I see light at the end of the tunnel. I’m learning more and more about DVD authoring as I go and am pretty happy with the results so far. ReDeath and FBBB are mostly done, I just keep finding little wrinkles to iron out every time I test a new disc. Nesca shouldn’t be too hard since it won’t have nearly as much stuff to arrange. Very close now…

I finished re-lip-syncing the problem areas of Nesca, which meant all but two of the 25 files that make up the video had to be re-encoded for DVD. The final four will be done by tomorrow evening. I also saw fit to cut out about 18 more seconds, giving Nesca 1.7 a svelte new runtime of 59:55. Feel the burn!

Barring any other possible renevations striking my fancy, the final authoring of ReDeath, FBBB and Nesca begins tomorrow.

Alrighty then, FBBB (both cuts) and Nesca are now subbed. During the tedious process, I noticed a few more glitches and timing quirks I want to polish and that’s what I’ll be doing over the next week. Nothing major, but it does mean I will have to redo the MPEG-2 encoding for those scenes. And retime the subtitles. But even that’s not a big deal since there’re only two edits I’m considering that affect timing. The rest of the subs simply have to be shifted around that, which I can do all at once. And that’s only for the FBBB director’s cut, Nesca’s issues are purely technical. Also, the soundtrack for the original cut of FBBB is slightly off, so I’ll be adjusting that as well.

Number of Subtitles:

Nescaflowné (version 1.7) - 957
Fanboy Bebop – 558
Fanboy Bebop (Director’s Cut) – 551
Evangelion ReDeath ReDux- 398
Evangelion ReDeath – 389

Remember how I said there was a problem with the soundtrack for the original cut of ReDeath? I must have made it up. After hearing Misato’s dialogue in the OC just fine on my comp, I checked the DVD to see if the issue was really there. Lo, her lines are all present with all the fidelity of the audio cassette tape that they were recorded on. I can imagine why I really thought there was a problem. Much of her dialogue only comes out of one speaker (I opted not to fix this for the DVD in order to truly preserve the orignal cut of ReDeath), so when I couldn’t hear her lines, it must’ve been because whatever room I was in at the time wasn’t rigged for stereo. Can’t complain, less work for me is always a good thing.

So after I test the DVD encode of Nesca 1.7, my next project is to recap the deleted scenes for Fanboy Bebop. The audio is way overblown. Then I will consider the subtitle options for all three. Doing ReDeath was such a tedious chore, I’m not looking forward to doing subs for the longer FBBB and the even longer Nesca. I’d ditch subs altogether had I not seen how well they worked at Fanime last year. Reminds me, “songs only” for ReDux…