CSI: Miami FanEDIT 2014 Shadoe
All rite ladies and germs, bare with me here as, this is my first fanedit and
I’ll try to include as much info as possible without it being overwhelming.
I guess I should start with how this project manifested into reality.
A few months ago I was looking for info relating to an old Matrix screener from
back in the day, and somehow ended up here at OT. I have seen some fanedits
that are posted on fanedit.org, including a great LOST mini-series Fanedit,
and then started browsing through the things that people have worked on here
on OT. “WoW!” was my initial thought. I ended up starting some work on another
project on here (for the matrix isolated score) and while waiting on my computer
to encode various things for that project I started a CSI: Miami marathon on
netflix (I own the DVD’s but netflix has the series in HD so I watched it on
my ps3) There were a lot of things that I hated about the show, being a “Grissom”
fan from the original series, CSI: Miami seemed a little too tits&ass, weak story,
and Carusso over-acting. However, I stuck with it (for lack of anything else I
wanted to watch) and as the seasons went along the show started growing on me,
even with all its flaws. Then, I got to season 6, where the story started
getting interesting as they threw in a “long-lost” son, Kyle, for Horatio to
“discover” which leads to the eventual meeting of the mother of the boy and then
the story spirals… In a good way actually, as there is a husband for the mother
that, of course, is a criminal and major part of the plot for many episode
going until the end of season 7. however, the story involving the son, Kyle,
continues in season 8 and then there’s a cameo almost at the end of the last
(10th) season. So, I decided to take those main characters and story involved
there and attempt to make it into a movie. With the focus of the story I’m going
for, Carusso over-acting at times is actually needed for the plot and makes sense
so I could tone that down a little as well, plus focus on the son.
Unfortunately I possessed only the DVD and was not going to make a low-quality
copy for such a big project. using hdtv rips is out of the question, not just
because of the piracy issue(which is questionable as I do own the DVD, but that’s
beside the point) but all of those have watermarked logos of different tv stations
and are usually only 2.0 ac3 @192kbps-320kbps(depending on episode) so those
would be useless. I searched online for legitimate bluray release and was pissed
to find that the seasons I needed (6,7,8,10) have no bluray release here in the US.
So, I started looking for something I could import and finally, after some searching,
tracked them down in different countries (all Region B,which isn’t a problem but
still they were Region B locked). Season 6 came from Sweden and has a video bitrate
of ~12000kbps and stated DTS HDMA on the box but actually only contains a lossy
5.1 ac3 @640kbps 😦 still better than DVD though. Seasons 7 and 8 came from Germany
and and have a video bitrate of ~13500kbps and actual DTS HDMA in German and English
so that was sweet. And season 10 came from France and has a video bitrate of ~13000kbps
and actual DTS HDMA in French but only 5.1 ac3 @448kbps for English which really
didn’t matter as I only needed about 40 seconds of footage from one episode and
only 30 seconds of that audio is used.
Once I got all the episodes onto my computer and selected them all, I realized
that I have 830 minutes (including the intro’s and credits for each episode) worth
of material to go through. Plus, I needed to make a fanedit disclaimer and some kind
of intro or something. This is my first such project so I looked at the formats that
certain other projects have been done to give me a little bit of an idea how to
approach this. So I grabed a notebook and a pen and started writing down a list of all
episodes that need to be included (using Kyle, Horatio’s son, as a refference, as I
wanted to make the story surrounding those two and everone they encounter together
along the way) with their running times. Ran through all of them and made some editing
notes for myself for each one and realized that there is NO way that I will be able
to edit that whole story into one movie. If I tried to cut more, the story would
stop making sense and there would be huge gaps so I needed to re-work this whole
idea. I noticed that season 6 ends on a “big-bang” and decided that would be a great
ending point for the first movie and then I could make a second part that contains
everything from all the other seasons (as there are more episode there, but less
footage that pertained to the story-line I was going after). As a result, I titled
the first movie “CSI: Miami Troubled Son” (which has a double-edged meaning as it
reffers to Kyle being a troubled son but Horatio also being a trouble Miami “son”)
and the second movie is titled “CSI: Miami Revived Son” (which is also a double
meaning metafor for both of them being “revived” through-out the course of the film)
To do the editing, I used sony vegas pro 11 and opted to do the sound in 5.1 importing
it all in a wave format (since vegas won’t read dts natively) and then encoded the
sound into DTS HDMA to preserve best sound possible as not all of it was sourced from
a lossless encode. Now, I won’t post ALL the edits done (as there was over 50 pages of
timecodes that were edited that I wrote down and that’s too much to type up here and
really would just bore all of you to death, LOL 😉
However, I will give some overall stats of cuts. There are many places where I cut out
entire sections of story because it had nothing to do with this plot and I tried to make
sure that when something else was refferenced there was some kind of explanation how
this ties with the story I am presenting. There are many subtle cuts to dialgoue to
exclude parts to are irrelevant to the story, the relationship between calleigh and the
atf agent is only slightly hinted at but mostly cut, as is the relationship later on
between eric and calleigh and only hinted at in one brief scene. I also had to crop any
of the intro credits from any episode after the first used for each movie, so it takes
away from the “episode” feeling. Tried to use similar transitions to those used on the
show for consistecy (the “flash” dissolve, cross-effect, slide, etc.)
The list of episodes used and their original total time, as well as the amount of
time cut from each episode is as follows:
For first movie - “CSI: Miami Troubled Son”
s06e01-dangerous son-42:47(~10minutes cut)
s06e03-inside out-44:08(~16minutes cut)
s06e07-chain reaction-43:56(~28minutes cut)
s06e13-raising caine-42:52(~20minutes cut)
s06e15-ambush-44:05(~32minutes cut)
s06e16-all in-44:06(~38minutes cut)
s06e21-going ballistic-44:07(~7minutes cut)
for a total original time of ~306minutes and
the new total runtime is 154:32 for part I
For second movie - “CSI: Miami Revived Son”
s07e01-resurrection-43:31(~7minutes cut)
s07e05-bombshell-44:08(~30minutes cut)
s07e17-divorce party-44:07(~33minutes cut)
s07e18-flight risk-42:36(~40minutes cut)
s07e19-target specific-43:47(ALL cut,as the one scene including kyle ended up useless)
s07e21-chip/tuck-42:58(~14minutes cut)
s07e22-dead on arrival-43:36(~42minutes cut)
s07e23-collateral damage-44:08(~40minutes cut)
s07e24-dissolved-44:07(~20minutes cut)
s08e14-in the wind-43:51(~42minutes cut)
s08e18-dishonor-42:59(~12minutes cut)
s10e12-friendly fire-43:13(~42 minutes cut)
for a total original time of ~524minutes and
the new total runtime is 156:35 for part II
When it comes to specs, I encoded the video using the AVC codec into a M2Ts container at
a frame size of 1280x720 (as the blurays are not 1080p but only 720p) at a target bitrate
of ~10000kbps and actual came out to ~9500kbps. I exported the audio in wav and then encoded
it into DTS HDMA using the 5.1 audio. I also downmixed the audio (using foobar2000) to stero
and encoded a DTS HDMA using the 2.0 audio. Also, using foobar2000, I encoded a lossy ac3
only for the stereo sound as vegas already encoded a 5.1 ac3 when it encoded the video.
So both releases are 14GB EACH and have
Video: 1280x720@23.976fps@~9500kbps
Audio 1: DTS-HDMA 5.1 @~2350kbps
Audio 2: DTS-HDMA 2.0 @~1100kbps
Audio 3: AC3 5.1 @448kbps
Audio 4: AC3 2.0 @384kbps
in an MKV container
Once I watched this with some neighbors on a 46" HDTV with a proper 7.1 sound set-up,
the expereince was a pleasure. I do have to state, for the “record,” that this is not
completely flawless, as there were certain parts where the material to make a smooth
transition was just not there. I am refereing to the audio ONLY, as the video was much
easier to manipulate, but the audio at times is smooth and no one could tell that I spliced
it and at times is a little more obvious. There were also some macro-blocking issues in
certain scenes where the video moves extremly fast. It doesn’t happend often but we all
noticed it a couple of times. When I looked at my source videos, they had issues there too
so the problem wasn’t with my encode. Overall, my neighbors enjoyed both movies over the course
of two nights and now I have decided to be brave enough to release this to the scrutiny
of others. I hope y’all are interested and that you will enjoy these and I welcome any and
all comments as I could really use the feedback on whether this was a waste of time or not,
LOL
Here are some thumbnails for parts 1 & 2:
Here are screenshots from part 1:
Here are screenshots from part 2:
All images and this info is contained inside of the release as well and it can be found on my spleen… or your spleen, LOL… 😉
Peace,
Jerry Shadoe
UPDATE: As of now, there is also a 480p release of these two films that fits on one DVD5. I did this so that people that might be curious but don’t want to download 26GB, can still check this out 😉
It can be found same place as the 720p release…
