Part 12: Final Cuts

Ok. So, I made a final edit. Running time is 4hrs17min, including end credits (which are all 3 films combined). Using the Divxland Subtitler, I’ve set the timing on the new text and exported it to the proper file type. This basically meant watching the film and pressing a button and holding it for the duration of a given subtitle. I noticed a few visual problems doing this and was able to make corrections there as well.

I did output the audio in a 5.1 ac3, but did not go back & remix it to create any panning (you know, sounds swooshing from side to side…) effects. I did lay in some new music here and there to soften transitions and unify some actions.

I decided to use Sony’s DVD ARCHITECT to produce the menus. Mainly because I’d never tried it before, but also because I knew it would allow me to link the files, create custom buttons (if I wanted), and could handle the subtitle stream easily.

As it turns out, it was this last feature that was most handy. It lists each title as a separate event and allows you to change the font, style, size – etc, of each…as well as to tweak the timing. So, I was able to correct some mistakes & make last minute dialogue changes easily.

I created some menu backgrounds, then added chapter stops, named them, and created the links for the “scene selection’ menu. When the whole project was compiled (took about 47min), I had a 12gb size DVD file on my hard drive that I could test. A nice bonus to DVDA is that if you make minor changes to backgrounds, links, font, chapter stops, etc. in your project, it only recompiles the changes & not the whole thing.

All in all, I was very pleased with the outcome. However, I did notice that some of the timing on the subtitles was skewed when the project was finished. Titles would ‘stick’, as if they were repeated.

I did have to compress the DVD about 67% to fit it on a dual-layer 8.5gb DVD-R. It played in my home player, my PS2, and my PC. Quality was pretty good, & I didn’t shed any tears over the video degradation.

The subtitles did get messed up, though. Some are only on the screen for a second & others stay for minutes, bumping others out. Once I’ve got that corrected, I’m done.

Part 11: maybe 98% finished

Made a few more ‘style’ cuts and have really entered into the ‘fine-tuning’ stage – snipping a few seconds here or there and smoothing out some of the audio’s rough patches. I’m really getting much better at using Vegas and have become a fan. It’s very easy to make titles, professional transitions, etc. You can nest several projects together and perform some really complicated actions. It outputs mpeg files of comparable quality to other encoders, and can create ac3 compression audio tracks as well.

One thing to mention is the working pace. It may seem pretty slow, but consider that each time I decide to encode the most current edit, it takes about 3hrs to encode the first section, and another 6hrs to encode the second. I pretty much work in my spare time & let the computer crunch video overnight.

I had to make a couple of tough choices recently: it occurred to me that the ‘Flight of the Osiris” sequence starting off the second half is mostly unnecessary. It makes a nice ‘vision’ for Neo to have & I spent quite a long time editing it together (only the ‘chase’ parts of that episode into a 2min piece) but as a viewer you get the gist that the machines are tunneling down toward Zion without needing to see the Osiris discovering that fact & being chased. I cut it out, and replaced it with a flashback of Neo waking up in his pod from the first film. Then I cut that part from the first section, goosing the original film along.

I’d say that the actual editing of the film is 98% done. I’m going to sit through the whole thing again from start to finish looking for mistakes and minor adjustments, but it’s definitely the home stretch.