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Is making a regular and extended version of the same fanedit allowed?

hbenthow

hbenthow

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I'm working on a fanedit of the 1992 "Bram Stoker's Dracula", which takes out the romance, tones down the sexuality, makes Lucy more likable, and makes other changes to make it more faithful to the book.

I have the two-disc Special Edition DVD, of which the second disc has numerous deleted scenes, all in poor quality. I am planning on trying to clean them up as much as I can, but I'm not sure how good I will be able to get them to look, as they are poorer than VHS quality. One deleted scene is absolutely necessary for my edit, to keep the plot coherent, but the rest are optional. My question is this: is it allowed for me to create two versions, one with only the one deleted scene added, and the other with several deleted scenes added back in - an extended version of the fanedit? If so, could they could be released together, as a two-disc set, or would it be necessary to release them separately?
 
Sounds better to me if you release a two discs set with TWO separate set of links. That way people will choose to download the whole thing or not. The only thing is that the main fanedit page will have one single rating for both versions, I think. If you're okay with that.
That said I personally think you should make only one version: the one you like the best.
I was also tempted to release two versions of my Once Upon A Time In The West fanedit, but I thought it would have looked like I was not sure of myself. If you know what I mean.

Question: do you know if those deleted scenes ever exist in HD quality? Even if not perfect they maybe could still look better than the versions from the DVD.
 
Sounds better to me if you release a two discs set with TWO separate set of links. That way people will choose to download the whole thing or not. The only thing is that the main fanedit page will have one single rating for both versions, I think. If you're okay with that.
That said I personally think you should make only one version: the one you like the best.
I was also tempted to release two versions of my Once Upon A Time In The West fanedit, but I thought it would have looked like I was not sure of myself. If you know what I mean.
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I understand what you mean. I'm not sure if I want to or not. The thing is, the extended version would have a few more interesting scenes, yet would have a poor picture quality in those scenes. By releasing two versions, I'd be able to give the viewers a choice: more interesting scenes or better overall picture quality.

Then again, two versions would, as you pointed out, complicate things a bit.

Question: do you know if those deleted scenes ever exist in HD quality? Even if not perfect they maybe could still look better than the versions from the DVD.
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I was wondering the same thing, but I read a review of the Blu-Ray that said that they were in 480p, just like the DVD, and just as poor quality. The only difference is the format. It is pretty common to release a Blu-Ray extra in mere DVD quality.

Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to restore the deleted scenes with Avisynth (which I have no experience with).
 
As a viewer I look to the artist to make the tough decisions about whether to use a scene or not and the tradeoffs you have outlined. Give me the version you think is best in your experienced opinion having worked with material. If you make me decide, I may be inclined to watch neither. To me it is a bit like a gourmet cook asking the customer what ingredients to put into the food. But that's just my two cents on releasing two different versions.

Regarding the scenes themselves, maybe you can mess around with one for a while and see how good you can make it look? Then you will be able to make a more educated decision about how to proceed based on a deeper understanding of technological limitations.
 
As a viewer I look to the artist to make the tough decisions about whether to use a scene or not and the tradeoffs you have outlined. Give me the version you think is best in your experienced opinion having worked with material. If you make me decide, I may be inclined to watch neither. To me it is a bit like a gourmet cook asking the customer what ingredients to put into the food. But that's just my two cents on releasing two different versions.
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That's an interesting way of putting it. The previous poster seemed to have a similar opinion. It's something I will definitely have to consider. I now think it's more likely that I will create only one version.

Regarding the scenes themselves, maybe you can mess around with one for a while and see how good you can make it look? Then you will be able to make a more educated decision about how to proceed based on a deeper understanding of technological limitations.
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Perhaps.

By the way, you seem to know quite a bit about Avisynth and such programs. Here is one of the deleted scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK5sJWMcwhU. Although that is a Youtube video, the quality (when played on 480p) is pretty much the same as on the DVD. There's not really that much difference; that's really how bad it looks on the DVD. Could you give an educated guess on how good a video of such poor quality could be made to look?
 
I have 2 edits of Revenge of the Fallen. There's about 5 minutes difference though, so it's definitely noticeable. How much difference would the added scenes make?
 
Hard to say without fiddling with it, but it will never look equal to the theatrical video to be sure (if this is how it looks on the DVD). Too much detail has been lost from compression. I am not nearly awesome enough at avisynth to say off the top of my head the best approach to take. It would take a bit of experimentation with various filters for me to find the best solution. And then after that, even if you are successful at removing much of the artifact, you will still have a video quality that looks noticeably degraded. Perhaps with a finishing touch of darkening the scene a bit to hide the lack of detail you might be able to make it passable to the viewer without pulling them too much out of the story.
 
I can't make any promises that I will get to this in a timely fashion, but if you can send just the video for the scene in a lossless format, I may have time at some point to fiddle with it in the next few weeks.
 
Story trumps video quality, IMHO. If the edit works better with crappy looking deleted scenes I say use them in as good of quality as you can achieve.
 
Kevinicus said:
I have 2 edits of Revenge of the Fallen. There's about 5 minutes difference though, so it's definitely noticeable. How much difference would the added scenes make?
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Well, the first scenes are an extended version of the Dracula's Castle scene. One of them is an extended version of Harker's arrival, and includes Dracula's famous speech from the book ("I am from an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me"), before creepily going up the stairs twice at the same time. It's somewhere between and minute and a half and two minutes. Another is the dinner scene. In the Theatrical Version, this scene ends with Harker saying "Forgive me". The deleted scene includes Dracula (acting eerily easy to please) saying "No! Forgive me, my young friend!", then making a speech about being isolated in his castle for years and not being accustomed to visitors. He then walks away, ominously urging Harker to drink his wine. It's about a minute or so long.

Another is a scene of Harker trying to hit Dracula with a shovel. The entire scene is quite long, but I would probably only use a few seconds of it.

There are some deleted scenes of Lucy and Mina I've flirted with the idea of using as well, probably about three minutes.

None of those scenes are necessary to the plot, but I think some of them add a creepier edge to Dracula.
 
geminigod said:
I can't make any promises that I will get to this in a timely fashion, but if you can send just the video for the scene in a lossless format, I may have time at some point to fiddle with it in the next few weeks.
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Well, there's more than one scene in question. I could send you the most important one, though: the one I must use, regardless of which version of the edit I make. It is the scene of Renfield's death, and is absolutely necessary for the story.

How should I upload it? Would Megaupload do?

Would Lagarith AVI be the best format?
 
reave said:
Story trumps video quality, IMHO. If the edit works better with crappy looking deleted scenes I say use them in as good of quality as you can achieve.
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Definitely this.

Large's Ark simply would not be a worthwhile edit of Garden State without the deleted scenes, and there is unquestionable loss of quality, but the story cannot be told the way I wanted without it, so if your vision of the story is dramatically affected by the inclusion of deleted scenes, then use them. The only caveat to that is make sure that they match the visual A/R, not just dimensions. It's one thing to have degraded PQ, but distorted a/r is not acceptable. Better to zoom and crop than distort.
 
^You followed your own advice on SOTS also...IIRC you went SD due to the deleted scenes, correct?
 
Here's the link.

This is the first time I've ever converted a video to lagarith AVI. I'm not sure if I did it right. If not, please notify me.

EDIT: The link didn't work. I'm trying to fix it.
 
I fixed the problem. Here's the link:

*deleted*
 
Maybe you could send it in original mpeg2 and Geminigod could convert it in lagarith lossless? the size would way smaller to download...

And please, in the future try to keep those shared links in PM. I know it's just a couple of scenes that could even be shared on youtube, but the less links on this forum, the better.
Thank you.
 
Maybe you could send it in original mpeg2 and Geminigod could convert it in lagarith lossless? the size would way smaller to download...
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I considered that, but he asked for a lossless format.

And please, in the future try to keep those shared links in PM. I know it's just a couple of scenes that could even be shared on youtube, but the less links on this forum, the better.
Thank you.
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Duly noted.
 
Oh yeah, I should have told you to PM it to me. In fact, why don't you do that anyway so I don't lose it and the admins can delete that post if they want.
 
Yes, please handle via PM.
 
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