I’m currently working towards getting The Song Remains The Same mastered to DVD before Christmas. Thankfully, converting the burned-on subtitles of the Fanime/YouTube version to a removable DVD subtitle stream is easier than I would’ve guessed. I’ll take one last stab at converting Song for 16:9 display, but I’m not expecting much. Right now, I’m testing the sub timings for the main feature, after which I’ll convert the subs for the trailer and the deleted scenes and then start the DVD authoring.

However, I did make one last edit to the movie, and it’s significant enough that I decided to replace the YouTube upload that contains the scene affected (Part 8). My biggest disappointment with the game’s story is that the villain is not defined very well. In an effort to fix this, I rearranged some dialogue so that the details of the villain’s ultimate plan are now revealed earlier. It’s a small change, but one that makes the story a little more coherent (In the original staging of the scene, Faye and Kent seem to be responding to revelations they haven’t heard yet) and adds more tension to the ensuing big three-way brawl that originally occurred before this information came out.

Click here to view the recut Part 8.

http://animeotaku.animeblogger.net/2008/09/a-lost-episode-of-cowboy-bebop-the-song-remains-the-same/

Shortly after The Song Remains The Same was posted to YouTube, I found this blog post in which the writer tries to tie the game story’s thematic elements with that of the series proper. I responded with some thoughts of my own in the post’s comments.

Now playing on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8EEBA46A28DC9750

Another hiccup likely due to my old external drive (though I think there’s a good chance my out-of-date editing software may be to blame too) is that my project file was damaged at some point after Fanime, forcing me to work off a backup (auto-save, I love you). Unfortunately, what I didn’t discover until last night was that this backup file was created before I did the audio mixing for the last twenty minutes of the movie. At least all my edits are still in place.

The mixing of these scenes should only take me another day or three, and then all I got to do is work on the brightness issue and assemble the deleted scenes. My current thinking is that Song will be released on YouTube first while I investigate the feasibility of reformatting the video for 16:9 display for DVD/DivX release. I had experimented with making ReDeath 16:9 on its DVD, but cropping ReDeath for 16:9 resulted in a softer image compared to having my HDTV zoom in on the 4:3 letterbox image, so I left it non-anamorphic. But since Song requires subtitles (for most), it seems worthwhile to give it the 16:9 treatment so people with widescreen TVs don’t have to choose between a big picture and being able to read the dialogue. We’ll see.

I’m finally getting back to polishing Song. The biggest headache has to do with the audio mixing where I’m adding or removing footage. Since the audio mixing was applied as keyframes on the entire audio track, any change to the length of footage requires the keyframes to moved as well, which sadly does not occur automatically. Not difficult, but obnoxious.

Also not cool is that my old external firewire drive (a 120GB I’ve had since late 2001, on which Nescaflowné and ReDeath ReDux were edited) is flaking on me. Some footage and music cues were damaged and needed to be replaced. Thankfully, the damage to the whole is minimal, but I’ll definitely be retiring this drive from editing work once this project is complete.

I’ve crossed the halfway point and am currently considering shortening one, maybe two of the action scenes. If I can do it without butchering the music behind them, I most likely will. That’s about it for the edits I think the video needs, everything else is just tweaking a subtitle here and there or adding some sound effects where needed. I also think it’d be cool if I could find someone to translate the end credit theme for me (it’s in Italian), but that’s just extra credit. And then, it’s the deleted scenes and the DVD authoring, but I think I could get this online before then.