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Apocalypse Now: The Re-Redux by JDubyew

JDubyew

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Br7PZkHl.jpg


Hey guys. I just finished making my first fanedit.​

I've loved movies for as long as I can remember and have been editing my own short machinimas since I was a teen. I've been aware of fan edits for a few years now, and I love how they can completely transform a film. A bad movie can become good, a good movie great, a great movie something entirely different... And I've always liked the idea of doing one. I just either had no ideas to make an edit for, or I didn't have the necessary equipment to rip a high quality source file to work from.

...Until now. Apocalypse Now is one of my all-time favorite movies. It's a masterpiece (duh). I've seen both the theatrical cut and the Redux cut a few times now, and after rewatching the Redux again the other day, my opinion remains the same on it. There's some great, subtle new material included that really fits well with the rest of the film, but there's one infamous section that always gets on my nerves. A section that feels really out of place, going against the foreboding atmosphere and increasing isolation that has been building up around it's core boat crew since the opening credits. It's 25 minute run time turns the pacing from slow into boring, and considering that the events that occur are never mentioned again, it's a surprisingly superfluous section to boot.

So I made a single change to the Redux cut of Apocalypse Now - I removed the restored French plantation sequence. It now runs at 171 minutes long, leaving all the other new scenes intact, and the edit is completely finished already. I uploaded a clip from the edit to Vimeo showing the single cut in all it's seamless glory. Feel free to watch it below, the password is 'reredux' (without quotes), but there are major spoilers ahead for those of you that haven't seen Apocalypse Now:


The edit itself is done now, but when I worked on it last year I didn't really understand how to render and encode properly, so the video quality was decent, but nothing more. I've now finally had time to reconstruct the edit using fresh Blu-Ray sources and have MUCH better quality 720p/1080p files ready for upload. I also managed to construct the fanedit in 5.1 surround sound to give people the highest possible quality movie to enjoy. I'll update this post once I've uploaded the files, then when I have, feel free to PM me saying you'd like to see it if you don't want to have to wait for it to be approved. You can also find below the same clip taken from the better quality source so you can see how the picture quality has improved. It has the same password as the above video.

[align=center]
 

TV's Frink

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Video quaility is for the Academy to judge. However, your edit is not allowed here because you are using an illegal rip. Please read the Own The Source Rule, specifically (emphasis mine):

However, we can, and do police the forum to ensure that no member is promoting piracy, which includes discussions of making edits using pirated sources of commercially available material, nor will theoretical discussions of how to get around the rule be allowed. Fanedits which are found to be created in violation of this rule will not be added to the site, or will be removed from the site if such information comes to light after being added.

And before you ask, it doesn't matter that you also have the Blu-ray, since you aren't using that as your source.
 

wayne.workman2012

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oxm_madman said:
But the problem I have is this. I know FanEdit.org is very focused on keeping quality as high as possible, and I own the collector's edition of Apocalypse Now on Blu-Ray. The issue is that I don't have a Blu-Ray drive, and I likely won't be able to afford one for some time. So currently, the edit is using the highest quality, stereo, 1080p rips I could find for both versions floating about online as the sources my edit works from. So is that a high enough quality to qualify as an official release on FanEdit.org? Most likely it'll be available as an MP4 file either on Vimeo or MEGA.


does the blu ray disk that you own contain all of the material you've put into this fan edit?
 

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wayne.workman2012 said:
does the blu ray disk that you own contain all of the material you've put into this fan edit?

not the problem. no using illegally obtained materials, and no discussion of illegally obtaining materials on the forum. end of discussion.
 

wayne.workman2012

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wayne.workman2012

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Yes, I'm that nice.

And this guy needs to post a picture of his hand holding his copy ALONG with a spoon - yes, a spoon.
and it has to clearly be an un-edited picture. If he can do that, and the materials he wants to use
is indeed on his blu-ray copy, I'll order him that external drive and have it shipped to his address.
 

Neglify

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That's great you want to send him a drive. Continue discussion via PM plz.
 

JDubyew

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TV's Frink said:
Video quaility is for the Academy to judge. However, your edit is not allowed here because you are using an illegal rip. And before you ask, it doesn't matter that you also have the Blu-ray, since you aren't using that as your source.

Very well, I thought it would be a case similar to that, sorry for completely missing that rule!

wayne.workman2012 said:
I was going to offer to buy him a Blu-Ray drive for him to rip his copy with. :) Yes I'm that nice.

And this guy needs to post a picture of his hand holding his copy ALONG with a spoon - yes, a spoon.
and it has to clearly be an un-edited picture. If he can do that, and the materials he wants to use
is indeed on his blu-ray copy, I'll order him that external drive and have it shipped to his address.

Seriously?! If you do, that'd be a great help man! I may be sending you that picture shortly heh. But in that case, most likely this edit will either not be released or not appear for a month or three. I tend to have the shortest attention span when it comes to making things in general, so by the time the drive comes I may be completely unmotivated to re-work and release the edit on here, since I made it for myself first and foremost, and it's finished already. I'd be doing all this just for you guy in case anyone else is interested, but I'll see how it goes.

Neglify said:
That's great you want to send him a drive. Continue discussion via PM plz.

Will do mane.
 

TV's Frink

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oxm_madman said:
But in that case, most likely this edit will either not be released or not appear for a month or three. I tend to have the shortest attention spa-

;)
 

wayne.workman2012

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oxm_madman said:
Seriously?!


Seriously.

And even if it's not released in months, I'm not worried about it.
You can use the drive on other projects that you are motivated to do.
 

JDubyew

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So it's been a while since I announced this project, and I've been intentionally keeping hush-hush because I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up until there's been some real progress. I didn't want this edit to fall apart like most of my attempts at fanedits do.

...And now there's been some real progress. Wayne.workman2012 very kindly sent me a Blu-Ray drive that I received a few weeks ago. I managed to rip my copy of Apocalypse Now to gain some high quality source files for the edit, and now, it's back to the exact same stage. Apocalypse Now: The Re-Redux is once again completed and ready for release. :) Again, it consists of a single cut, with the French plantation sequence from the Redux cut of the film being removed, and footage from the original cut of the film being re-inserted to make the removal seamless. I also added a single new credit slide at the end of the fanedit. To further demonstrate the actually completed state, I uploaded a clip from the edit to Vimeo showing the single cut I made in action. Feel free to watch it below, the password is 'reredux' (without quotes):


There's only a few more things I need to do so I can get this edit out in the wild. I need to a) actually render the entire Sony Vegas project for the edit, but since I have a computer that took about half an hour to render 7 minutes of footage, and sometimes likes to shut off randomly in the middle of doing important things like rendering, that might take a few days for me to actually achieve. I also need to b) figure out the best rendering settings for the best video and audio quality possible for the edit whilst keeping the file size reasonable (most likely it'll be a .mp4 file with a bitrate of about 8k and audio at 320kbps, since anything above that is near impossible to hear an audible difference). Once I've done that, I'll have to c) upload the film itself, which is going to take an extraordinarily long amount of time due to having a pathetically slow upload speed on my end, though I may try and upload it on my university campus to benefit from their ridiculously fast speeds.

Anyway, what's the procedure when it comes to submitting edits? Who should I talk to/what posts should I read?
 

Neglify

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oxm_madman said:
Anyway, what's the procedure when it comes to submitting edits? Who should I talk to/what posts should I read?

This is the submission form: http://www.fanedit.org/forums/content.php?577-First-Time-Submission

If you want to read about the approval process and why, here you go:

Article: In the Spotlight - FE Quality

Guide: Using This Site (sections "Listing a Fanedit" and "Listing Process")

Thread: FE Academy New and Improved (Section "Review First Time Submissions")


This would fall under the category of a "Special Project" once approved. There have been a few other "one cut" fanedits before (ADM's T2 and Stomachworm's Psycho for example) and I feel that what you're cutting is significant enough to be listed. It's still a "true" fanedit and it would get the regular release treatment. But since not much editing is on display you'd still have to get approval on your next edit. Just to make sure you can handle more complicated or involved fanediting.

If any questions about this, send me a PM.

I look forward to seeing how this goes, sounds like a solid reredux.
 

TV's Frink

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For rendering settings be sure to look through the tech forum, especially the stickies.

Also, thread moved to ITW.
 

jswert123456

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the music is overpowering the dialogue iin that clip, in my opinion
 

JDubyew

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Neglify said:
This would fall under the category of a "Special Project" once approved. There have been a few other "one cut" fanedits before (ADM's T2 and Stomachworm's Psycho for example) and I feel that what you're cutting is significant enough to be listed. It's still a "true" fanedit and it would get the regular release treatment. But since not much editing is on display you'd still have to get approval on your next edit. Just to make sure you can handle more complicated or involved fanediting.

If any questions about this, send me a PM.

I look forward to seeing how this goes, sounds like a solid reredux.

Okay fair enough, thanks for the info! I'll be aiming to submit it some time in the next month or so depending on how my university workload is going and how quickly I can actually get the fanedit uploaded somewhere. And if rendering the fanedit tonight turns out completely flawlessly, which I highly doubt since I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist with anything creative I make heh.

TV's Frink said:
For rendering settings be sure to look through the tech forum, especially the stickies.

I think I managed to figure out a solution that leads to a pretty high quality end file. In Sony Vegas, I rendered out the edit as a lossless .avi, and right now I'm using Handbrake to convert it to a compressed, h264 encoded .mp4 file. Problem solved. :)

jswert123456 said:
the music is overpowering the dialogue iin that clip, in my opinion

That's just how the film is mixed overall, it's got a fairly wide dynamic range on the audio side of things. I haven't touched the audio at all, I just spliced together the different cuts of the film, and I've never had any trouble with the audio whenever I've watched either version of the film, so it'll be fine once you've heard the end product.
 

jswert123456

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ok was just my opinion., who can help me fix it so i dont get a email everytime i am quoted
 

Neglify

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jswert123456 said:
who can help me fix it so i dont get a email everytime i am quoted

Settings --> User Tagging Settings --> check "Disable Quote E-mails" --> Live life to the fullest.
 

JDubyew

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Okay, a quick update on where the edit is right now. In full, exact-same-video-and-audio-bitrate-as-source quality, the .mp4 file is around 10GB right now. It's at full 1080p resolution with audio that sways between 192kbps-256kbps. The video I'm perfectly happy with, but I'm a little annoyed with the audio. I rendered the edit so many times using so many different encoders, yet despite the fact I always chose 320kbps audio, the end result always hovered around a lower bitrate. It's still very listenable however and it's still perfectly good quality, so I think that'll have to do for now.

I also think that 10GB remains a bit of an unnecessarily large file size for the edit, so while there will be a full 1080p release soon, for the sake of upload speed on my end and download speed for those keen on checking this out, I'll first release the edit in 720p at a moderately lower bitrate. Hopefully that'll bring the file size down to the 5-6GB range, then I'll work on uploading it some time over the next week. A 1080p release of the edit will maybe come a week or two after.

Edit: Also managed to make a little official poster, I added it to the post that started this thread.
 

Neglify

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For now, just upload a smaller 720 version. Then when it's approved upload the massive 1080 file. Save yourself some upload time in case it's disapproved and something needs fixing.
 

JDubyew

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Neglify said:
For now, just upload a smaller 720 version. Then when it's approved upload the massive 1080 file. Save yourself some upload time in case it's disapproved and something needs fixing.

Yeah, that makes sense. Thankfully I finally managed to render a version of it in 720p yesterday with decent audio quality at around 5.2GB. I'll be commuting to my university campus today, so hopefully I can upload the entire thing whilst I'm working all day there. :)

I'll send off my submission form once it's uploaded and upload this post as well as the thread post when it's available. Feel free to PM me if you're interested in watching it once it's upped.
 
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