newt

Ya. Hopefully this will encourage people to add to it. I know I'll be updating it as I load stuff onto my media center.

Thankfully, I am not Newt Gingrich :)

Hi everybody,

Those of you that use XBMC might be interested in this. I made a scraper for fanedits that uses fanedits.com (a.k.a. originaltrilogy.com) for data.

https://github.com/nwtn/metadata.fanedits.com

It's fairly basic right now, but it's working in my limited tests.

hey guys,

thanks for the feedback. i've put this on hold temporarily as i work on my rat race edit and some other stuff, but i still intend to finish it.

i don't know if i've seen those kenner commercials -- i'll keep an eye open for them.

i'm still working on my droids one, but got sidetracked by various things. don't know when active work on it will resume.

ya, it kinda is a weird choice for a fanedit. but i really like the movie overall, but there are just some things (e.g. the end) that completely ruin it for me. i don't know if i can make the bad parts good, but hopefully i can make them better.

speaking of smash mouth, did you guys see the smash mouth sketch on snl recently? it reinvigorated me to get this edit going. :) http://videogum.com/147482/saturday-night-live-jennifer-lopez-is-her-own-best-friendworst-enemy/tv/late-night/#ooyalaPlayer749461425_wda2m5

Hi. I'm currently working on an edit of Rat Race (my first fanedit). I have five goals with this edit:

1. change the terrible, terrible ending and get rid of Smash Mouth
2. remove unnecessary exposition at the beginning - the characters should be revealed by their actions, not by meaningless talk at the beginning that never comes up again later (e.g. Meryl and Vera having never met; for the whole movie they act like any normal daughter and mother, not strangers).
3. bring this movie a little closer to it's inspiration, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, by doing a new Saul Bass-inspired animated intro and incorporating music from IAMMMMW throughout
4. get rid of some of the more over-the-top moments that take the viewer out of the movie
5. fix some technical glitches that are present in the original and make a few other minor edits

I'd love to hear comments/suggestions/questions from you all!

Changes I've already made:

• cut the opening song/animation and begun planning a new saul bass-inspired intro
• cut the opening scene to eliminate some dialogue between nick and the hotel clerk and just start on "afro whores"
• reedited owen's referee scene to avoid jump cuts
• cut out all but about 10 frames of first gloria allred appearance
• cut down/reedited scene of vera and meryl meeting scene so they're just a little estranged, not meeting for first time
• cut nick talking to his friend
• started work on a new introduction + coin-finding for pollini (since he's the only main character who doesn't really get one)
• reordered the "finding the gold coin" scenes to accommodate previous cuts and to make timing of reception arrivals make more sense
• cut out vera taking a picture with owen, and the bit about the commemorative coin
• cut meryl calling vera "vera" as she tries to drag her out of the reception
• changed sinclair's "one throw of the dice" to "one throw of the die"
• cut out "who let the dogs out" in stairwell scene, and started working on changes to other music throughout
• cut out weird shot of someone's foot (stepping on glass in front of the camera?) in stairwell
• cut out meryl calling vera "vera" in stairwell and while running for cab
• cut out second gloria allred scene
• cut out stupid and poorly-performed "i'm wigging out back here" by jason and one of bev's lines from car trip and tried to fix bad audio edit present in original
• cut out heart beating gag
• added two deleted shots / one deleted line ("you people are worse than the lucys") while bus is chasing balloon and slightly reedited scene to accommodate
• started working on new ending for donald sinclair and the high rollers
• added two new bus shots and one new balloon shot to ease transition from day to night
• started working on new ending for the rest of the main cast

Changes I'd still like to make:

• finish above bits that are still a work in progress: new opening, new pollini introduction, new ending, new music
• add in a couple bits from the DVD's gag reel. this might not happen, as the whole thing has music running underneath the dialogue that will be more or less impossible to remove.
• check for any more instances where meryl is acting weirdly distant from vera, e.g. calling her "vera" instead of "mom"
• replace the bit with the soapy lucys with a deleted scene of the lucys reciting a scene from the show
• possibly add in a deleted scene of a bus full of rickys
• redo (some of) the credits, maybe with some animation like i'm having at the beginning

this was amazing. i agree with some of the other points and suggestions that people have made, but i think they're pretty minor and don't really detract from the overall experience. tmbtm, you totally made my day with this. thank you.

Cade Skywalker said:

I've been trying to split an AC-3 file into 6 mono AIFF's with no luck (using mac3dec). I click "Start" but it does nothing. Maybe it is related to error message when I try to simply convert to AIFF/WAV/whatever, which is "Could not open Sound Converter"?

Does anybody know what the problem is?

i'm having a similar problem to this, though i'm not even getting that error. mac3dec seems to have broken in 10.5 (with the error above) and broken harder in 10.6 (with no error). can anybody suggest a replacement ac3 decoder?

thanks

hey guys,

quick update: basically i haven't done much with this lately, as i'm still trying to locate german, italian and french (and maybe dutch, swedish, and other languages if possible) copies at reasonable prices. if anybody sees anything, please let me know.

the vhs transfers of the japanese tapes went really well, so i've put my problems with the pal tapes on hold for now as i work on ntsc.

i don't think so. the advc-110 has a trick to circumvent macrovision, but even if that wasn't working it detects macrovision and flashes a status light at you if it's there, which didn't happen. also, on the one that plays, the quality isn't SO bad that i'd think it was macrovision, it just seems like the tape is in rough shape. almost like a constant tracking issue.

for the ones that won't even play, i think it's some kind of physical issue. the tape starts to play, for maybe a second, and then the vcr stops it dead and pops up that error code. i'm wondering if maybe the tape is getting jammed or something and the vcr is stopping it to prevent catastrophic failure. the weird thing is, it rewinds and fast-forwards ok, so maybe it's just that the vcr THINKS it's jammed. sigh.

hi everyone,

i thought i'd give you a quick update on this project. i currently have:

• the dvds in ntsc and pal, with english, french, and japanese audio
• the 'pirates & the prince' "movie" on ntsc vhs
• episodes 1, 2, 5 and 6 on ntsc vhs in english (the j2 releases). these are in good shape, and look nice for vhs.
• the complete series, except ep 9 and the great heep, on pal vhs in english (the cbs fox releases). two of these won't play in my vcr and are giving me error messages. the other looks kind of bad, with all sorts of scratchy video, audio glitches and tracking problems.
• en route, but not in hand: the complete series (except coby) on ntsc vhs in japanese
• a bad quality download of ep 9

in addition to all that, i've also found a bunch of the foreign language audio online:

• the dvds in spanish
• the great heep and eps 3 and 5-9 in one spanish translation
• eps 1, 2 and 4 in two separate spanish translations
• the opening theme in spanish (two versions), german and swedish

i also got my advc-110 and started the transfers, which is going well.

i haven't completely decided how i'm going to put this all together. i'm thinking of aiming for one dvd per "cycle". for those episodes that were part of the "movies" i'm thinking of having two angles, one that's straight vhs-sourced, and one that's got the dvd frames in where possible. then, multiple audio tracks for each. i've also thought about splitting the movies up into their constituent episodes and having those as separate options. so for example, episode 5 would have a "VHS/broadcast version" and a "DVD version", each w/ separate audio etc. i haven't decided yet whether i'm going to do subtitles, but the dvds i have have english, french, and dutch (and maybe japanese? i can't remember) subtitles. i haven't checked out closed captioning at all yet.

i've also put some thought into bonus stuff, but not much, so if people have suggestions feel free to let me know.

ps if anybody has a sony slv-x315 vcr and knows what error "e2 09 03" means, could you give me a shout?

thanks. it sounds like i should keep on trucking, then.

i guess i'll keep my eyes out for a copy of his dvd, in case it turns out there are any interesting differences between the broadcast and VHS versions or interesting bonus features or anything.

hi,

i just saw that angrysvn did a preservation of this. has anybody seen that? i'm wondering what the quality is like and whether it's worth me duplicating that work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsK_QA9GJGk fan-shot video from japan, in HD

edit: more - 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ103U4W4F8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeuQEKtWhFQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ8w8YWCYbk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX03R1CWM4k

actually i just looked at the newAurabesh font mentioned in that wookieepedia article, and it has characters for numbers. the article says they're based on "technical readouts" -- not sure what technical readouts they mean, but it sounds good enough for me.

there's some info about that on wookieepedia: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aurebesh

in some writing systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals), numerals simply use the alphabet symbols -- the first letter for 1, the second letter for 2, etc. i would suggest that if somebody were to take this up, they could follow a similar system w/ aurebesh.

just watched revisited again and something struck me that i don't think i've seen mentioned before. please correct me if i'm wrong. all the writing is alien but the numbers -- in luke's cockpit, during the death star countdown -- aren't. it doesn't really make sense for them to use the same numbers as us, so i think it would be neat if these were changed. what do you guys think?

SilverWook said:

It can be a blind shot in the dark, but keep checking ebay auctions for odd lots of Betamax tapes. Sometimes you can read the labels. And sometimes the seller will list what's on them.

I don't know if thrift stores bother with Beta anymore, but that used to be a good place to look several years ago.

 

 

i haven't watched my PAL vid yet so i can't speak to the quality, but it is indeed from 1985.

according to http://www.lucasfan.com/ewdr/vanhoof.html there were dutch dubbed versions as well, though i have no idea if these were released.

Thanks for the support everyone. The Adventure Hour is a sweet idea that hadn't crossed my mind. I have no idea how that could be done w/o masters and/or somebody's old home videos, but a cool idea nonetheless.

I'm definitely still interested in any other ideas you might have, so keep em coming.

BTW, I currently own a PAL VHS w/ the first four eps, NTSC VHSes with eps 1, 2, 5 and 6 and an NTSC DVD of the two spliced together TV movies (all English). Getting the other sources in English shouldn't be too expensive, as Darth Venal said. The expensive/difficult part is getting all the foreign-language stuff.

I will post back here (possibly infrequently) with any progress.

Thanks again!

Hello,

I am considering doing a preservation of the Droids TV series. My ideal plan is to get as many of the episodes as possible in both NTSC and PAL formats and do separate simultaneous preservations, so that I can minimize any conversions between standards. I’d also like to get the soundtracks in as many languages as possible so that I can do alternate audio tracks.

I know of the following sources:

The White Witch - NTSC VHS (English, Japanese), PAL VHS (English, Italian, German, French?)

Escape Into Terror - NTSC VHS (English, Japanese), PAL VHS (English, Italian, German, French?)

The Trigon Unleashed - NTSC VHS (Japanese), PAL VHS (English, Italian, German, French?)

A Race to the Finish - NTSC VHS (Japanese), PAL VHS (English, Italian, German, French?)

The Lost Prince - NTSC VHS (English, Japanese), PAL VHS (English, German, French?), NTSC DVD (English), PAL DVD (English, French)

The New King - NTSC VHS (English, Japanese), PAL VHS (English, German, French?), NTSC DVD (English), PAL DVD (English, French)

The Pirates of Tarnoonga - NTSC VHS (English, Japanese), PAL VHS (English, German, French?), NTSC DVD (English), PAL DVD (English, French)

The Revenge of Kybo Ren - NTSC VHS (English, Japanese), PAL VHS (English, German, French?), NTSC DVD (English), PAL DVD (English, French)

Coby and the Starhunters - None?

Tail of the Roon Comets - NTSC VHS (English, Spanish, Japanese), PAL VHS (English, German, French?), NTSC DVD (English), PAL DVD (English, French)

The Roon Games - NTSC VHS (English, Spanish, Japanese), PAL VHS (English, German, French?), NTSC DVD (English), PAL DVD (English, French)

Across the Roon Sea - NTSC VHS (English, Spanish, Japanese), PAL VHS (English, German, French?), NTSC DVD (English), PAL DVD (English, French)

The Frozen Citadel - NTSC VHS (English, Spanish, Japanese), PAL VHS (English, German, French?), NTSC DVD (English), PAL DVD (English, French)

The Great Heep - NTSC VHS (Spanish), PAL VHS (English, German, French?)

Note: The DVD releases are edited into feature-length movies and feature a modified soundtrack. Some assumptions: The Spanish releases are from Mexico, so I’m assuming they are NTSC. I’m making a similar assumption for the Japanese tapes. I’m also assuming that all the non-English sources have new audio tracks, and aren’t just subtitled. If anybody knows differently, please let me know.

So, does anybody know of any other sources that are out there? Does anybody have any suggestions if I go through with this project? I’m looking at capture options now and I’m leaning towards the ADVC-110, but I’m open to alternate suggestions.

If this happens, it will most likely be a fairly long-term project (mostly because getting ahold of all the necessary sources will be fairly expensive).

Thanks for your help!