any news?
Yep, just finished exams today, super happy to really give all my attention to this project for the next week.
Update for anyone following:
As I've implied earlier, the digital version is 99.99% finished and so my website has that version linked,
but I was always planning on doing one more patch. It's not a case of me struggling to "release a final product", but rather, I just wanted to get a good version out last month, finish up school and take a break,
then come back and finish the job with some fresh eyes.. And so that's where we are, I've done just that. The theatrical footage has also shipped to me a few weeks ago so those minor tweaks been implemented, and some more things which I'll detail below. I can now export the final digital version this weekend, get the subtitles, chapters, audio commentary, and everything else all set up bundled into it, then it's finally good to go, probably uploaded on Tuesday!
Special Features Notes
-Replaced title screen with a new title, "Durin's Folk"
-Redid dissolves for title cards/most fade-ins to now be more exponential and not so sudden
Main Edit Notes:
-(Theatrical footage fix) Finally improved the other Rivendell transition I was iffy about, when we cut from Moon Runes/Elrond saying "not deem it wise" to the Dwarves, there is no more bleeding leftover music. I was able to remove it by using the theatrical version, which had no music while the Dwarves were talking.
-(Theatrical footage fix) Extended Mirkwood sequence featuring a new shot of the path/more dialogue kept from extended
-(Theatrical footage fix) When Bard finds the prophecy, the theatrical version has been inserted to replace the extended, which is identical except it does not have a shot of Alfrid "spying"
-Removed a shot during the goblin escape sequence that showed the Company on two separate levels which was never expanded upon in my cut, since it's assumed they're just all together on the same bridge, so no need to show that
Continuing to try to be a perfectionist:
- (Theatrical footage fix) When Dain arrives, slightly higher quality video & audio has been inserted. Now the entire edit is uniform in the quality of its source files, (the original footage I used had been transcoded from the blu ray h264 -> high bitrate h264 back when I couldn't figure out how to work with MKVs lol, but now I do, so that second layer of compression isn't necessary)
- Thought I might as well, finally added some waterfall SFX during the first hiking montage to match how the official AUJ montage also sounded, but this was the only exception, the rest of the montage was silent except for music
- Added extra dialogue when they are escaping the goblin tunnels to provide context that the daylight will save them from the goblins "Daylight! come on!"-Gandalf
- Added back very quick center channel audio when the Eagles show up and Ori/Dori are hanging, so now their yells don't fade out
- Removed Bain's grunt when Bard shoots the arrow
- Removed Bain's face from the shot of Bard holding his broken bow (Missed that, whoops)
- Added the Laketown trumpet composition info to the credits along with the other special compositions/sung songs
- Some very minor additional audio mixing tweaks to really make sure everything is as best as can be - no missing ambiance/wind background sfx when I replaced music, no imbalanced music volumes, no missing footsteps/breathing/other foley SFX, every transition I do every single detail is considered