chyron8472

Q2 does have them there on occasion (ie. in the background of important scenes), but they have no speaking parts and are not mentioned by name. Really the justification for them being there at all in his edits is that he didn't have the expertise to recolor every single shot of them.

It is possible to make (Hayden's) Anakin an interesting character rather than an annoying one, and it is also possible to make Anakin and Padme's love story believeable.

I like L8wrtr's explanation for what needed to be changed about Ep 2 to make it good:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/topic/12973/

Friendship We all know that Anakin and Obi-Wan are supposed to be “good friends” so it was quite disjointing to see Obi-Wan be a dick to Anakin throughout the movie, as well as Anakin be a petulant, ungrateful whiner. By cutting out the mutual antagonism we are left with two characters we can believe are friends. The audience wants them to be friends, and by eliminating the obstacles to that, we now can simply accept that we are watching two friends on screen.

We need a Hero From the first frame, grown up Anakin is annoying. He’s timid and unsure one moment, disrespectful and bitchy the next. Audiences react so negatively to these extreme personality traits that the moments where Ankin is likable or heroic are lost. By carving out his creepy leering at Padme, his whining, and his unexplained outbursts of anger, what remains are glimpses of the hero we want to like and root for, at least as much as can be salvaged with the footage we have at our disposal.

A Love Story  People bash Lucas for the stilted dialog, and this is a fair criticism, however I can forgive that because it is par for the course in the Saga of Star Wars. What is perplexing is how he chose to have them resist their emotions. We all know that they will end up together so the ruse of them resisting is at best distracting, but worse it impedes the progression of the actual story. In addition to eliminating their resistance, it is key to also remove Lucas’ attempt to show how/why they fall in love. He forgot his own brilliant solution to how to tell a love story back from The Empire Strikes Back; don’t show it. We never see why Han and Leia fall in love, we simply have two characters we like who over the course of several scenes admit their love for each other. Fixing Anakin and cutting out the more on-the-nose aspects of the story results in a love story that is far more believable.

What I do NOT like about L8wrtr's Episode 3 edit is Palpatine's "reveal" of his true "Sith form." The movie doesn't explain what happened. You are just watching Palpatine fight with Windu and Palpy looks normal; cut to Windu/Anakin; then cut back to Palpy who now is inexplicably white and wrinkly.

Either Palpatine's appearance should have been changing over time as the Dark Side corrupted his appearance, or else the theatrical version of events should have been left intact. I had to listen to L8wrtr's DVD commentary track to know what the heck happened.

Also, L8wrtr had a fixation with Yoda never using his lightsaber, but it created a WTF moment: You see the troopers being given Order 66 and then walking toward Yoda; we cut away to elsewhere in the galaxy; and when we see Yoda next, he is safe and sound, next to his pod before leaving Kashyyyk.

I want 3 movies, not just one. After all, ANH:R says "Episode IV" in the title crawl.

Let me talk about what I like in other fan edits that I would like to see implemented:

-- Q2's Fall of the Jedi Trilogy

I love that Padme isn't dead at the end of Episode 3. I especially love that there is, in fact, a scene with her alive and holding Leia (in which she is not in the medical bay).

Wholly removing R2 and 3PO from the prequels really helps the movies. It sounds dumb and unnecessary, but it really works.

-- L8wrtwr's fan edits

I like "Shadow of the Sith", "The Republic Divided", and "Dawn of the Empire" better than the official titles. I especially dislike the name "Attack of the Clones."

more to come...

Harmy, Do you already have in mind what special features are included with the Bluray?

Might I ask what they are?

JavaJones said:

Ah, my mistake. Got confused between the AVCHD and the m2ts. But now I really am confused why you're uploading the m2ts separately from the rest of the blu-ray. I guess for those of us like me who just want to get an MKV out of it, but personally I'll want all the extra features as well, if possible. I have some great MKV packages that include multiple audio tracks, I was hoping for the same. I suppose some will just want the stand-alone MKV, which they can get from the m2ts?

- Oshyan

Because there may be changes between the AVCHD and the Bluray, hence the AVCHD is 2.1 and the Bluray is 2.5. Harmy suspects people might only want the v2.5 m2ts with which to encode. As he, himself, is only personally going to share the completed project via split RAR (which indicates he's using such as Rapidshare, or usenet, or something like that), the files are not individually downloadable unless he uses separate RARs (which is, in fact, his plan.)

...as per this post by Harmy.

If you want the movie via torrent, someone else will have to take charge in uploading it to Myspleen because Harmy isn't going to do that. Which isn't surprising really, as he didn't upload the previous versions to Myspleen either. And said person is perfectly free to put the .m2ts in its proper place so long as the files are individually selectable instead of combined into an .iso.

Oh. Because of the special features.
(AVCHD doesn't have special features.)

That's a lot of extra stuff :)

Still, if someone only wanted to use the m2ts, they could tell their client to  download only the m2ts and nothing else. Which, again, doesn't require it to be separate.

All I know is that I'm going to keep a backup of the whole thing, whether or not I need just the m2ts to encode, and I would prefer to keep said backup in immediately usable form. If it just so happens that the smallest (complete and burnable) version of 2.1 available is 23GB, then so be it.

I uploaded an ISO of the NTSC DVD9 to a torrent in May 2011.
It is currently very actively being seeded.

Googling "ntsc a new hope revisited torrent" has it listed as the first several entries on the list.

Harmy, you said that you are going to separate the .m2ts file from the rest of the Bluray for those who want to re-encode to H.264, but why?

Isn't the difference in size negligible between the two? For example, the combined size of the SW:DEED 2.0 AVCHD files without the .m2ts is 63.7k.

It occurs to me that if you separate the .m2ts from the rest of the files, what you'll really be doing is making it less likely that other people will continue to seed the whole torrent after they're done leeching it, given that what they would then be seeding is not conveniently usable as a proper Bluray backup.

If someone wants to access just the .m2ts, all you need do is instruct them how to find it in the "Stream" folder. You shouldn't break the movie's ability to be immediately burned to disc. The torrent should be organized in a way that people can seed it and burn it at the same time, or else it's more likely that they won't seed it at all.

Adywan, there is something that has been bothering me about the red lights on objects in what seems to me to be fan edits derived in part from the Blurays (and presumably the Blurays themselves, though I refuse to see them).

Look here, at this shot from Harmy's ESB:DE:

Those 3 red lights on the Falcon and the one on the right of the frame stick out like sore thumbs to me.

Also here:

And, in the case of your recently posted ESB:R shot, the red light on R2:

I thought that lights in the background should be more subdued, like this:

This is not a poke at Harmy. I would use the Blurays as an example, but I do not own them (nor do I intend to at this point). I am only concerned that this is a problem created by the Blurays that may be being overlooked by faneditors, including yourself. The red lights on objects in the background are so bright and obvious that they draw one's eye to them and away from the rest of the picture, and it bothers me greatly.

EDIT: It is the Blurays that are at fault. Look at these frames that Adywan posted earlier (when pointing out the bad color changes on the Blurays):

R2's light should not be that bright. It's so bright that it looks rotoscoped, and not at all like it's really supposed to have been there.

Please fix this, Adywan.

 I don't know. I think I prefer the "AVCHD" shots for the probe and the tauntaun better.

In the case of the probe shot, it seems to me that the sky and the shadowed sides of the mountains in the background are perhaps too blue. At least the moutains' shadowed sides are grey in the "AVCHD" version while the sky is still realistically blue.

EDIT: Although, I say that and when I go look at Harmy's ESB:DE, the probe shot there is also similarly blue on the mountains' shadows and such, just like that "Revisited" shot.

And then...

and then I look at the very next shot in Harmy's ESB:DE, which has progressively dark shadows on the ground which are blue and look totally accurate to me regarding the color.

My question is: How do you/Puggo know that Puggo's 16mm is unfaded? Is it standard for film that when it fades, it red shifts (as opposed to blue shifts or else fades uniformly)?

All I'm saying is that I wonder how one declares any such print as unfaded. How can you be certain that Puggo's print is the actual original color?

Please, forgive my ignorance.

Personally, I'd rather defer to Adywan's grasp of common sense regarding proper coloring over relying on the color of potentially improperly maintained prints.

Suffice it to say, Adywan... to quote Star Trek IV: I "feel safer about your guesses than most other peoples' facts."

Does anyone have custom Fall of the Jedi Bluray covers I can use? I don't like the 3 options put up on Fanedit.org, as they do not in any way match any available OT covers.

I want to use these edits as part of my definitive Star Wars set, along with Harmy's SW:DeSpec (at least until Adywan finishes his OT edits).

Most of the prequel covers I can find that look official have the droids and suited Vader in them.

Does anyone have any good BD covers for Q2's Fall of the Jedi prequel fanedits?

I don't like the choices he has on fanedit.org, because they don't look official, and they don't match any OT covers.

joed424 said:

i have very little skill and no good software

MakeMKV converts DVDs/AVCHDs/BDs to MKV.

AVI2DVD converts MKVs to DVD format

DVD Shrink drops the file size to DVD5 (if you tell it to)

ImgBurn burns the data to a disc.

oh... and Handbrake encodes nearly any movie format to MKV/M4V, while dropping the file size to a managably portable/streamable size without greatly reducing picture quality.

All of these programs are free.

I figured it out:

doubleofive said:

Monroville said:

BTW, what was the great flipper debate?  And the snowflake on Chewie's foot?

 

 

Great Flipper Debate: Originally, Ady had replaced the hairy arm on the floor of the cantina with a model based on Ponda Baba's hand, since his was the arm that got cut off according to the EU and other sources.  This cause a huge stir as people who had no problem with a hairy arm on the floor were suddenly up in arms (no pun intended) because it didn't even register to them that Ponda Baba had suction cup hands which then brought up the question of "how does he hold a gun?"  So Ady made it so its actually the Doctor's arm that gets cut off (a cameo by his own hand!).

Snowflake on Chewie's Foot: A long running joke started by HotRod back during ANHR about Ady doing such good work, but ignoring the sand on Chewie's foot.  When the conversation was moved to ESBR, he started complaining about the snowflake.  I'm sure in a few years, it will be the twig...

 

 

What snowflake are you talking about?

Monroville said:
What is interesting is that it looks like EMPIRE:R is going back to the look of the 2004 dvd (at least with the specific "Luke sees Obi Wan" scene):

Adywan's The Empire Strikes Back: Revisited - Lukes Rescue (go to 2:40)

EMPIRE:Revisited:

EMPIRE: 2004 dvd:

 

I don't understand what was wrong with this:

from the Youtube comparison.

The Revisited version looks great to me  there.

AntcuFaalb said:

I don't understand.

If people are willing to put up with YouTube quality, then why don't they just watch the GOUT DVDs?

Also, since when did downloading files and burning DVDs imply that one has "technical expertise"?

You don't have to burn it to a DVD to watch it anyway.

dblake83 said:

Those who for whatever reason want smaller file size there are plenty of free tools that will allow you to do (ruin) that ON YOUR OWN and google/yahoo/duckduckgo/etc can be your friend unless you are too lazy of course....

On the one hand, I agree that it's better to run the movie through Handbrake (or such) on one's own rather than having Harmy do it.

On the other hand... "ruin"? Since when does dropping the file size to something manageable and not ridiculously huge ruin it? You can run 480p video through Handbrake at RF19 or HD quality video through at RF21, and still have extremely good quality picture, while potentially cutting the file size in half or more.

I've been ripping both my own and my parents' movie libraries, and I can personally attest to the quality of the output. Further, not everyone has a 3TB NAS to store movie backups on.

I wouldn't expect Harmy to do it, though.

Video Collector said:

I said to myself, I'm not gonna do a Star Wars set. Everyone else is doing it. And if I WAS gonna do a Star Wars set, I certainly wasn't doing a Drew set. Everyone is doing a Drew set...

*sigh*

[snip]

I really want these.

Although, I would really like to have an Episode III cover that doesn't have Vader on it, as I plan to use the prequel covers for Q2's fanedit, which doesn't have Vader's suit nor name mentioned in it.

There's something I just never really liked about the reveal of the Executor (SSD).

I always used to think that maybe what was wrong with it was that they didn't depict the scale properly or something (that is, it's supposed to look ENORMOUS, but the shot didn't pull it off properly.)

In looking at screenshots, I think I've found the problem is that there is no shadow on the nearby Star Destroyer(s) in shots following the first one:

In this shot, the Executor is casting a massive shadow across several of the Star Destroyers:

But in the next two shots which reveal the actual size of the Super Star Destroyer, there is no visible shadow whatsoever, so the standard Star Destroyers (and the TIEs, for that matter) )look pasted into the shot rather than actually being there:

Can this be fixed, so that the Executor's shadow is cast across the Star Destroyers (and perhaps also TIEs) in the second and third shots? Plus, the Executor in the third shot is darker down one side than the other, but in the second shot there's no difference, which is a continuity error.

Also, in that first shot, It's really nitpicky but I'm not sure if the shadow on the two Star Destroyers in the background is supposed to be coming from the Executor.

If it is, then that makes no sense because the shadows on them are unchanging throughout the shot while the shadow on the nearest SD is moving. If it is not, and the shadow on them is a result of an offscreen star casting light on only one side, then the light cast on them from said star should similarly affect the light being cast on the nearest SD.

Come to think of it, the two SDs in the background on that first shot look like they're the same model. If you look at them both, they are light on one side and dark on the other, split right down the middle in the same place, and yet they would seem to be at different angles to the light source, which makes no sense.


(sorry for being wordy about this and jumping from this problem to that. I just keep noticing problems with this scene as I continue to look at it, so I keep editing my post to add things.)

EDIT:
"46 - Altered path of stardestroyer in first fleet shot so it doesn't look like it is just dropping down the frame
47 - Altered path of distant stardestroyers to give them a more natural movement
48 - fixed problem of TIE flying behind the stardestroyer tower causing scaling problems and replaced all TIES in this shot apart from Bomber
49 - Altered the shadow seen on the underbelly of executor in close-up shot to match other shots.
50 - Fixed bluescreen matte problems of rear side of stardestroyer tower on executor underbelly shot"

Okay, I do see that you may have fixed /some/ of my issues.

AntcuFaalb said:

Harmy and box are right, chyron8472.

My point was more about the tone of Laserschwert's post effectively told her to get lost, when she was only asking what media she should probably own the official movie on.

The tone of his post sounded, to me, less like "just pick one (and btw, welcome to the forums)" and more like "don't bother with fanedits if you remotely care."

Laserschwert said:

Alice Jameson said:

I'm sure this has probably been asked before but which Star Wars dvd's would I need to own to download the 1.0 despecialized editions? I already have the 2004 dvds.

It doesn't matter, as owning any DVDs doesn't make it legal in any way.

What the heck are you talking about, Laserschwert?

Are you telling her that downloading any fanedits whatsoever is illegal, no matter what form of media one owns a copy of the original work on?

Not only is this not true (it's profiting from the fanedits that is illegal), but you might as well have told her to stick it and to go away.

YanniD said:

chyron8472 said:

I suppose it is a question related to technical help regarding AVCHDs in general instead of Harmy's edit specifically. Sorry. :p

IIRC, Harmy AVCHD and mkv video is already H.264, so all you should need to do is convert the desired soundtrack to AAC and mux together with the video into an mp4 container:  much less effort than converting the video.

I figured it out (I also asked the question of the Handbrake forums). The answer is to encode AVCHD using the same quality setting as Bluray (ie. ~22 RF).

Just remuxing it is a good idea, but space is also an important factor. When I ran it through Handbake at RF 22, it dropped the filesize from the AVCHD's 7.89GB to 2.54GB. ESB:DE is now 1.61GB and ROTJ:DE is 2.1GB.

on topic:

Harmy said:

Yes. I'm hoping for a release next month - only reel 6 left to do and I don't recall there being much I wanted to fix - I just don't have the time to work on it just now.

Fantastic! I didn't realize it was that close.

Are you going to do a 2.1 of ESB and ROTJ? I'm not saying it's needed, I'm just wondering what your plans are.

Kingherb said:

These are all the original 2.0 releases with the audio fixes by Hairy_Hen.

- 16.06GB MKV - by Harmy, best quality, has the most audio and subtitle options.

- 7.9GB AVCHD DVD9 - by Harmy, great quality, not much difference in picture quality from the mkv, less audio options.

- 4.29GB DVD5 - Chewtobacca's NTSC DVD5 conversion, most likely the best conversion you will see in sd dvd5 format, has only 1 audio track.

 

Which versions still don't have the fixed audio tracks? The OP suggests that the first (and perhaps also the second) track needs to be manually replaced.

I suppose it is a question related to technical help regarding AVCHDs in general instead of Harmy's edit specifically. Sorry. :p

Thanks for that.

Okay, so what I'm doing right now is: my parents are asking me to rip/convert their movie collection to (.m4v) files with the intent of watching said movies on their AppleTV. My intent is, instead of ripping their Star Wars SE DVDs or my GOUT DVDs, I'm going to use Harmy's SW:DE fan edits.


My question is this: As I'm using the AVCHD's and Handbrake for this purpose, can any of you tell me what Constant Quality value I should use?

I was watching ESB, and noticed that, on approach to Degobah, the planet is not there and then suddenly is.

R2 *beeps* (no planet visible):

Luke: "Yes, I'm sure it's perfectly safe for droids" (planet/atmosphere suddenly visible):

Might there be a way to have the blue of the outer atmosphere gradually appear and/or the planet be seen behind R2 during their conversation?