot of discussion about this scene. But this will definitely be the last one until the trailer. again the audio is a temp track so please no more comments about the levels of the fx etc. Most of the live action shots aren't the final versions but you'll have to wait until ESB:R is released to see those. Don't want to spoil everything. lol

ION CANON 720p XVID

if you just want the audio commentaries you can set your sound mixer recorder to "what you hear". then just open up your recording program and record the commentaries as you listen to them. this way you lose no quality. just make sure you have your windows sounds and mic disabled first. there's nothing worse than a windows ping coming up half way through the recording

for megui i'm using 0.3.1.1016 (dgindex is included in this) and TSMuxer i'm using 1.8.4

Some new shots...

as for the blockade i will be adding a couple of extra stardestroyers to the initial approach and a disabled stardestroyer in the background during Lukes escape but what i was saying was that Luke could easily slip away unchallenged because its just one fighter and a transport did leave just before he escaped so any remaining stardestroyers (which would only be one or two at the most) would be concentrating on the larger ships, so no need to add loads of stardestroyers for that scene. After all Luke is going in a completely different direction than the rebels so he most likely leaves in the opposite direction so you wouldn't see all the disabled stardestroyers which seem to concentrate above the rebel base on the other side of the planet. When the rebel transport escapes the stardestroyer is now firing upon the ships and destroys one x-wing and after the stardestroyer is disabled you see the transport and remaining x-wing jump to hyperspace.

vaderios said:

Hmm Oups?

-Angel

The one on the right has an on set backdrop whereas the one on the left has a matte painting backdrop due to the high angle. you can see the backdrop on the bottom left here and the main walls on the right hand side.

The matte needs a bit of tweaking on the high angle shot to help it match the on set piece.

Deckard2 said:

HOTH ESCAPE:

One thing that always bothered me, Luke blows up the AT-AT and then the next screen he is getting in his X-wing to go to Dagobah?

Wouldnt he be surrounded by stormtroopers? And how does he get to his X-wing and the other rebels without having resistance from the Empire attack force?

well here's my take on this.

Luke is quite far from the base when he is shot down and destroys the AT-AT. After the generator is destroyed and the troopers enter Hoth base. Vader is after Luke and he sees the Falcon escaping. Maybe he thinks that Luke is on board. Vader is using the whole destroy the rebels to find Luke without the Emperor knowing what his true agenda was so after he thinks Luke has escaped he probably wouldn't have cared less if they are all captured or not and orders the fleet to pursue the Falcon. Then we see the falcon fly past Luke who is walking back to the base. now he suddenly appears at the transports which seems a bit sudden. But this behind the scenes shot shows Luke walking back through the detestation of the battle so this may well have been a cut scene which would have lengthened the scene

.Where are all the Imperials? well they're off chasing the falcon. Vader has returned to the executor for the pursuit. Now  3 stardestroyers try to trap the falcon , and with the amount of ships we see approach HOTH that doesn't leave any for a blockade after one has been disabled. So luke is able to escape without any problems, so no blockade. Vader is using the whole destroy the rebels to find Luke without the Emperor knowing what his true agenda was so after he thinks Luke has escaped he probably wouldn't have cared less if they are all captured or not.

The whole clone wars original cartoon now not being canon is another thing that was changed because Lucas wanted to do his own version of the cartoon after the original one that he had nothing to do with was so successful. if it wasn't supposed to be canon why was it used to introduce General Grievous and have the final moments lead directly into ROTS, which Lucas himself asked them to do.

This is why i will only ever use what is in the 6 movies as canon for Revisited and nothing outside for these because the canon keeps changing all the time and has become a mess.

i've replied about these issues in this thread HERE. Not sure why there is now 3 threads about the same thing now though.

i've replied about these issues in this thread HERE. Not sure why there is now 3 threads about the same thing now though.

This is a problem with the video file itself through an improper muxing or encoding. If TSMuxer reports this problem just load the mkv into MKVEXTRACTGUI and extract the streams that TSMuxer has ignored or just create a whole new mkv that should now be ok.  once this is done you can import it back into TSMuxer adding it to your video

The problem some people are having with playing some files on the PS3 is nothing to do with the machine but the way that the video was encoded. Its the same with XVIDs and standalone players having problems with certain encoding settings like QPEL. This is the encoders fault and not the players. Here are some other questions from the other threads about this

Monroville said:

Adywan said:

If you get audio and no picture then it has an illegal video stream and would need to be re-encoded.

How would one go about re-encoding the audio and video to correct this issue?

A few other things:

(1) does TSmuxer have any issues with porting over subtitles from an MKV file?
(2) how does your PS3 play TS muxed or m2TS muxed files?  I made muxing tests using both those options and neither worked on my PS3.  While the machine acknowledged the files, all I get is a black screen when played - no audio nor video.

I've read other forum sites and it looks like a lot of other people are experiencing the same thing.  Could the newest PS3 firmware upgrade be causing this?

1) no it doesn't . if the mkv hasn't been muxed properly by the encoder then just do what i said above. subtitles can only be selected to display  on the PS3 if you have created an AVCHD. It cannot display subtitles if just stored in a .ts or msts container. TSMuxer will automatically convert the subtitles to a compatible format but they do need to be originally a .srt format. if they are not then just use subtitleworkshop to convert them.

2) the PS3 doesn't seem to like plain M2ts files but plays .ts files just fine. Again it is all down to the way that the original file was encoded. if it was encoded with level 5.1 settings or anything higher than 4.1 changing the level to 4.1 in TSmuxer has a high possibility of not working due to the encodes other settings. all you will get is a blank screen and just audio no matter if you create an AVCHD or just a plain .ts. Again not a problem with the PS3 as it is a fully compatible blu ray player that conforms to the level 4.1 standard.  the best way to test if file will work without having to go through the whole process is to use the "split & cut" feature in TSMuxer. Just encode a couple of minutes to a .ts file and load it onto a usb stick. if it plays then you are good to go. If you get the blanks screen with just the audio then you will have to re-encode the mkv video. for this i use MeGUI. it has many presets for various encodes and i use the "x264: SA-Bluray" preset. you will need to change the bitrate depending on the length of the movie but there's a bitrate calculator built in. There's the MEGUI forum HERE with plenty of guides and help.

Monroville said:

This brings up something that I've been starting to dread:

Ady has stated that his EMPIRE: REVISITED will be in 720p.  If it is released as an *.MKV file, does this mean others and I won't be able to watch it due to this snag with MKV conversion (because it also looks like the PS3 won't accept any surround sound audio encoding like DTS, which I've heard is the main reason a lot of uploaders use MKV to begin with)?

yes there will be a 720p mkv but also a 720p AVCHD along with the usual DVD versions. The PS3 has no problems playing surround sound audio. many of my AVCHD's have DTS audio and play just fine. many people have problems of having no audio because they have the wrong setting enabled in the PS3's settings and their TV can't handle the signal sent. i have never had a problem at all with audio in my PS3 unless its an ac3 5.1 audio track that's been encoded at less than 384kbps because that is an illegal audio track for that format. AC3 2.0 can be 192kbps and play fine though. When burning the AVCHD use UDF 2.50 and don't use nero because its udf filesystem is screwed and it doesn't create a compatible udf 2.50 disc. Always use Imgburn.

now if your video file isn't either 1920 x1080 or 1280 x 720 then you will have to re-encode the video if you want to make it into a AVCHD for the PS3 or you'll get a horrible green bar across the bottom of the screen and the picture moved to the top of the screen because it is an illegal HD resolution. If you don't need subtitles for the movie though you can just convert it to a .ts and stick it on a data disc using udf 1.20

Now even if the original video file fits perfectly onto a DVD it probably won't after converting it to a .ts or AVCHD as it will be slightly larger. Now many mkvs use either DTS or high bitrate AC3. just rip the audio stream and change it to an ac3 320 or 480kbps ac3 5.1 which will result in a smaller ac3 and replace the new audio with your original in TSMuxer. You can use foobar 2000 with the DTS plugin to convert the demuxed DTS track to AC3 and also for ac3 to ac3, but i use besweet for the ac3 conversion.

hope this helps.

dark_jedi said:

MAN I feel your pain,I want to SO badly be able to figure out how to create AVCHD discs,I have a bunch of hidef files just waiting to be converted,Ady makes it sound so easy but I keep getting some of the same results you do.

so I will be following this thread along with you.

Ady if you are up for it,I would love to upload a sample 100MB .ts for you to look at.

yeh, i'll take a look at it for you

auraloffalwaffle said:

I also think Luca$h should really have been made to think by the way that the first three he did still get to be the Star Wars Trilogy on their own, even though he's done his damndest to bastardise them into postscript for his Lil' Orphan Annie story...

I just couldn't resist this....

Entropy Ink said:

It looks much better, Ady, but any chance you could raise the height of the buildings behind the rail along with the railing? The skyline and exposed windows of the central building in the 2004 version look better.

Good call. Fixed