Seamless branching

[John Hoare]

There was a bit of discussion around here a while back when it was asked why seamless branching wasn’t used on the Dwarf DVDs, to include deleted scenes, or as an alternate way of including the Xtended episodes without including the episodes twice (as eventually transpired). The answer given was that it was too complicated to do, but I recall some people rather disbelieving this.

I didn’t disbelieve it, but I did wonder quite what made it so hard. Well, Mark Ayres on the Doctor Who Restoration Team Forum has done an excellent post about the subject:

http://www.rtforum.co.uk/read.php?id=250630

READ AND LEARN.

Topic

[Phil]

The few DVDs I own that attempt “seamless” branching still throw up a slight hiccup when branching out to the alternate/deleted scene. It’s not a huge complaint, but it does kind of take you out of the moment.

I don’t know if that’s just poor encoding, the fault of my player, or an overall limitation of the medium. But I don’t like it. I prefer the way the Xtended eps handled it.

[thomasaevans]

The Simpsons dvds do this. It doesnt ALWAYS work. Sometimes Its clear to see that the intserted scene is a few seconds or 15 seconds too slow/too fast to where It should come in.

[ChrisM]

My Alien Quadrilogy DVDs seem to work fine with it. (Although I haven’t checked them out for a while.)

Mind you I’m used to little pauses, etc. I’m not sure if it’s a disk thing or my old type PS2. Considering the time it’s done pretty well though.

[Dave]

Off Topic, but what’s on Disc 9 of the Alien Quadrilogy set?

[Zombie Jim Undead]

Oh, it’s just about 45 minutes of softcore porn and Ceefax.

[James]

> Off Topic, but what?s on Disc 9 of the Alien Quadrilogy set?

Disc Nine Supplemental.

Alien:

Alien Evoloution Documentary
Featurette
Ridley Scott Q&A
Alien special edition Laserdisc
Archive
Theatrical Teaser & Trailer
TV Spots

Aliens:

Aliens Special edition Laserdisc
Theatrical Teaser & Trailer
Domestic & International Trailer
TV Spot

Alien 3:

Advance Featurette
Theatrical Trailers
TV Spots

Alien Resurrection:

Theatrical Teaser
Theatrical Trailer
TV Spots

Aliens in the Basement
Bob Burns Featurette
Dark Horse Cover Story

[ChrisM]

What was that James? Heh.

>Off Topic, but what?s on Disc 9 of the Alien Quadrilogy set?

Ok, I’ve grabbed the booklet that comes with it. It’s mostly supplemental stuff for all the films. I’ll write out a list of the contents if you like but it’s essentially

The “Alien Evolution” documentary
laserdisk archive material for the first two films
Theatrical teasers and trailers and TV spots
Featurettes

The Bob Burns “Aliens in the Basement” featurette is quite interesting in a geeky way as it’s a guy with loads of props and alien heads from the various films. He basically stores them in his basement like his own personal little museum. I think they still belong to the studio (or production company, whatever) strictly speaking, but they know he’s a fan and leave their stuff with him.

When they did Alien Resurrection they came back to him so they could grab the queen (from Aliens) to use apparently. I think they painted it with brown to keep it with the colour scheme of the film (but they might have made something new based on the puppet.)

[ChrisM]

Agh! James beat me!

And more detailed too. My “What was that?” comment at the start was because his post was blank when I started writing mine.

[James]

I had the “>” the wrong way round, everything went blank for a second, I was in the edit. Your description of the Bob Burns featurette is very good, well worth a watch.

[Andrew]

I bought the Alien set the day it came out. It was a really exciting release…and yet here we are, years later, and I STILL haven’t watched the (Not Really A) Director’s Cut of Alien.

Everything else, just not that. Which just seems ridiculous.

Thanks, John, for the link, BTW – it’s nice to have that explained in more detail than the “Um, because you just can’t, okay?!” answer I used to give…

[Ian Symes]

Don’t bother, Andrew – it’s not even remotely close to being as good as the theatrical release.

[ChrisM]

‘Not remotely close’ apart from being almost the same?

The ‘Director’s Cut’ is worth a watch Andrew. Without spoiling anything, it does cover a couple of plot points in the original (I say ‘points’ cos they’re too minor to be holes really) but the theatrical release is better paced I think*. And it fits better with the sequels.

*I’m thinking of an extra scene here which is very interesting as a deleted scene but was removed for pacing reasons in the first place.

[Ian Symes]

The directors cut removes things from the theatrical release. It lacks the atmosphere as a result. As you say, Chris, the changes are minimal, but they’re key.

[JohnnyW]

John: The answer is in the post you linked to…

“But while this kind of interleaving is easy in a book, it’s very difficult in a DVD – especially in non-ideal, real-life situations where version 2 is never exactly twice the length of version 1. I once deconstructed a seamlessly-branched DVD and it was *very* complicated. So complicated, that while “angles” is a standard part of every professional DVD authoring application, seamless branching is not: it’s a part of the spec, but very esoteric and needs very specialised software to implement it.”

[John Hoare]

Erm, yes, that’s why I posted it in the first place!

[thomasaevans]

IS there branching on the quadrilogy set? Where?

[ChrisM]

>IS there branching on the quadrilogy set? Where?

There are 2 versions of each film in the set. They use branching to keep the 2 films on the 1 disk.

Is that what you meant?

There ARE 2 disks per film, (and a 9th at the end described above) but the second is purely extra stuff (documentaries etc.)

[Author]

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