sidshady12

“I could imagine a scenario where Bilbo says that line, then hard cutting to him hiding behind some rocks as he hears animal howling. It would be pretty funny moment if it were only cut different.”

This is actually what I originally did in my first version of this edit. It was funny, because it was almost a “match cut” of Bilbo’s face, saying the worst is behind us, then boom he’s scouting and the danger is right back.

The issue was that I felt without a cut to black screen/intermission it felt too sudden for the drastic change in time & setting. On top of that, it didn’t really establish that the Orc pack was still after them (it was missing those 2 establishing shots of the orc pack), because we only saw Bilbo’s face, then Bilbo see’s Beorn, then he runs to the company.

So at the moment now it looks as if we have but 3 options:

• Keep it the same, says “continues on part two” (to mirror the experience while watching LOTR EE)
• Keep it the same, but it says “Intermission” instead (because that’s what it really is)
• Have no intermission, this would be similar to the test clip I posted but with a few adjustments - I’ve made the black screen slightly longer and the fade slightly slower but there’s not much I can really do. I think the idea of the warg/wolf SFX is good but I can’t really find any clips that sound good to put there.

I think I’ve ruled out my original way where it just went straight from Bilbo to Bilbo even if it was a bit more comedic, that’s about the only thing it has going for it. Anyways, the disc version is where it’s at - full special features, higher bitrate, and of course, the insert next disc screen would make perfect sense, it’s really just a question of what I do for the digital version, so I’m not even that attached to any method, just whatever works best and most agree on.

Hal 9000 said:

My only feedback from reading over this but not yet having seen it all is the transition between AUJ and DOS. I would suggest that, whatever you do, it play seamlessly without any sort of a break, even if you do add one. It should be able to play fine in a theater without a disc break the way even the LOTR EE films do.

Thanks for reading through 👍 I’ll send you the final export in a few days and I’ll consider any feedback whenever you’re down to watch it - but if you don’t get around to it, no problem.

Anyways, for anyone else reading this maybe you could give some additional thoughts. This is an interesting topic for my edit, or Hobbit edits in general, as the jump from AUJ -> DoS will always have some sort of time jump/sudden location change with little explanation. That’s why I leaned towards just making it an intermission, which a lot of edits do after the barrel scene such as the Maple edit. For me, I just knew the end of AUJ was the perfect spot for an intermission, even if it’s only about 40-45% of the way into the story, it’s the only time with a really weird time jump in my edit, and so an intermission could patch that up, whereas the end of the barrel scene wasn’t really that climactic and didn’t need an intermission to patch the transition, and in my edit that was about 55-60% of the way in. The true 50-50 mark would be in the middle of Mirkwood. But I also knew that none of the Middle Earth films have ever had a blank screen saying “intermission,” but what they do have, is a screen that says “insert next disc,” so I went for the middle ground, and on the digital version it currently says “the story continues on part two…” so there’s no mention of any discs, but it’s not quite just a generic “intermission.”

That said, I made a little test to show what the transition would be without the ‘intermission.’ https://youtu.be/O8NuorLzhUk (EDIT: slightly updated one here - https://youtu.be/W0LnBzsa6WM ) So it’s either this, or a transition to Dwarvish music with a black screen/text, which I won’t post a test clip of as I’m sure it’s easy to imagine.

Most people I’ve heard from do enjoy this pause even if it’s slightly unrealistic, it gives a chance to take a break, but there certainly is a perspective to be had that the movie should just play through the whole time. I might end up doing a poll and asking my discord.

Finally, for followers of this thread, just need to tidy up the River transition, do a final watch, and the update will be out.

Movies Remastered said:

sidshady12 said:

Movies Remastered said:

sidshady12 said:

I would also suggest throwing on a subtle 35mm film grain overlay to help mask the fact that it’s a video game. The sequels were shot on film after all, so it’d fit well anyways. That + 24fps + color grading/adjusting exposure are all that I can think of to make a video game look like real footage.

I wanna add grain to all the scenes I’ve been doing but haven’t looked yet. Is it an Pr or Ae effect? I’d like to know what setting you use if I May?

Pretty sure you can do it in AE if you want but I’ve only ever tried it in Pr. Basically there’s 2 options - use the noise filters built into premiere and adjust them to look like film sort of like this https://youtu.be/k7P_sSUH9fE or the other method is you download an actual clip of 35mm camera footage that’s just blank grain and then you go into opacity settings, set blend mode as “overlay”, and then adjust opacity from there. Sorta like this https://youtu.be/g_lEPb5-_9I

Now for the sequels their film grain is pretty subtle so you obviously don’t want to go overboard and make it look like something out of the original trilogy but you get the idea. The process isn’t 100% accurate to real film grain but it’s very close and for our purposes of just adding it for a few shots it’ll do just fine, in my opinion.

Oh cool. Yeah, ep1 was on film and had way too much grain when compared to recent footage. I tried it in AE but I could see much difference. I’ll give it another try. Thanks.

Yeah that’s why you gotta be really subtle with it, I’d just compare back and forth with Skywalker footage. I mean I know for sure they shot on film, but the type of camera and how much DNR they used makes the amount of the grain change. Like u said Phanton Menace was also shot on film but it was more noticeable then they went digital for 2 and 3

Movies Remastered said:

sidshady12 said:

I would also suggest throwing on a subtle 35mm film grain overlay to help mask the fact that it’s a video game. The sequels were shot on film after all, so it’d fit well anyways. That + 24fps + color grading/adjusting exposure are all that I can think of to make a video game look like real footage.

I wanna add grain to all the scenes I’ve been doing but haven’t looked yet. Is it an Pr or Ae effect? I’d like to know what setting you use if I May?

Pretty sure you can do it in AE if you want but I’ve only ever tried it in Pr. Basically there’s 2 options - use the noise filters built into premiere and adjust them to look like film sort of like this https://youtu.be/k7P_sSUH9fE or the other method is you download an actual clip of 35mm camera footage that’s just blank grain and then you go into opacity settings, set blend mode as “overlay”, and then adjust opacity from there. Sorta like this https://youtu.be/g_lEPb5-_9I

Now for the sequels their film grain is pretty subtle so you obviously don’t want to go overboard and make it look like something out of the original trilogy but you get the idea. The process isn’t 100% accurate to real film grain but it’s very close and for our purposes of just adding it for a few shots it’ll do just fine, in my opinion.

I would also suggest throwing on a subtle 35mm film grain overlay to help mask the fact that it’s a video game. The sequels were shot on film after all, so it’d fit well anyways. That + 24fps + color grading/adjusting exposure are all that I can think of to make a video game look like real footage.

JakeRyan17 said:

sidshady12 said:

JakeRyan17 said:

sidshady12 said:

JakeRyan17 said:

sherlockpotter said:

I typically use FFmpeg for conversions. It’s a bit more confusing to use than Handbrake, but I find that it’s faster, and the output is generally a higher quality too. Another benefit over Handbrake is that Handbrake will try to re-transcode the entire video; whereas FFmpeg can simply repackage the video and audio tracks into any other format container. In other words, it can convert your file to a compatible file type without losing any video quality.

If you just need to convert it from .avi to, for example, .mp4, you can do that really easily and quickly with this command (remove the square brackets and add the file name):

ffmpeg -i "[source file].avi" -c:v copy -c:a copy "[output file].mp4"

(In layman’s terms, this means “Run FFmpeg. Use [source file].avi as the input file. Copy the video and audio tracks without transcoding them, and output them into [output file].mp4”)

If you need to convert the audio codec - aac audio tends to work well when I’m editing - you could do that with:

ffmpeg -i "[source file].avi" -c:v copy -c:a:1 aac "[output file].mp4"

(Run FFmpeg. Use [source file].avi as the input file. Copy the video track without transcoding it. Convert the 1st audio track to .aac, and output the video and the audio track into [output file].mp4")

Except if it’s a codec issue beyond container, then it’s not solving the issue. If something is an avi, it’s not likely H.264 even though the new container of mp4 would suggest that. If a program, especially a non-linear editor, can’t read a file, it’s far more likely a codec issue than a container issue.

Also, transcoding doesn’t lose quality just because it’s changing formats. For example, to use ProRes codecs as an example, you cannot add quality that wasn’t there. So, some people will transcode H.264 into ProRes 422 or ProRes 422 HQ for editing, and scoff at using ProRes 422 LT: all have higher bandwidth than H.264 and will not have any quality loss. Look at the data rates capable from codecs, if the source codec is at a lower rate than the destination codec, you won’t lose quality (unless you set the transcode to compress the file or something). Using something too much higher in bandwidth will just create an unnecessarily large file.

FFmpeg is a good tool, but if you’re deep enough in knowing how to use codecs and such, I feel like you’d be using better tools anyway. That’s why I generally don’t recommend it to people.

Disagree on the gatekeeping of tools, FFmpeg is the perfect tool for working with re-encoding codecs, it’s not just for changing containers. There’d be no reason to need anything else other than FFmpeg and your video editor in the context of fan editing movies, working with ProRes, h264, etc. From my memory handbrake only encodes in distribution formats which is built on compression which means losing quality, and that’s what he was referring to, so I agree, I do not recommend that program for people who want to edit movies. If you want to avoid editing h264 because it can be buggy and slow, then go with a good visually/near lossless format that’s built for editing, like ProRes or DNxHD and the specific format depends on your needs, but the unnecessarily large file is the whole point so that you can have it an editing format without losing visible data, you can even use a proxy if your computer is too slow.

Not gatekeeping, it’s just a difficult tool to learn for beginners, and if you’re not a beginner you likely have better tools. That’s all I was getting at.

Most NLEs come with encoders (Final Cut has Compressor, Premiere has Media Encoder, DaVinci Resolve has it built into the main app, etc.) that are far more robust and capable, while also easier to use. My original comment was more that Handbrake can read most things, and give you an H.264 of the same quality of the source, and if you’re on a setup where you can’t edit with H.264 you can use one of those other tools instead.

I do this for a living, and I started with fan-editing. I’m just trying to give advice for every skill level, and I think giving command-line instructions for FFmpeg is not really accessible to every skill level.

I guess, just disagree at the core - because I think ffmpeg is quite easy to learn. You tell it what to do and it does exactly that, plenty of resources online. People are just scared of command prompts.

Are you referring to turning ProRes into h264 for editing because that doesn’t make any sense to me so I don’t think you are, but if you need to watch something that’s ProRes and need it in h264 then why not just export it as h264 in the first place, no additional handbrake is needed.

Also you’d be surprised, plenty of professional editors use ffmpeg in their work flow, I just think it’s giving the wrong idea to say “there’s better tools out there” because ffmpeg is one of those better tools for being free to use, the learning curve can be tough for some maybe, and yeah Disney’s not gonna bust out ffmpeg for the next Star wars films but to any editors out there ffmpeg is very solid and will fulfill all your needs for free even past just doing fan edits.

If anyone needs help setting it up feel free to DM me, I mainly use it for repackaging video and audio into different containers very quickly, or adding custom audio tracks like DTS-HD MA onto an Mp4 or Mkv that I can’t get out of premiere.

We really don’t need to get into this again… but I can assure you Lucasfilm does not use FFmpeg. I’m quite sure about that. They use Avid for editing, and DaVinci Resolve for final color on EXRs.

The main process I know of people taking their BDs and ripping them starts with making an MKV, converting that to H.264, and then converting it to ProRes or DNx if their system struggles to edit with H.264. I personally edit in those H.264s, because there’s no real reason not to with the changes I’m making.

To each their own, but if someone is struggling, and not an expert in command line, I still would not recommend a command line tool.

That’s why I said “Disney’s NOT gonna bust out ffmpeg,” yes, I know.

But ripping a blu ray in an mkv container IS already a h264 video stream, no conversion necessary, just need to swap the container which is why I recommended ffmpeg from the start, type one command line, wait half an hour and boom you have an mp4 with no quality loss, no need for handbrake or hours of waiting, no catches. “ffmpeg -i video.mkv -c copy video.mp4”

Anyways, back on topic, when the next version is finished I was just thinking I could encode a DTS HD Master Audio track for anyone that’s interested I’m not sure what kind of audio the final product has. Can’t wait.

JakeRyan17 said:

sidshady12 said:

JakeRyan17 said:

sherlockpotter said:

I typically use FFmpeg for conversions. It’s a bit more confusing to use than Handbrake, but I find that it’s faster, and the output is generally a higher quality too. Another benefit over Handbrake is that Handbrake will try to re-transcode the entire video; whereas FFmpeg can simply repackage the video and audio tracks into any other format container. In other words, it can convert your file to a compatible file type without losing any video quality.

If you just need to convert it from .avi to, for example, .mp4, you can do that really easily and quickly with this command (remove the square brackets and add the file name):

ffmpeg -i "[source file].avi" -c:v copy -c:a copy "[output file].mp4"

(In layman’s terms, this means “Run FFmpeg. Use [source file].avi as the input file. Copy the video and audio tracks without transcoding them, and output them into [output file].mp4”)

If you need to convert the audio codec - aac audio tends to work well when I’m editing - you could do that with:

ffmpeg -i "[source file].avi" -c:v copy -c:a:1 aac "[output file].mp4"

(Run FFmpeg. Use [source file].avi as the input file. Copy the video track without transcoding it. Convert the 1st audio track to .aac, and output the video and the audio track into [output file].mp4")

Except if it’s a codec issue beyond container, then it’s not solving the issue. If something is an avi, it’s not likely H.264 even though the new container of mp4 would suggest that. If a program, especially a non-linear editor, can’t read a file, it’s far more likely a codec issue than a container issue.

Also, transcoding doesn’t lose quality just because it’s changing formats. For example, to use ProRes codecs as an example, you cannot add quality that wasn’t there. So, some people will transcode H.264 into ProRes 422 or ProRes 422 HQ for editing, and scoff at using ProRes 422 LT: all have higher bandwidth than H.264 and will not have any quality loss. Look at the data rates capable from codecs, if the source codec is at a lower rate than the destination codec, you won’t lose quality (unless you set the transcode to compress the file or something). Using something too much higher in bandwidth will just create an unnecessarily large file.

FFmpeg is a good tool, but if you’re deep enough in knowing how to use codecs and such, I feel like you’d be using better tools anyway. That’s why I generally don’t recommend it to people.

Disagree on the gatekeeping of tools, FFmpeg is the perfect tool for working with re-encoding codecs, it’s not just for changing containers. There’d be no reason to need anything else other than FFmpeg and your video editor in the context of fan editing movies, working with ProRes, h264, etc. From my memory handbrake only encodes in distribution formats which is built on compression which means losing quality, and that’s what he was referring to, so I agree, I do not recommend that program for people who want to edit movies. If you want to avoid editing h264 because it can be buggy and slow, then go with a good visually/near lossless format that’s built for editing, like ProRes or DNxHD and the specific format depends on your needs, but the unnecessarily large file is the whole point so that you can have it an editing format without losing visible data, you can even use a proxy if your computer is too slow.

Not gatekeeping, it’s just a difficult tool to learn for beginners, and if you’re not a beginner you likely have better tools. That’s all I was getting at.

Most NLEs come with encoders (Final Cut has Compressor, Premiere has Media Encoder, DaVinci Resolve has it built into the main app, etc.) that are far more robust and capable, while also easier to use. My original comment was more that Handbrake can read most things, and give you an H.264 of the same quality of the source, and if you’re on a setup where you can’t edit with H.264 you can use one of those other tools instead.

I do this for a living, and I started with fan-editing. I’m just trying to give advice for every skill level, and I think giving command-line instructions for FFmpeg is not really accessible to every skill level.

I guess, just disagree at the core - because I think ffmpeg is quite easy to learn. You tell it what to do and it does exactly that, plenty of resources online. People are just scared of command prompts.

Are you referring to turning ProRes into h264 for editing because that doesn’t make any sense to me so I don’t think you are, but if you need to watch something that’s ProRes and need it in h264 then why not just export it as h264 in the first place, no additional handbrake is needed.

Also you’d be surprised, plenty of professional editors use ffmpeg in their work flow, I just think it’s giving the wrong idea to say “there’s better tools out there” because ffmpeg is one of those better tools for being free to use, the learning curve can be tough for some maybe, and yeah Disney’s not gonna bust out ffmpeg for the next Star wars films but to any editors out there ffmpeg is very solid and will fulfill all your needs for free even past just doing fan edits.

If anyone needs help setting it up feel free to DM me, I mainly use it for repackaging video and audio into different containers very quickly, or adding custom audio tracks like DTS-HD MA onto an Mp4 or Mkv that I can’t get out of premiere.

So… anyone following this thread has heard about this “update” coming. Well here’s what I have listed out:

Runtime changes: Film might be longer by two minutes or so, but just due to having both cuts & additions, it actually balanced out pretty well.

-New Scenes/Moments-

• The company hears Orcs after leaving the Shire. Provides context/build-up for the “Orc pack” that shows up later.
• Misty Mountains Storm - There is no longer an avalanche, instead, Bilbo simply slips off the edge because of the dangerous weather. This is preferred to my old cut, as when this new version is analyzed, there are far less inconsistencies/causes for confusion/continuity errors (or even none at all).
• Added a second close up of an Orc in the Out of the Frying-pan sequence to make sure the audience knows it’s not just a Warg pack, but also an Orc pack.
• Added an establishing shot of a mountain range with some wind SFX & soundtrack at the start of part 2 to give a slower opening before we cut to Bilbo.
• Bard discovers Thorin’s quest. In this extended Laketown sequence we get to hear some more lines from the book, it provides build up for Bard opposing their quest, shows that Bard is smart and discovered what they were doing on his own, and it explains why the Dwarves were forced to try to steal weapons.
• More of Dwalin talking to Thorin in the throneroom during the battle. I have added a few extra lines to this scene, including the iconic “You sit here, in these vast halls…yet you are lesser now than you have ever been.” This is an interesting moment to have, especially with the Dwarvish music building up, and helps to act as a better moment of “changing Thorin’s mind,” because Dwalin really spoke some hard truth.
• Gandalf’s departure has been reworked to mirror the dialogue from the book. This also makes it so Gandalf does not know about the ring until sometime after The Hobbit/the start of FotR, which is accurate to the lore.

-Color Grading-

• Removed green tint from AUJ
• Increased the effects on DoS/BotFA to match AUJ more
• Overall, the color grading looks more real & natural, with a slight ‘reddish/warmer’ feel rather than a ‘greenish/murky’ atmosphere. Certain scenes have been adjusted differently, for example, Laketown has a bluish atmosphere to match the coldness of the setting, same with the Goblin caves.

-Digital Alterations by Eric-

• Removed Thorin’s injuries on his face from the end of part 1, because in my edit he never dueled with Azog.
• Removed arrows from appearing on the barrels when they meet Bard.
• Removed Bard’s son from the Bard vs Smaug scene, so now we get to see Bard release the arrow on screen.
• Removed Dwalin from the background when Bilbo gets knocked out.
• [Pending] Improved the removal of Radagast from riding an Eagle.

-Fixes/Small Adjustments-

• [Pending] added establishing shot when switching from night to day in Rivendell to ease the transition.
• Removed a jump-cut that was in the official movie when Bilbo was waking up to turn around back to Rivendell.
• Removed silly cartoon sound effect when Bilbo is falling down into the cave and tries to grab the rope but his hands slip out.
• Adjusted the shot of Gollum floating on his little raft over to Bilbo so that we don’t see his full face. This means the first time we see his full face close up is when he jumps down in front of Bilbo, which works better because he should be more mysterious at first.
• Slightly shortened the sequence when the ring falls on Bilbo’s finger to mirror how it looked in FotR when it happened to Frodo. Originally, when it fell on Bilbo’s finger we saw a CGI ring dancing around/floating in circles for a really long time before it went on his finger, this was something they probably did to “look cool” but it wasn’t necessary at all.
• Adjusted a short transition when they are escaping on Eagles at night, to account for the sound effects of Gandalf moving his arm on the tree, because previously in my edit this audio played during a wideshot so if you listened closely there was a random sound.
• Also for the Eagles, when they are landing on Carrock I swapped a shot out and now we see them fly up to Carrock, then cut to 3 shots of them being on Carrock (Gandalf/Company/then Bilbo), and we cut to the Eagles flying off. This is better because now I don’t have that odd shot of what appears to be Thorin lying unconscious on the ground.
• Removed a Warg sound effect I had play in the background at the start of part 2 when the company was talking, I had this to remind the audience of the Wargs, but now that I have shown the Wargs several times we already get the idea they’re still after them
• Removed my custom subtitle for Thorin’s insult when he’s in the cell. I have purposefully left his other insult subtitled to Thranduil because that actually contributes to the narrative - showing that Thorin wishes Thranduil’s people faced the same demise of dragon fire, which contributes to their feud.
• Reduced red tinting that I had added on the scene of Azog marching his army so it looks more natural.
• Increased audio volume for the stab wound SFX on Fili/Kili
• Tidied up various audio transitions/fades, the Company escapes from Goblins, landing on Carrock, the Rivendell transitions, and possibly more, these usually don’t effect the runtime at all.
• Will add a movie chapter for “A Thief in the Night” because my edit now has had the Bofur scene for some time, which I like, so I believe it requires its own chapter rather than being combined with the following chapter like I had done previously.
• Added Eric to the editor’s credits.

Coming this year.

IF YOU HAVE FEEDBACK now is the time as I am working a lot on this project, this is supposed to be the most comprehensive & detailed book-accurate Hobbit edit (to an extent, I could probably trim more but then character arcs would be flat and plots wouldn’t be fleshed out) that also sits well with LOTR

gboybama said:

I’m so thankful for this edit. It makes Jackson look much better, showing the good choices he did make and removing his poor attempts to punch up or elongate the story. What’s left comes out far better than the theatrical version, and counterintuitively, makes the Hobbit story track better with the LOTR trilogy. Yes, the story beats that link the two sets of movies are removed, but the overall quality of this Hobbit edit hews closer to the quality of LOTR and that makes all the difference.

Personally, I missed the giant rock dudes clashing as the company watches in fear. Really awe inspiring scene, even if it isn’t from the book. Same deal with Thorin making a stand when the wargs had the company treed.

Okay, wait. I just refreshed my memory by watching the Thorin heroics among the burning trees. Yup. Far better to dump all of that nonsense, if for no other reason than it’s full of Azog. Nice choice!

Thanks! That means a lot.

Also yeah in my current edit, there’s one part I miss too. The warg chase before Rivendell, it was actually pretty awesome - cool music, action, good acting, most Orcs were non-CGI, but it was just unnecessary for the plot, inaccurate to the book, and had the inclusion of Radagast. I’ve always considered including a “deleted scene reel” on the Blu-ray version. Maybe the Stone Giants might be something to throw on there, I dunno.

But I had cut that sequence because it was very excessive, the stone giants in the book were probably just a different kind of troll or other creature, but not skyscraper tall giant boxers. I felt like it was kind of out of place in the Middle Earth film atmosphere, like we’ve never seen anything like that, it raises too many questions IMO about what they are, why they exist, who’s side are they on, where are they in LOTR, how come no one talks about them

JakeRyan17 said:

sherlockpotter said:

I typically use FFmpeg for conversions. It’s a bit more confusing to use than Handbrake, but I find that it’s faster, and the output is generally a higher quality too. Another benefit over Handbrake is that Handbrake will try to re-transcode the entire video; whereas FFmpeg can simply repackage the video and audio tracks into any other format container. In other words, it can convert your file to a compatible file type without losing any video quality.

If you just need to convert it from .avi to, for example, .mp4, you can do that really easily and quickly with this command (remove the square brackets and add the file name):

ffmpeg -i "[source file].avi" -c:v copy -c:a copy "[output file].mp4"

(In layman’s terms, this means “Run FFmpeg. Use [source file].avi as the input file. Copy the video and audio tracks without transcoding them, and output them into [output file].mp4”)

If you need to convert the audio codec - aac audio tends to work well when I’m editing - you could do that with:

ffmpeg -i "[source file].avi" -c:v copy -c:a:1 aac "[output file].mp4"

(Run FFmpeg. Use [source file].avi as the input file. Copy the video track without transcoding it. Convert the 1st audio track to .aac, and output the video and the audio track into [output file].mp4")

Except if it’s a codec issue beyond container, then it’s not solving the issue. If something is an avi, it’s not likely H.264 even though the new container of mp4 would suggest that. If a program, especially a non-linear editor, can’t read a file, it’s far more likely a codec issue than a container issue.

Also, transcoding doesn’t lose quality just because it’s changing formats. For example, to use ProRes codecs as an example, you cannot add quality that wasn’t there. So, some people will transcode H.264 into ProRes 422 or ProRes 422 HQ for editing, and scoff at using ProRes 422 LT: all have higher bandwidth than H.264 and will not have any quality loss. Look at the data rates capable from codecs, if the source codec is at a lower rate than the destination codec, you won’t lose quality (unless you set the transcode to compress the file or something). Using something too much higher in bandwidth will just create an unnecessarily large file.

FFmpeg is a good tool, but if you’re deep enough in knowing how to use codecs and such, I feel like you’d be using better tools anyway. That’s why I generally don’t recommend it to people.

Disagree on the gatekeeping of tools, FFmpeg is the perfect tool for working with re-encoding codecs, it’s not just for changing containers. There’d be no reason to need anything else other than FFmpeg and your video editor in the context of fan editing movies, working with ProRes, h264, etc. From my memory handbrake only encodes in distribution formats which is built on compression which means losing quality, and that’s what he was referring to, so I agree, I do not recommend that program for people who want to edit movies. If you want to avoid editing h264 because it can be buggy and slow, then go with a good visually/near lossless format that’s built for editing, like ProRes or DNxHD and the specific format depends on your needs, but the unnecessarily large file is the whole point so that you can have it an editing format without losing visible data, you can even use a proxy if your computer is too slow.

Thanks 😃

I’ll keep that in mind though, like I could make the whole thing darker before to make it more gradual.

Regardless, progress is good - Eric still doing some awesome digital fixes & I need to do a ‘full’ rewatch to double check some of the changes I’ve discussed in this thread, then I’ll be good to go for another release.

Just gotta make sure it’s as perfect as it can be. I have a hunch this will be the last update for a while, similar to what happened in mid 2020, I released & then let it sit for a few months. And then we’ll see, maybe I’ll be happy with this latest release in the long run (months from now), hopefully, but you never know.

RogueLeader said:

Damn, the deep fake work to reduce Thorin’s injuries is really solid! That alone almost made me kinda wish the whole Eagles sequence was skipped, but that vfx work is really helpful to reduce his injuries!

Speaking of which, another thing I wish the “Out of the Frying Pan” scene had was a simple tree line shot to show the sun setting (and hear the approaching enemy) to help with the nighttime transition. Right now it feels like twilight happens in the blink of an eye, but I know the theatrical film had that issue as well.

Yeah that’s just gonna be an inherent flaw in the edit because I don’t think it’d be really possible to find any footage that works showing it turn to night, unless someone recommends any. In the original movie, they had azog pop up for like 15 seconds, which helped, I guess, because it slowed the transition down, but I definitely can’t have that back in, so I’m kind of stuck. I mean honestly when you think about it, it’s not a big deal, they got outside right at sunset just as the sun was going down into night.

Also, here’s an update on the misty mountains, this is the best I could get it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lodow2cQY78 I made it a bit jumpy on purpose with the quick cuts, but not too quick

In comparison with other hobbit edits, my clip seems like it fits in just right/might even be better depending on your opinions, only so much you can do though.

The arkenstone I would like too if the music was right, but the audio imperfections take me out of it - but that’s what I’ve been testing too, a combo of his idea & mine.

Testing out a stone giant sequence, here’s a comparison between mine and a few other famous edits - https://youtu.be/zVnlq0A2Aw0 if anyone wants to give suggestions/feedback that would be nice, or if I can just stick with this, or my old version, etc.

LeperMessiah117 said:

Ahh, very cool! The edit is sounding better all the time, guess I’ll be getting a third version whenever the update comes.

Yep, I have this silly quote on my website referencing what Gandalf says in LOTR:
“M4 is not done, nor is he just starting, he finishes precisely when he means to”
Which basically sums it up for anyone looking at this project. I’ve always felt bad about announcing it’s “finished” and then going back and still editing it. I imagine if I had a thread the size of some of those Rise of Skywalker edits with hundreds of feedback comments/suggestions, it’d be a different story.

Regardless, the “hobbit edit” genre is kind of dead right now and doesn’t have a lot of attention, so it’s up to me and my small discord to finish this up. So close, I can feel it. Tons of fun, a huge passion, so it’s very hard to just set down once for all knowing that there’s possible ways it could be improved.

Luckily I’m at a point where I’ve decided there’s no major audio errors/weird audio transitions, everything’s as perfect as it can be in terms of technical editing in my software (Have yet to export, obviously), meaning that also the runtime as of today is now fixed, the only changes made will be shots already included. For example, soon my friend is starting on removing some of the arrows from the barrel, but that doesn’t change the story nor does it change the runtime, so why not!

Thank you man! That’s awesome.

Also, UPDATE: recently my man eric1894 has done some amazing digital alterations, which I will be including in the next update. (Again, this doesnt change the story, these updates I’m doing are mostly just to refine what’s already been edited. If you’ve seen my edit already and liked it as-is, then that’s great)

First up, deep fake work to reduce Thorin’s injuries here: https://i.imgur.com/A9IJ5vY.png
In my edit, Thorin never duels Azog here so he shouldn’t be extremely wounded, now, he appears just a little cut up and bruised but nothing too bad.

Second, Eric was able to replace Bard’s kid with a piece of wood to get this shot back in: https://i.imgur.com/f11cYvX.png (I believe this is just his first version of it, not sure, but I think it’s awesome as is-you also have to remember these are very quick and fast shots, so you aren’t supposed to really pause and be able to analyze)
Previously in my edit, Bard shoots the arrow off-screen which “worked” but obviously it’s much cooler to see him actually release the arrow.

PMed

Surprised you haven’t already found an edit you like before mine - there’s been dozens since 2014! But I can see what you mean, mine is one of the few 4-hour book accurate ones. Most people make 3 movies to 2 movies edits, or 3 movies to one short 2-3 hour movie, but there’s a nice middle ground in my opinion.

PMed

Also quick update, I was able to fix one very minor error in the Bard vs Smaug scene but no one will probably notice, and I was also able to make a trim so when the ring falls onto Bilbo’s hand it’s much more natural and similar to the Frodo scene in FOTR, I’ll quietly update the link sometime this month or next month, since these are extremely minor things.

Video: https://youtu.be/MJe7e7rVVO8

This is the first Star Wars related thing I’ve edited and I don’t intend on doing a full-movie edit, but I thought I’d still share. I took the 2011 Blu-ray footage of Boba’s death and made it faster paced & have more of Temuera Morrison’s voice - it’s probably not perfect, but if anyone wants to use this in their edit or get inspired to take a similar approach, be my guest! All resources are linked in the YouTube clip description.

Changes:

• Removed a fraction of a second as Boba Fett lands from his jetpack, to make it seem like less of an awkward pause
• Boba Fett reacts to shoot Luke with his fibercord whip quicker, again, to make it seem like there’s less of a pause
• Boba Fett starts to slowly get back up after only 3 seconds, as opposed to 7 seconds, to make it seem less like he was just laying there ‘knocked out’
• Added (subtle) Boba Fett grunts/sounds when he:
  -Lands
  -Gets stunned
  -Falls down
  -Collects himself on the ground
  -Stands back up
  -Flies into Jabba’s barge
  -Hits the sand & rolls down
• Added Boba Fett dialogue:
  -Says “what the?” when he gets hit by Han
  -New scream when he goes flying

chrisvilla said:

Watched this. It’s much better than the released trilogy, which bloated full of junk IMO. Love the fact that it’s much tighter to the book, and the pace is much better now. This is the only Hobbit I need now, will probably give the trilogy away to someone. Superb, well done.

Thank you! This means a lot, glad you enjoyed. The blu-ray version will be coming this month, with final tweaks, full menus and everything.

It is an interesting thing to think about - how far did they go on their first light speed jump? And would it make sense with the whole chances of running into a star or other debris?

The speed of light is 299,792,458 m / s

Being generous, I’m assuming he was going light speed for 3 seconds, but it might be 3.2 or something. Multiplied by 3 and converted to miles, you only get 558,847.

EDIT: nvm ships go WAY faster than the speed of light in star wars pretty sure

https://www.tor.com/2014/12/08/star-wars-how-fast-is-the-millennium-falcon/#:~:text=The Millennium Falcon’s top speed,So there we have it.

With this guys research and anaylsis, which I’m inclined to believe because for the star wars lore/movies to make sense with the distances and speeds seen then going hyper speed would be extremely faster than just normal light speed, so even 3 seconds is by no means a ‘quick/close jump.’ Did some calculations with the times this guy theorized and the falcon likely would’ve gone a couple trillion miles in just a few seconds

IMO for the hobbit there are two categories, there is no definitive edit, regardless of what people will ever tell you, plus most people are bias and only like the edits they’ve seen so they just stick to what they know.

1: The 3 films to 2 films style (or even, 3 films to just 3 shorter films) is the first category. This includes the Arkenstone edit as you said, the Chris Hartwell edit which came out this year, and a great many others. I haven’t seen any of them so I wouldn’t know much about these, but in summary, these edits focus on just making the story better, with less attention to the original book. They are usually 2 films or 3 films, so still greatly expand upon the book.

But the problem is IMO, even if you say, “well I don’t care about the book, so maybe this 1st category is for me!” the reality is that a lot of sideplots and new characters that people keep in this category of edits can still feel unnecessary, or even distracting, because let’s face it, Tolkien knew how to write a story. It all just depends though, some 3 in 2 edits are better than others depending on what sideplots they keep. I couldn’t be sure on which is the best of this style of edit though. It comes down to personal preference, do you prefer a longer story that takes a lot of creative liberties, or would you like just the essentials in telling Bilbo’s/the Company’s story, which at the same time, is more like the book.

2: The second category is the 3 in 1 edits. First, to get this out of the way - Some people do turn the trilogy into a single 2-3 hour movie, but they’re just too short to be a definitive edit, because they really should cover every plot point of the Hobbit. Like sure there can be near perfect 2-3 hour edits that are fun to watch, but they just can’t be ranked above edits that do cover the entire written story, being short leaves plotholes and can mess with pacing. But, I will say the Spence edit is an exception, it’s 3.5 hours and is really good so definitely consider it, but I personally think that skipping over Beorn and still having Radagast detract from its ability to be at the very top of the list, I mean cmon, you gotta have beorn. So that leaves the 4-4.5 hour sweet spot. It has the same benefits as category 1, being that it’s less silly, less distractions, and a better story, BUT it also is now “book accurate” because 4 hours (more or less) is the runtime required to tell the full story of the Hobbit, as read in the book. Anything longer is unnecessary and just “extra” (not that it’s necessarily bad, but you don’t need it), while anything less just means the story is moving too fast and misses out on key parts from the book. For context, a 4 hour edit is in the same ballpark of length as the LOTR extended edition movies, so this runtime fits perfectly.

Now, I can speak more on category 2 as I’ve worked on my edit which is 4 hours and based of the book for over a year, especially because I’ve researched every other popular book edit. One popular 4 hour edit is the Bilbo edition, which I would consider checking out, but I haven’t seen it in a while so I can’t write much on it, but he does have an entire website with all the details. Now finally, the most popular Hobbit book edit you’ll hear about is the Maple edit which I do enjoy, but unfortunately, like many other edits, I wouldn’t be able to put it as the definitive edit because of the simple fact that it was made 4 years ago and missing out on a ton of new techniques people have discovered since then. Also, some of the technical editing could improved, and there are still fatal flaws, such as, when scenes like this https://youtu.be/D6LDiJK4W-w?t=48 and this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-LTG2LpJDk are still in it, or how you still see Smaug break out of Erebor covered in gold, jump cutting from troll caves to Rivendell, the odd handling of the Azog plot, dumb scenes with Alfrid, stuff like Dain headbutting Orcs with helmets, I just can’t call it the definitive edit with these things, sure there’s arguments for why some of these parts are “needed” but people have removed them/fixed and effectively told the same story, with the same accuracy, and the same emotional impact. Regardless, the Maple edit deserves its respect and props for being an amazing edit no doubt. I would put it in my top 5, even top 3. Another 2 good book edits are JXeditor’s and TheNameLessEditors, but I just think the technical editing still needs to be refined before they could be put near the very top, obviously they follow the book, they do their job, but there’s points where you can tell things have been fan-edited.

So that leads me to the edit I’ve worked on, which I have a trailer for here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vko4eecNkuc which I truly think is the definitive edit of the Hobbit for me. The “for me” part is important. Everyone has a different opinion, the Hobbit trilogy is extremely convoluted and complicated to edit with so many factors. It could be the definitive edit for some people, but for some, maybe they miss stuff like Radagast or the expanded sideplots. Personally, my edit in the 4 hour category is a balance of book accuracy, professional editing, very occasional creative liberties here and there straying from the book for storytelling (but not as much as the 3 in 2 edits), being closer to LOTR, and just aiming to tell Bilbo’s story effectively. I have received plenty of feedback which I have used, all documented in the update log to show how the edit has improved over the year, thanks to the community, so that means at the moment I have no complaints from people who have watched it in full, but anyone is welcome to try to change that if there’s something I mightve missed.

My Favorite Edits

1. M4 Edit (I mean cmon, I spent over a year on it how can it not be my favorite 😃 )
2. Maple Edit
3. Bilbo Edition
4. Arkenstone Edition / Chris Hartwell edit / Original 2-film structure edit (These 3 are the longer category 1 edits, and it’s hard for me to rank as I’m no expert but they are all really good)
5. Spence Edit

Honorable mention: NameLessEditor’s version, just needed to be more technically refined but it was so ambitious in its book accuracuy, and a huge inspiration.

As for LOTR, the definitive edits… are PJ’s extended edits in my opinion. Yes there’s minor things I might change, and if someone were to make a very careful and conservative edit, it could be better, but LOTR reached an amazing balance of book accuracy + creative liberties, so any edit that aims for “even more book accuracy” might be a little too much, now I could be wrong, I havent seen those edits, maybe they are relatively conservative, but as a huge Middle Earth fan, a 4 hour fan edit of the hobbit + the 3.5-4 hour official extended LOTR movies are my go to in a marathon. I will say I would trust Hal9000 with a revised LOTR edit made in 2020 for slightly more book accuracy and small fixes here and there, I think he had a project like that but it’s really old and unfinished, he should pick it back up though. But both hal’s and kerr’s old projects, as of right now, are pretty much the only LOTR edits worth watching for a full experience of the entire trilogy (I believe there are some fun ones that just follow certain characters but it misses the main story). But I wouldn’t call them definitive, because I’m sure they’d change or improve a ton of their old work if they started again today.

VLC isn’t a format it’s just a program that opens videos for you, so when you opened it, the icon probably updated to the VLC cone.

To convert it so your program can read it, you can do the video and audio separately it doesn’t really matter, because we have the power of video editing. Simply convert your video, drag it in, looks like you’ve already done this. Then convert your audio by dropping the original .avi onto an audio program like audacity, then export each channel as 24 bit wav files, and load those into your video editor. Then just make sure video/audio are lined up with eachother.

If it’s 5.1 audio then you’ll need to look up how to set that up in your video editor, you will see 6 channels pop up in audacity, right click the first one - hit “split as mono”, and export each of the 6 as a mono track in order from top to bottom, L R C LFE sL sR.

In the works for over a year & an early version was released this summer, but now the final version is out. Download is available on my website with built in togglable English subtitles, chapter markers, and a DTS HD High-Resolution audio track.

The Hobbit (Extended Edition)
-4 hour runtime
-A re-edit that is extremely book accurate
-Much closer to the tone and universe established in the LOTR trilogy, specifically in relation to the action scenes/combat.
-Made sure to keep some of the movie lighthearted, specifically the parts that pay homage to the text, this isn’t a LOTR epic, but it isn’t a childish joke of a story either

Hey everyone, I know a lot about working with 5.1, but not so much with 7.1. I use ffmpeg, audacity, and Premiere - I basically want to edit this audio in Premiere in a 5.1 24 bit wav set up, but the problem is the source audio is 7.1.

My question is how do I go about dealing with the rear channels so I can go from 7.1 -> 5.1?

For example, when I load the 7.1 audio into audacity only 6 channels show up, not 8. I’ve heard that it’s because the 4 rear channels are matrix encoded into just 2. Can I just export the respective mono rear left/rear right and they’ll act as the rear left/right in 5.1, with correct volumes and all the audio data? All I care about is maintaining the accurate sound but presenting it in a 5.1 format, as this film makes heavy use of surround sound. Any help would be appreciated.