saf1916

Anjohan said:

PMs sent. Thank you for a lot of positive feedback lately, both in the thread and on PMs. Always keeps a fan editor going.

Remember to own the original films and/or series before watching or downloading.

Hi Anjohan,
I’ve finally been able to get a chance to watch your edits of I-IV (found through Fanedit.info and Fanedit.org), and am hopeful that the ending can be salvaged!
I had no idea until today that film 5 and 6 were even in progress - let alone released - and was hoping a PM could be sent with links (I know, I know, another request without much - if anything - to offer in return).

Fantastic work so far, and a phenomenal effort!

kosarek92 said:

Hey can anyone help me out? I downloaded 2.7 AVCHD version onto my computer yet when I right click the file to mount it, the mount option doesn’t appear.

If it helps, Googling “avchd imgburn” will bring up some really good instructions on how to easily create an ISO from the AVCHD files.

I’ve been lurking around this thread since February, then took a break from the site over April and just jumped back on tonight. D’oh! It seems I missed a lot!
Going from the comparison gallery, this looks absolutely incredible! Such a fantastic piece of work to augment something that was already damn near perfect.
So great job, congratulations, and thank you.

darthrush said:

This definetly has taken my interest for possibly taking the throne of my definitive TPM edit once your finished. Might I ask, if you will retain any of Sidious’s hologram scenes. When cut out, I feel it raises the mystery of Darth Maul and makes Yodas final thought at Qui-gons funeral even more thought provoking. Thanks for your efforts!!

Agreed. This sounds incredible!
I haven’t been able to check out any of the clips yet, but it sounds like it’s shaping up to potentially be my go-to version.
Adding Dooku to the funeral scene is a fantastic idea but I’m not sure about him sitting in the council. To me that would more likely make him out to be another throw-away Jedi like Conehead and Squidward if he has no dialogue. I’m more than happy to be wrong on this point, though. Having more Dooku in TPM will definitely help to remedy the disconnect between this and the later two prequel films.

EDIT: I just watched the restructured funeral scene. YES! Absolutely brilliant! Well done!

TV’s Frink said:

saf1916 said:

I’m not sure if you’re still taking suggestions

I am. I will be taking suggestions through the workprint stage, which I haven’t reached yet.

but I think using the Dr Robotnik boss theme from Sonic 2 during the Grievous battle/chase would be really funny.
Admittedly, I only thought of this because of your use of the Aquatic Ruin Zone theme around the Gungan city in TRM. Best.

This one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbhX7XKgkDU

That’s the one!

Maybe…it doesn’t necessarily fit (unless you think of Obi-Wan jumping onto the wheel bike like Sonic jumping on the Dr.'s head?) but I do like that song. I will have to check to see how present the existing music is…unfortunately I think it might be too difficult to remove without losing sound fx. The other option would be to strip out music and sfx, which now sounds jarring to me, or do that plus add in sfx…which is a pain. We’ll see.

You’re right. It would probably need new sfx to work properly, maybe even some speeding up and significant cuts to the action to make it work. A lot of work for something that’s more of a nostalgic “oh, cool” moment than being outright funny.

I’m also partial to this version of the song.

https://youtu.be/9jlCbMIMPCM?t=359

I’d never heard this version before. That might even be a bit easier to incorporate than the original, tonally.

I’m not sure if you’re still taking suggestions but I think using the Dr Robotnik boss theme from Sonic 2 during the Grievous battle/chase would be really funny.
Admittedly, I only thought of this because of your use of the Aquatic Ruin Zone theme around the Gungan city in TRM. Best.

Oh wow! I honestly didn’t think there was any need for it when I heard mention of it on another thread, but now having seen the comparison gallery I have to agree with the overwhelming majority. This looks fantastic! Good job!

I’ve changed my mind. I’m watching Frink’s Ridiculous Menace and it is flawless.

MalàStrana said:

saf1916 said:
how they could have possibly built a bigger, better Death Star between eps 4-6

ROGUE ONE might give a answer to that. Maybe the geonosian project was too ambitious and suffered many failures over the years, before a simili Wernher Von Braun (= Mads Mikkelsen, as the space nazi scientist officer 😃 ) arrived to fix everything right. I would even love to see in this movie that a second death star is already being built in secret (and, why not in the background, plans for a crazy and impossible project called the “star killer base”…). So, with only 2/3 lines of dialogue Disney could settle for good one minor inconsistency. I hope they will !

That’s not a bad thought at all. It would definitely clear up an “issue” that was non-existent until the prequels. But if they’re fixing inconsistencies, there are far more important ones than this 😛
Also if I think about it, they didn’t really finish it between eps 4-6 at all did they? It was still well and truly under construction.
I really like the idea of having Easter Eggs for Death Star 2.0 and Star Killer Base thrown in there somewhere, and Mads Mikkelsen as a (star) war criminal can have all of the moneys. ALL OF THE MONEYS.

So I guess my minor niggle with the Death Star ending is really a non-issue isn’t it?

I’ve decided on Hal’s eps 2 & 3 whenever I use the Machete order to watch the saga, which will probably be more often than watching from I-VII now. They’re awesome.

thecuddlyninja said:

I think most of the ones mentioned here were some great work but for me, Darth Awesome’s 3-in-1 ‘The Empire Begins’ is the one. It sounds like I dislike the prequels more than some on this thread, though so I really don’t have much interest in sitting through three of them again. ‘The Empire Begins’ is pretty good and I actually like revisiting it.

As far as 3-in-1’s go this one is done really well but it just cuts too much for my liking, and ends up being too long in runtime for a single SW film.
The only way I’d watch The Empire Begins again is if I were wanting to have a marathon but was with people who, like you, really didn’t want to watch the prequels.
Otherwise I’d definitely stick to Q2’s (Thunderclap) The Fall of the Jedi trilogy for I-VI or Hal 9000’s prequel trilogy for IV, V, II, III, VI.
Q2’s is the only cut of TPM I’ll watch now.

Really fantastic work! The altered “NOOOOOOO” at the end really saves that scene, even making the overacted gesture seem like it’s better.

As for the rest of it, the pacing is so much better. I actually believe Palpatine as a mastermind and puppeteer, as opposed to a character that things just kind of happen in his favour, and Anakin’s turning to the dark side is far more relatable and easy to take.

I am torn on whether having Coruscant edited into the bridge scene in previous versions was a better approach than having the Death Star under construction in this one.
On one hand, having Coruscant there made the scene fall flat for me, like it may as well have been cut entirely (I know that’s not something you would like to hear given how much effort it must have taken).
On the other hand, having the Death Star at these early stages at the end of ep 3 makes me question how they could have possibly built a bigger, better Death Star between eps 4-6. Still, I think leaving it in was the right choice.
That’s all incredibly nit-picky of me though, and I doubt there’s a perfect way to handle it.

Again, great job! I thoroughly enjoyed it 😃

LuckyGungan2001 said:

Thats weird. I wonder why my new avatar isn’t showing.

It’s a caching issue.
In Chrome (similar for other browsers, I’m sure) hit F12, then F1, then click “Disable cache (while DevTools is open)”, and refresh the page. After that, close the DevTools and you’re golden.

Molly said:

Oh geez.

I think rather than Handbrake, - if the bulk of the movie is in one .m2ts file, just run that through mkvmerge. If you’re gonna re-encode, re-encode the big file, not the AVCHD - because re-encoding a re-encode is absolutely going to look worse.

^ Good point. Downloading all of the despecialized editions and some fan edits has all but cooked my download limit for the month but if you have the available bandwidth go with the larger mkv.

Thanks, Molly 😃

SputnicK said:

Interesting… It seems to me that the majority of people watching it would be doing so digitally (since it’s a web file). Will he be releasing it in a smaller digital format?

I don’t think they’ll ever be released officially in a smaller format.
What you can do is download the AVCHD version and use Handbrake to convert the m2ts file (ISO\BDMV\STREAM) to mkv.
You can google “optimal handbrake video conversion” for the method I used. It’s the second link. This will compress it to ~3GB at 720p.

TV’s Frink said:

saf1916 said:

Full disclosure: I haven’t watched HAL9000’s completely yet but fully intend to once v4 of ep3 hits faninfo.org.

That’s not a real site. I assume you mean fanedit.info.

chyron8472 said:

Q2’s Fall of the Jedi Trilogy.

My personal opinion is that Q2’s are the definitive edition, and Hal’s are like an Extended Cut (“you liked the theatrical cut, now watch it with extra footage”) supplement. Kind of like the Extended LOTR movies.

I agree.
Full disclosure: I haven’t watched HAL9000’s completely yet but fully intend to once v4 of ep3 hits faninfo.org.
As a new fan, I was surprised at how I simply couldn’t get through ep1 at all. Downloaded Q2’s Fall of the Jedi Trilogy, and was glued to the TV like I was with the OT.

MalàStrana said:

The best way to keep the reveal is the full machete order: 4-5-1-2-3-6 (or 1-4-5-2-3-6).

I can see that, and that this might also be the best way to watch HAL9000’s edits (minus ep1… Jar Jar, ugh).

So I think (reservedly) that I will still prefer Q2’s to watch from I-VII in order, but HAL9000’s for Machete order (IV, V, II, III, VI, VII), based on the fact that Vader still makes an appearance at the end of ep3.

towne32 said:

saf1916 said:

I hate to be that guy (I will be anyway), but is it worth getting ESB v2.0 at this stage or should I just be patient and wait for v2.5? I’ve seen v1.0 (I think. It was an unofficial, compressed file, from a public tracker) and thought it looked great.
I’m not a videophile by any stretch of the imagination so the updates may be negligible to my untrained eyes.
Hopefully Harmy takes some well deserved time off after the phenomenal task of completing RotJ v2.5, so I wouldn’t expect the updated ESB in the immediate future.

Harmy thinks ESB will be a relatively quick turnaround. But the keyword is relative. He may indeed take a break for all we know.

ESB looks fantastic at 2.0. If you want to watch it, there’s absolutely no reason to hold off. If you don’t go poking around in these threads trying to learn what’s wrong about 2.0, you won’t ever catch the couple of flaws that exist. If you do, you’ll be inclined to notice the imperfections. But they are indeed minor.

I just finished downloading ESB v2.0 and did a quick comparison to the copy I already had. It was clearly v1.0. This copy is far superior. Thanks for the advice 😃

Harmy said:

I’m definitely taking a break but not a long one - my optimistic estimate is that ESB v2.5 could be done in like a month.

Well deserved!
You’ve even chosen the shortest month of the year to be optimistic 😉

I hate to be that guy (I will be anyway), but is it worth getting ESB v2.0 at this stage or should I just be patient and wait for v2.5? I’ve seen v1.0 (I think. It was an unofficial, compressed file, from a public tracker) and thought it looked great.
I’m not a videophile by any stretch of the imagination so the updates may be negligible to my untrained eyes.
Hopefully Harmy takes some well deserved time off after the phenomenal task of completing RotJ v2.5, so I wouldn’t expect the updated ESB in the immediate future.

towne32 said:

SAF1916 for example: welcome to the forum! Always interesting to hear from a brand new fan who finds the CGI as off as we do.

Thanks towne32!
I was honestly surprised at how much the additions put me off. I’d always thought it was a bunch of crazy fans overblowing something small that really didn’t matter… Now I’m one of them.

abouttreefitty said:

Polygon picked up on the release of 2.5:

http://www.polygon.com/2016/2/8/10938060/star-wars-disney-return-of-the-jedi-harmy

Beat me to it! This is the site that I first heard about Harmy’s efforts, so it’s good to see they’re still keeping an eye open.

First (and probably longest) post from me!
First of all, even though the thanks are flying all over the place, I have to give a massive thank you to Harmy and everyone involved in this. I know there are a lot of you, so I won’t even try to list you all out of fear that I’ll leave someone out!
These Despecialized Editions have been absolutely wonderful. I never thought of myself as a purist when it comes to any film until I discovered these.
In my entire 28 years of life, I had never seen a Star Wars film (except TPM in the cinema when I was 12) until new years eve 2015 when I watched a gifted version of ANH.
I thoroughly enjoyed it but the CGI just felt off, and that Jabba scene really took me out of it. That’s when I went searching for the Despecialized Editions I’d read so much about on various sites I frequent.
My wife (also unintiated) and I proceeded to watch Harmy’s versions of ESB & RotJ (both v1.0) forward. Amazing! They actually felt better to watch! What a fantastic time to be discovering these movies for the first time. The almost 3 decade long wait was worth it!
Yesterday, we had some friends around and we all watched v2.5 of SW (no longer ANH in my mind). They had never heard of these despite being fans, and couldn’t believe the increase in quality of the movie in general.
We’ll be sure to watch v2.5 of RotJ as soon as we get the chance, and will be waiting ever so patiently for v2.5 of ESB.
Anyway, I’ll end my gushing incoherent rambling with yet another thank you to all involved. You have truly created a couple of Star Wars fans in two people who otherwise would not have seen what the big deal was.