HA! Viewing the DE reminded me of one of things that always bugged me in the original Star Wars, and that I was really surprised Lucas never fixed up until one of the last releases: at 1:30:18 when the doors are closing after Vader strikes down Obi-wan, they didn't add his red saber glow so he's just carrying a white stick.
Much thanks for that list. I was about to go diving through past pages to find it! I'll see if the MKVNixTools conversions default to subtitles on. Maybe it's just something weird with makeMKV. I couldn't find any options related to it.
Thanks so much for all the help and patience with people new to this stuff like me.
A couple of questions that I'm wondering about:
I successfully used MakeMKV to convert SW 2.1 to an MKV but when I play it, it defaults to subtitles on. Is this set within the DVD info itself or is this an anomaly?
I also don't know what all the different audio tracks are (5 say DD 2/0, 1 says DD 2/0 and doesn't seem to have any audio, and 1 says DD 1.0 English, and the default for me is DD 3/2+1 English). Is the default designated in the disc itself, as in the audio track Harmy designated as the default?
And the biggest problem, ESB and RotJ won't convert. They start converting but after a few seconds I get a popup that just says "Copy complete. 0 titles saved, 1 failed."
EDIT: MKVNixTools seems to be getting the job done on ESB and RotJ. I'll check them tomorrow.
If there is a more appropriate place for me to ask this stuff, just let me know and I'll take it there! Again, thanks for the hand holding and patience.
@ nos402
MakeMKV isn't shareware. It's in Beta and has been for a long time. While it's in Beta it's free.
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MakeMKV
Oh! When I selected the index file it said it was SharewareI had 30 days to evaluate it before purchasing an activation key and asked did I want to start my 30 day trial period.
Is there a free tool to do this? I saw MakeMKV suggested but I know that's a shareware )pay after 30 days). I'm not opposed to paying for good software but not for something I will probably use once or maybe twice.
So how do most of you view these files? Burn to DVD? Just put the AVCHD files on a flash drive? Convert them to something else and put them on a flash drive?
I have a USB flash drive I was planning to be my dedicated home for them but just am not sure of the best way of going about it to maximize the chances of it playing back on various systems (like if I take it to my friend's house).
I would like to keep it as high quality as possible.
Doh! So simple. I guess I've just never tried to use Plex Media Server with an alternate audio track. Here's me trying to overcomplicate things. Thanks!
I was going off djchaseb who said he watched it with the commentary.
How do you watch it with the commentary? Sorry, I'm new to these video types and formats! I'm normally such an advanced tech guy that it's weird feeling like a newb! I downloaded the AVCHD from myspleen. So far just tested it by streaming it from my laptop to my TV via Plex Media Server (unfortunately I think that causes a little audio lag since it's being transcoded on the fly...there was no lag when played directly on my computer in VLC). This is all a brave new world for me but it's worth it for the Despecialized versions! Still learning and sorting all this out. I'm hoping to keep the best quality files I can on an R2-D2 USB drive for playing at a friend's home theater.
Harmy said:
Well, I kinda nostalgically like TPM - deal with it and stop telling me what I should and shouldn't waste my talents on :-P ;-D
LOL! That's exactly what I was thinking! My thoughts were "Well it's really up to how Harmy feels about those movies and whether he feels fond/passionate enough about them to WANT to do that!
I ordered an R2D2 64GB USB drive to be my dedicated "Despecialized" repository!
I like BuckNaked's idea of just keeping all the movies on a USB drive (or several). My question is this (sorry if it's dumb, but I'm not real experienced in this realm): What are the various formats? There's talk of the 15GB MKV, AVCHD, DVD5. What are the differences? Just trying to devise a plan of action as far as what to get and how to store it!
Thanks!
mudse said:
hey guys. i'd like to see Harmy's Despecialized Edition but it seems that i'm too stupid for the interwebz. can someone show me the right direction, please?
greetings
mudse
I'm very tech inclined and I've found the quest a bit hard to follow as well, so don't feel bad.
I'm still a total newb here so I can't help much. The most I can tell you is that it seems to me the easiest path is to get a myspleen.org account (I believe open registration is still going on) and search for "despecialized" there. When I search I only see version 1.0 there but when I clicked on version 1.0 there was a link to version 2.0. You will need a torrent program, (I use utorrent) to get the torrent files. From there I can help no more since I haven't bothered downloading them yet as I'm waiting on version 2.1 before I do. I'm guessing you would need access to a blu-ray burner if you wanted to make DVD's or you could perhaps just watch them on your computer or media center or something. This is all speculation on my part. When version 2.1 comes out, I will try to figure out the rest of the journey!
Hope that helps at least a little.
That was part of what caused my confusion. When I did a search for "despecialized" on myspleen, I only saw 1.0 for SW and ROTJ, and there were two versions of ESB, and neither stated the version.
But I figured I've waited this long, may as well wait for 2.1!
Firstly, thank you for this AWESOME preservation. I was just bemoaning recently that I had no access to certain original aspects of the films. This project simply sounds like a godsend to us lifelong fans.
I have a few questions which hopefully aren't stupid: I notice on myspleen that it seems to be version 1.0 available. Is this the "remastered" version? I guess I'm unclear as to how many versions there have been. In reading his thread I hear mentions of 2.0 and 2.1. Is this thread the best place to watch to find out when those are "released"? Once they are, then they will be on myspleen?
Again, apologies for my newb-ness. I'm still googling and reading through the plethora of material here! Thanks!