millenniumfalcon.com

by **Zion** » July 1st 2005 1:06 am

Should be up this weekend.

by **KneelbfZod** » July 1st 2005 6:41 am

nice! torrent or usenet? i hope usenet

by **Zion** » July 1st 2005 9:11 am

usenet: a.b.dvdr, a.b.starwars

by **Reecoh** » July 2nd 2005 9:34 am

Wow, those shots are sharp! Very nice

I hope the x0 project turns out that nice.

It looks like the aspect is a little sqeezed in those though. Is that the final look?

by **Zion** » July 2nd 2005 11:16 am

Those are shots of the anamorphic frames. I did not resize them after making the caps. The video is of course wider when you play it on your DVD player. A lot of the stuff I've done has a direct relation to stuff I'm doing for the X0 Project (video filters, opening menu logo shot, generated crawl, etc.). I just took my ANH templates and did ROTS versions.

From the nfo:

Code: Select all: ___________________________________________________________________ | | | .:: Release Notes ::. | |__________________________________________________________________| | | | | | This is a re-encode of the original XviD internal DVD rip. | | | | VIDEO | | The video has been cleaned up considerably. | | Video noise is reduced, jaggies are almost non-existant and | | color has been boosted slightly. | | | | Unfortunately, dot crawl from the original interlaced source | | is still very evident. Various frame skips have been fixed. | | | | | | AUDIO | | This is the same crappy audio as every other rip out there. | | Attempts were made to fix the amount of distortion/clipping, | | but like others have said you can't put back what ain't there. | | Channels have been swapped. All audio sync issues I am | | aware of have been fixed. | | | | LOGOS/CRAWL and CREDITS | | I have generated new opening logos, crawl, and | | credits for this release. | | | | Yes, I typed out the whole damn credits by hand. Don't ask. | |__________________________________________________________________|

I'm still encoding/authoring this so it might be another day or three.

by **Reecoh** » July 2nd 2005 1:00 pm

Awesome. Thanks for the updates.

by **MasterCreep** » July 2nd 2005 1:32 pm

First off, wow, your re-encode looks great :heavymetal:

Also, I'm really glad you're also posting it on a.b.starwars, as SBC blocks off a.b.dvdr, please don't change your mind :chewbacca:

by **InfiniteDY** » July 5th 2005 3:56 pm

Would you mind sharing how you cleaned up the video and what you used to transcode to DVD? I love working with that stuff. I've been experimenting with noise reduction filters and film grain effects using ffdshow.

It looks like you did an awesome job. :heavymetal:

by **Shiban** » July 5th 2005 4:15 pm

Zion wrote:Had to work this weekend. I'm doing the final encode tonight. Shouldn't be long now.

So this has not been posted yet? I was wondering, because my nsp has real shitty retention and my giga account has lapsed.

It looks great Zion. I look forward to seeing it.

by **CoGro** » July 5th 2005 4:20 pm

Looks great.

Nice work, man.

by **MattOusley** » July 5th 2005 8:33 pm

Excellent work, Ben. Looking forward to it. Those menus are kickass. :cool:

by **Zion** » July 6th 2005 8:07 pm

DagobahWarrior wrote:Would you mind sharing how you cleaned up the video and what you used to transcode to DVD? I love working with that stuff. I've been experimenting with noise reduction filters and film grain effects using ffdshow.

It looks like you did an awesome job.

AVISynth mostly. I did a light Convolution3D for noise reduction, SangNom to de-jaggy (quite an amazing filter), Tweak to boost saturation, then a custom made filter called YLevelsS (do a search on doom9 forums) to tweak brightness/contrast levels. I loaded that into VirtualDub with MSU DeBlocking and SmartSharpen filters. The results were better than I expected.

This thing is still encoding (6-pass VBR w/ CCE). After a quick test burn I'll post here when I start uploading it.

Thanks for the comments guys. This project has been a few weeks in the making, and I'm very anxious to get it finished and out to the masses. I trust some of you will soil your pants when you get this. The screenshots don't do the video or the menus much justice.

by **InfiniteDY** » July 6th 2005 11:29 pm

Zion wrote:AVISynth mostly. I did a light Convolution3D for noise reduction, SangNom to de-jaggy (quite an amazing filter), Tweak to boost saturation, then a custom made filter called YLevelsS (do a search on doom9 forums) to tweak brightness/contrast levels. I loaded that into VirtualDub with MSU DeBlocking and SmartSharpen filters. The results were better than I expected.

This thing is still encoding (6-pass VBR w/ CCE). After a quick test burn I'll post here when I start uploading it.

Thanks for the comments guys. This project has been a few weeks in the making, and I'm very anxious to get it finished and out to the masses. I trust some of you will soil your pants when you get this. The screenshots don't do the video or the menus much justice.

Which of those would you say did the best job at removing the block artifacts? Something I have noticed in the source video is the presence of ugly blocks in the opening scroll... grey blocks mixed in with the blackness of space and the stars... this really annoys me greatly. :mad:

by **Zion** » July 7th 2005 11:40 am

Which of those would you say did the best job at removing the block artifacts? Something I have noticed in the source video is the presence of ugly blocks in the opening scroll... grey blocks mixed in with the blackness of space and the stars... this really annoys me greatly.

MSU DeBlocker. I used a low setting due to the effects of the other filters but by itself I would have used a higher setting.

by **InfiniteDY** » July 7th 2005 5:45 pm

I downloaded a version of MSUDeblocker to test it out with VirtualDub and it doesn't seem to be working right... for one thing, it only has 4 settings:

High Quality, High Speed, U deblock, V deblock

And when I preview it in the output view of Vdub there appears to be no difference. :vsuicide:

Do you have a link to make sure I got it from the correct site? I've been experimenting with several different deblocking filters and have never found one that seems to make much difference.

by **Zion** » July 7th 2005 11:54 pm

You've got the same one I do. I just went back and checked. Those are the same settings I have on mine. I guess I actually used the high quality setting there, not the low setting I mentioned above. Anyway, if you're expecting to get rid of the multitude of huge macroblocking effects inherent in the source XviD, it's not really going to happen. The DeBlocker actually does a pretty good job of smoothing out the blocks, but anything over a certain size stays untouched because the filter doesn't see it as a problem. My version still has these flaws in it, as the only effective way to get rid of them completely makes the rest of the picture look blurry. I think I found a healthy medium though, but in reality there's only so much polishing you can do to this turd of a source.

by **InfiniteDY** » July 8th 2005 1:04 am

I've been using tmpgenc for a long time, but am thinking about switching to another encoder.

Yeah... I kind of figured that there is not much that is going to make a difference without losing quality... that's the main rule in video editing... everytime you "improve" something, you tend to "lose" something as well. :\

I have been impressed with what the film grain effect (in low doses) can do. It tends to confuse the blockiness and make the picture sharper... though it can be a bad thing if you use too much (makes it seem to much like a broadcast or something).

by **Faid** » July 8th 2005 1:46 am

How's the OT restoration coming?

by **Zion** » July 8th 2005 7:24 pm

Slowly but surely.

Photoshop, Premeire Pro, After Effects.

For the credits, I spliced in the music from the soundtack as the original XviD obviously cuts off right after the last shot of the film. I used the workprint as a guide and lined it all up pretty well. You shouldn't be able to tell I spliced anything in. That goes for the opening logos and crawl as well.

The encoding is done, but the newest thorn in my side is syncing up the damned subtitle track. I'll have it done tonight hopefully.

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 10th 2005 12:56 am

Thought I'd try my hand at a cover for this, and it came out sort of OK. Unless your printer's a POS like mine, you might need to tone down the "gold" parts a little.

Here's a 72 dpi version to look at:

And here's the 300 dpi versions, with a bleed of 4mm on each side:

Hi-res RGB JPEG

Hi-res CMYK PDF

by **MasterCreep** » July 10th 2005 1:26 am

Wow, that's a great looking cover to complement a great looking DVD release.

by **BrotherTheFirst** » July 10th 2005 11:32 am

nice Ayatollah Krispies. especially the back.

by **BearnBird** » July 10th 2005 1:36 pm

I tried to do the exact same thing that Zion has perfected. Had all the menu assets and audio ripped and ready to go, but couldnt friggn resize the 16:9 anamorphic widescreen to 720x480 in Adobe Premiere cause the file was too big. (You can only burn MPEG2 files with Adobe Encore as they are 720x480 resolution.)

Zion this really looks amazing, if you need any troubleshooting or help using Encore to finalize the thing let me know. :heavymetal:

by **Zion** » July 10th 2005 1:46 pm

Wow, that's a great cover! DLing as we speak, and I might just upload that along with the DVD if it's cool with you.

Speaking of which, encoding is done. The DVD authoring is pretty much done. I'm going to spend today fixing some more audio sync issues, as I noticed on my test viewing that a few of my corrections made other parts out of sync. After that's finished and I get the subs finished (how I loathe subtitles now, especially importing them into Scenarist), this thing will be ready to upload.

by **thecolorsblend** » July 10th 2005 4:23 pm

Ayatollah Krispies wrote:Thought I'd try my hand at a cover for this, and it came out sort of OK. Unless your printer's a POS like mine, you might need to tone down the "gold" parts a little.

Here's a 72 dpi version to look at:

And here's the 300 dpi version, with a bleed of 4mm on each side:

ROTS DVD cover

1) Thank you for the cover. This coupled with Zion's offering should tide me over just fine until November.

2) THANK YOU for knowing how to spell "climactic".

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 10th 2005 4:55 pm

Thanks all.

That's pretty cool Krispies and thanks for not using a ton of lens flare.

I knew I forgot something.

Zion wrote:Wow, that's a great cover! DLing as we speak, and I might just upload that along with the DVD if it's cool with you.

No problem. I figure that yousendit link will expire pretty soon anyway.

by **Zion** » July 10th 2005 11:28 pm

Doing some final testing, but it looks like this thing's just about ready...

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 10th 2005 11:58 pm

I went back and made some changes to the cover (links above have been changed as well) -- fixed the font for the text on the back cover, fixed some of the chunky grads in the artwork, added a little disclaimer text at the bottom of the back cover, fixed the crappy-looking LFL logo, and last but not least, added some lens flare to Yoda's saber. I know that lens flare is the last refuge of the retarded, but I was consciously trying to emulate the cheesy design of the existing DVDs, so it's a necessary touch.

Then I took my PDF to Kinko's and it printed up so nicely that I nearly had an emotional breakdown. So in addition to the 300 dpi RGB JPEG file, I'm also uploading the CMYK PDF. Take your pick.

Low-res for viewing on your screen:

Hi-res RGB JPEG

Hi-res CMYK PDF

by **cardboard monster** » July 11th 2005 5:01 am

I like the changes you've made, that truly is a thing of beauty. Now how's bout some disc artwork?

Can't wait Zion. :chewbacca:

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 11th 2005 6:31 am

cardboard monster wrote:Now how's bout some disc artwork?

I don't generally label discs myself, because I haven't got a printer that can print directly to discs, and I don't like to use adhesive labels because I've heard that if they're even slightly off center, they can affect your discs' ability to play in some players -- and even though this has not yet happened to any discs I put labels on before learning this, I figure better safe than sorry.

But I did start thinking about a label after I'd finished the cover, something that would be reminiscent of TPM's Disc 1 and very simple to whip up. So voila, que sera sera, sacre bleu and other French phrases:

hi-res version

by **Zion** » July 13th 2005 4:39 am

It's away. :chewbacca:

First person to download it and tell me it works gets a cookie.

by **Faid** » July 13th 2005 5:35 am

I will make a ridiculously easy guide to downloading it from newsgroups tomorrow.

edit: pretty cool menu so far.

by **Zion** » July 13th 2005 8:42 am

Power-Post froze up on me after uploading part 1. Restarting....

by **ETandElliott** » July 13th 2005 12:48 pm

This thing isn't going to just disappear off the face of the earth. Have patience if you're waiting for a torrent.

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 13th 2005 4:27 pm

Zion, looks like part 13 is bad. The file size looked off to me, so I did a partial unpack of what I had (the first 18 parts) and it crapped out right at that part with an unexpected-end-of-file error.

Menu looks great though.

by **sideshowtob** » July 13th 2005 4:37 pm

I have the first 16 and they all unpack fine. Downloading from Easynews and unpacking with Winrar.

Edit: Yes my bad - Zion: Great looking menus! AK: Great looking cover/label!

Ayatollah Krispies wrote:Zion, looks like part 13 is bad. The file size looked off to me, so I did a partial unpack of what I had (the first 18 parts) and it crapped out right at that part with an unexpected-end-of-file error.

Menu looks great though.

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 13th 2005 5:19 pm

What I'm seeing when I look at these files with Unison (a Mac newsgroup reader) is that every .rar file is either 49.36 or 49.37 MB -- with the exception of part 13, which is 49.22. This appears at the same size whether I'm in a.b.starwars or a.b.dvdr. If you guys are seeing something different, please let me know (though if so, I don't know what I can do about it).

I would also have to point out that I don't think you can completely unpack anything at this point except for the DVD-ROM folder and the menu, so it might be a bit premature to say that everything's working. I use UnRar and it gives me feedback on each part as it unpacks.

by **sideshowtob** » July 13th 2005 5:28 pm

Usenet Explorer (PC) shows all files as either 49.3Mb or 49.4 MB. 13 is 49.4MB over here. Easynews is the Usenet provider.

All files show as 47.6MB on disk.

Ayatollah Krispies wrote:What I'm seeing when I look at these files with Unison (a Mac newsgroup reader) is that every .rar file is either 49.36 or 49.37 MB -- with the exception of part 13, which is 49.22. This appears at the same size whether I'm in a.b.starwars or a.b.dvdr. If you guys are seeing something different, please let me know (though if so, I don't know what I can do about it).

by **Zion** » July 13th 2005 5:29 pm

AK, Part 13 (as well as all the others save for the very last one) should be 49.31MB or 49.32MB. Just checked both a.b.dvdr and a.b.starwars with NewsReactor and 13 looks the same as the others. Try dl'ing again maybe?

So you guys are able to view the menu VOB already? Nice. I put a lot of time into them.

Let's hope the whole thing uploads without any problems. I'm leaving for the Warped Tour in Calgary in an hour or two and I won't be back for two days. I hope you guys can help each other out until then and repost parts for people if they're scewed up. I'll be back Friday afternoon.

by **KneelbfZod** » July 13th 2005 5:48 pm

Is it done uploading to usenet yet?

EDIT: ok now i see. up to 23/90

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 13th 2005 5:50 pm

Weird. I dl'ed part 13 again, and got the same error:

Extracting from /Desktop/alt.binaries.starwars/sw3.zion.part013.rar

... VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB
VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB - CRC failed
Unexpected end of archive

Think maybe one of you guys could throw it up on yousendit?

EDIT: got it, thanks.

by **Zion** » July 13th 2005 5:50 pm

Right now it's on part 24 of 89.

by **Faid** » July 13th 2005 6:20 pm

Downloading Zion's ROTS DVDR Newsgroup Guide

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 13th 2005 7:52 pm

There are now enough parts up that you can completely unpack and watch VTS_01_1.VOB. All I have to say is:

FUCKIN' A.

This is by far the best pre-release DVD-R I have ever seen. I think that the only way to improve on this (short of the official release) would be if the person who provided the Xvid files were to upload his original source video. Even then, I think the difference would be minimal, and probably not worth the effort to get them.

And I think we're all going to get into a lot of trouble.

by **Slumberland** » July 13th 2005 9:42 pm

Is anyone else not seeing a part 21? I'm on Unison, and there's a 20 and a 22, but no 21.

Menus are A-MAZING. Really nice work.

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 13th 2005 11:09 pm

Slumberland wrote:Is anyone else not seeing a part 21? I'm on Unison, and there's a 20 and a 22, but no 21.

Quit Unison, delete your .db file (in Home/Library/Application Support/[your server]), and then reconnect and look again. The same thing happened to me a couple of times. I'm learning all sorts of things about Unison's quirks today.

Alternatively, you can just check the other newsgroup and it will probably be there.

by **Slumberland** » July 13th 2005 11:38 pm

Thanks for the tip, AK, but strangely, I'm still not seeing 21. Either I'll try a different newsgroup browser, or I'll count on the kindness of someone to send me that particular .rar when all is said and done.

edit: Interesting... Unison apparently thinks 21 is incomplete, as it was visible only once I enabled it to show incomplete files. Hopefully it won't give me a problem upon extract.

yet another edit: Trashed the .db files and re-started Unison twice. 21 shows up if 'show incomplete files' is enabled. It's still listed as incomplete, with a file size of 48.93 MB as opposed to the 49.36-8 that the others are listed as. I'm doing a test extract to see if Unison is just mis-diagnosing the problem.

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 13th 2005 11:53 pm

Essentially what's happening is that, if you use Unison to check on an ongoing upload, it will read what's posted at the very second you're refreshing -- whether the file has been completely uploaded or not. If it's not complete, then you're never going to see it complete as long as you leave your Unison .db files as is. So if you checked out the group while part 21 was uploading, you saw everything up through 20. What you didn't realize was that Unison was collecting data on the chunk of part 21 that was there, only it read it as incomplete. So then when you checked it later, it showed everything that had been fully uploaded AFTER part 21, because to its way of collecting data, part 21 came up in two or more incomplete pieces. You can see this if you turn on the "Show Incomplete Files" preference. More than likely you'll see two or three copies of part 21, all incomplete. It doesn't help to "Hide Incomplete Files," because the program still collects data the same exact way -- you just can't see the incomplete files anymore.

You need to trick Unison into thinking it hasn't been to the newsgroup yet. Trashing the alt.binaries.starwars.db file should do the trick.

by **Slumberland** » July 14th 2005 12:20 am

Yeah, the .db delete fix isn't helping with 21, though I know I did it right as I was seeing 38 for a time as two incomplete files in the exact manner you described, and now it's whole. No biggie, I'll wait and see if anyone else has problems with 21. For the record, I checked it with MT-Newswatcher as well, and that also gave me a file incomplete error when attempting to download 21.

by **Ayatollah Krispies** » July 14th 2005 2:22 am

OK, I'm a dope: the commands to empty the message and image caches are right in Unison's File menu. You can easily do this without having to quit and delete anything.

millenniumfalcon.com

ROTS Internal DVDRip • The Zion Edit

ROTS Internal DVDRip • The Zion Edit

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