Personal re-edits of shows

[Catar]

preface disclaimer: my official releases will not have this done unless requested, and it will be very clearly labelled as well as offered as an optional addon on top of the untouched normal release.

 

I'm curious if anyone else ends up editing their own copies of shows in minor ways. For example, as I'm usually more of a binge watcher and I hate spoilers/unnecessary recapping, I often edit the next-episode previews out of my own copies, unless they actually have some comedic value or are otherwise not just a quick preview. 

 

EXAMPLES!

Madoka Magica spoilers: 

Spoiler

Since the first three episodes are essentially set up as a bait-and-switch on the typical magical girl opening, I think keeping the previews on the first two episodes is fine. However, from episode 3 on I removed the previews, as I felt it was more impactful to continue the sudden shift into a more serious and dark drama, by continuing to double down on removing the existing episode structure. In addition, having episodes close on a distorted shot of giant skull-face with Madoka curled up in the eye socket is just fantastic. No need for a preview here.

 

Cowboy Bebop and Rage of Bahamut are both good examples of the previews having their own merit and keeping them around. However, most shows tend toward a generic preview with a quick voiceover of no particular value, from what I've seen. Some minimise this effect, such as in Steins;gate with quick flashes and a nice little musical tone (usually under 5 seconds).

 

Steins;gate spoilers: 

Spoiler

However, in one episode, I did elect to remove the preview from the end of an episode. In E22, with the altered ED credits and song, the episode does a hard smash cut to black after the line "I need you to stop World War 3." This is fantastic. But just less than a second later, we smash back in with a preview of the next episode. I feel like the ending impact is much stronger if the episode ends right there.

 

 

I've not just done preview removals though. As an example of a more substantial edit:

 

Psycho-Pass S01 spoilers:

Spoiler

In Psycho-Pass, I removed the entire opening sequence of the first episode. This is nothing against the sequence in of itself; it's actually pretty gorgeous, the OP theme is great as always. Problem is, it's just reused footage from later in the series, and while I get the whole Greek Chorus opening they're attempting with Makashima v Kougami, I feel like it actually robs the slower paced reveal. In addition, having the voiceover done by Akane seems weird. While obviously it's not really meant to be in-character, I still find it a bit odd.

 

My edit removes this sequence entirely, and starts the show off directly at the overhead shot of the city in the rain, before beginning the episode proper following Akane to her first crime scene. I thought about moving normal OP sequence from another episode and splicing it in somewhere, but after reviewing it a few times I elected for no OP. 

 

 

So yeah. Anyone else weirdly obsessive and do this too?

Edited July 4, 2016 by Catar

[Koby]

I've never removed scenes or edited shows and I don't download releases that have. Unfortunately back in the day AHQ use to do this. They'd remove OP/ED and NEP, though they'd also hard-sub their watermark on the title screen along with some other stuff. Like this:

 

[Catar]

13 minutes ago, Koby said:

I've never removed scenes or edited shows and I don't download releases that have. Unfortunately back in the day AHQ use to do this. They'd remove OP/ED and NEP, though they'd also hard-sub their watermark on the title screen along with some other stuff. Like this:

 

Watermarks are awful, I'd never do that. And just to be clear again, my releases will never alter the series in any way.

[ElementalCards]

Oh man, I started doing this with Sailor Moon. Whenever I watch the episodes on my iPad, I tweak them a little bit. For the R episodes, I deleted the DiC intro and replaced it with a fanmade R opening I found on youtube last year. My reason is because the official intro was definitely inappropriate for the R episodes as it depicted events from Classic (smh). For SuperS edited, I added back the VHS intro and end credits.

[AaronScythe]

For some shows where it shares nothing, it isn't so bad doing this.
For others, there are often key differences, even scenes that plain don't pop up as they've been cut that may be seen within the small glimpse of the previews.

 

I think if you're binge watching that bad, what's the harm in clicking next ep?

[Catar]

Just now, AaronScythe said:

For some shows where it shares nothing, it isn't so bad doing this.
For others, there are often key differences, even scenes that plain don't pop up as they've been cut that may be seen within the small glimpse of the previews.

 

I think if you're binge watching that bad, what's the harm in clicking next ep?

No harm, obviously, but in my media center setup there is no "next episode" button, and it's preferable to have the episode properly end rather than having to manually hit skip to end or stop. Means I can catch the "episode end" event in Kodi and pass it along to my lights/stereo/etc, sync it to plex, other things. 

 

Catar does some silly things. 

 

From a viewing perspective, it's much nicer to have the credits end and pull back to the episode list without having to scramble for the remote, particularly when watching with guests. Just looks better overall. 

[AaronScythe]

Fair call, I assumed you meant PC for your watching.

 

The grace time in between episodes is usually good for a quick toilet trip/snack run for me, so I wonder if for keeping things original, you could set up a "skip these chapters" option in your media centre?

It might not be good for older h264 files, but if you're doing your own edits then I'd assume you're able to quickly punch a few of these in for end of intro (and possibly beginning of credits)

Alternatively, separate files in a subfolder for extras/previews. Sorry to press into this, I just feel that the original format should be preserved as much as possible.

[Catar]

42 minutes ago, AaronScythe said:

Fair call, I assumed you meant PC for your watching.

 

The grace time in between episodes is usually good for a quick toilet trip/snack run for me, so I wonder if for keeping things original, you could set up a "skip these chapters" option in your media centre?

It might not be good for older h264 files, but if you're doing your own edits then I'd assume you're able to quickly punch a few of these in for end of intro (and possibly beginning of credits)

Alternatively, separate files in a subfolder for extras/previews. Sorry to press into this, I just feel that the original format should be preserved as much as possible.

Sadly Kodi doesn't support ordered chapters, and I think they're terrible anyway since there are so many cases where they just make no sense and there's always a sound gap when they're used. 

 

A "skip final chapter" option would be interesting, I might look into that. That would require every file I have to actually have chapters though, which doesn't include the majority of live action shows, and a lot of older anime releases. Adding chapters to all of them would be... tiresome. Plus, the "skip final chapter" option wouldn't work in a lot of edge cases where previews don't exist, eg: Psycho-Pass.

 

I do agree with you on preserving the original format. I have a separate master copy of every video I've ever edited, untouched, and I always just do file splits than re-encode anything so no quality is ever lost.