Texhnolyze - Omnibus Cut

[15MaF]

My latest project. 22 episodes into one. Editing out music intros and end credit ballads from each episode.


The scene repetition that is used to serve as a reminder where the story left off for certain early and late episodes is trimmed and blended as segues, so we simply move through the story once as smoothly as possible. There is also a truncated filler montage towards the end of the story that I have simplified and re-scored with OST music to better suit the scenes either side, but it is mostly a straight run through the episodes.


There are new end credits with repurposed music from the wider OST - other tracks of which are also utilised and re-arranged during the concluding scenes. In point of fact the music track I removed from the montage mentioned above is now featured for the credits - but is a full fidelity version only featured on the soundtrack, as the version used in the show was creatively distorted and only used the high end portion of the mix as a jarring texture.


The footage has also undergone an extensive and colossally time consuming edge detail upscale process, using processor intensive filters that enable a 1080p output. While not wholly detailed and sharp like a genuine remaster could be, it does improve quality noticeably over the original versions available. Where the scale of detail between the positive and negative spaces either side of any contrasting edge detail is tightened up using a "Find Edges" filter, which is then inverted on a transparent percentage setting - Rather than just blowing the whole frame up to a soft mess, this effectively re-interprets the space to edge ratio. It only works in a very narrow percentage range and cannot be used with all manner of animated footage, but it suited the scale of detail in this animation pretty well. It works best for "close-up" and so the success I was getting with it had to be suppressed a little to suit the medium and long shot/scale  too as it threatened to lose detail.


The only HD version around is a 720p available to stream/download as a purchase from Amazon. Then there's the standard definition DVD of course - whose rich colours, textures and lesser/uncompressed footage is sometimes preferable over the 720p version. Both are sampled from and used based on overall definition success with the filter sets I was using.


The style of the animation itself veers from chunky grain and coarse muddy textures - Via purposeful posterisation and colour banding and compression artifacts surviving the DVD mastering just to make it fun - To clean line work with very little texture to obscure output processing. So all this filter manipulation was borne of much experimentation so as to not let it get heavy handed and destroy any detail or texture intended by the creators.


It's run time is just over 7 hours so far and so it is divided into episode chapters and people can either binge it or utilise their media player resume function. Personally this is why I'm doing it, as I'd much rather choose how much to watch in one go than to get those bloody karaoke ballads popping up after 20 minutes just as you're getting into the deep dive of a very very dark philosophical piece of science fiction anime. I really enjoy select anime/manga content, but not the  majority of the industry's rather adolescent output. So this project probably won't become a habit outside of the occasional diamond in the rough.


It has dual stereo audio tracks at 640kbps AC3 - ENG/JPN with English subs provided.


I'll post some screenshot comparisons in the not too distant...


15MaF

SAMPLES
These are also darker to better match the DVDs. The internet streams are conversions that often playback lighter due to differing colour ranges and ripping software etc. This aims somewhere inbetween to cover a range of scenes. I have resisted doing much sharpening to these as the work is done by the find edges filter and sharpening cannot come close to dealing with the remaining contrast that is still quite soft at the edges. The originals shown here are already upscaled obviously.

 

[addiesin]

You cut out opening/closing credits, cut montages made of previous episode clips, and cleaned up the overall look. 

I'm not sure that counts as a fanedit on its own. Am I missing more work that went into the actual editing?

 

[15MaF]

There are edits (re-cutting footage into a different sequential order) that take out some scene replication and re-order's some other shots to segue episodes into each other more smoothly than they previously were, thus embellishing the narrative slightly from what it was. There's a truncated montage towards the end which is re-cut and removes footage wihilst using re purposed music from the soundtrack release that previously didn't feature in the series in full - Incidentally, the footage in the montage was not made up of shots from elsewhere in the series. There's a re-scored concluding sequence using re-purposed soundtrack at the end. All on screen titles from each episode have been digitally painted out and the end credits are an entirely new addition with re-purposed music. All footage has been filtered to tighten up the scale detail of all edges between the negative and positive space samples. That's about all I can think of from a technical standpoint.

If I were to post it as anything other than a remix or fan-fix, it would be inaccurate. It's more than the deletion of titles and credits, which would be of little use as it would play awkwardly without the episodic presentation.

That's my take anyway, if it helps. I might not have made clear enough initially.

Cheers,
15MaF

 

[addiesin]

Sounds like a Special Project to me. I don't call the shots, though.

 

[Jrzag42]

If anything, I think it would be classified on the site as either TV-to-Movie or Special Projects. I do think there's enough edits made for it to fit here, though I think harsher edits would have to be made to consider it a fanfix or fanmix. But I could be completely wrong! Interested in this nonetheless.

 

[TV's Frink]

Since I'm not the best at judging this kind of stuff, I've kicked it to the rest of the staff for review.

 

[15MaF]

Yeah, there isn't a great percentage of re-edited visual narrative when you take into account the run time. And I didn't consider the other options in any detail to be honest, but I don't mind how it is accommodated - Special Edition/Project does seem to be useful for these types of changes.

Cheers,
15MaF

 

[15MaF]

really.

Sounds like a Special Project to me. I don't call the shots, though.

The more I look at the classifications available the more I realise how right you are. Bit short sighted of me really.

 

[addiesin]

The more I look at the classifications available the more I realise how right you are. Bit short sighted of me really.

Some projects don't fit easily into labels, and the labels aren't always self-explanatory. Figured it was best to ask.

 

[15MaF]

The more I look at the classifications available the more I realise how right you are. Bit short sighted of me really.

Some projects don't fit easily into labels, and the labels aren't always self-explanatory. Figured it was best to ask.

Yeah man for sure, it helps get us all ship shape.

 

[addiesin]

I'm curious about your upscaling process. It sounds really cool but complicated. Maybe better to discuss in another thread but I'd love to hear more about it.

 

[theryaney]

The staff has agreed on this being Special Projects, so I've moved it accordingly.

 

[15MaF]

The staff has agreed on this being Special Projects, so I've moved it accordingly.

Cool, cheers.

15MaF

 

[15MaF]

I'm curious about your upscaling process. It sounds really cool but complicated. Maybe better to discuss in another thread but I'd love to hear more about it.

The process isn't complicated once you find the sweet spot, but very time consuming finding out what you can do with it - feeling your way through the filter settings to test out different scenes to find the right tweaked settings that can work well enough for the whole piece. It uses the Find Edges filter in Adobe Premier, which initially turns everything into outlines. You can invert the effect and change the transparency blend to a percentage that is far less acute. This facilitates a type of inflation to the body of positive/negative space depending on the percentage you use, and this tightens up some of the line work between the pos/neg space etc - which aids the upscale. But it does need to suit the footage, so there's an aspect of happenstance as well. I'll put some samples up at some point soon. There's a wider filter set added to this as well but that's just seasoning if you will, denoise, sharpen - depending on the footage etc. It all started off using vector blur crossed with find edges in After Effects - which has lots of nuance to work through, but I found after about a week of messing with it on and off I was able to do the same job with much less. And it's only really processing time that made me search for a more efficient method as it would taken serious time to render. So that's probably why I've made it sound complicated.

cheers,
15MaF