xREL.v3

RELEASE iNFO

RUNTIME.......: ~100m x 2 episodes + ~70m x 7 episodes
SIZE..........: 64.7 GiB + 7.7 GiB extras
VIDEO CODEC...: x264, L4.1
FRAMERATE.....: 23.976 fps
BITRATE.......: Variable / CRF 19
RESOLUTION....: 1030x720 (1.43:1)
AUDIO.........: English DD 5.1 @ 640Kbps
AUDIO.2.......: English Vorbis (-q3) Commentary
SUBTITLES.....: English / English (SDH)
SOURCE........: US Retail Blu-Ray
GENRE.........: Documentary / History / War
IMDb RATING...: 9.5/10
IMDb LINK.....: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098769/

RELEASE DATE..: November 2015

NOTES

Source levels were adjusted to expand dynamic range.

Commentary tracks included on all episodes but do not run the
entire episode length. Use a player that supports mkv editions
and choose the 'Commentary Only' edition to play only the parts
with commentary.

The extra "Making 'The Civil War' 25 Years Later" is encoded VFR
as it contains a mix of film and video content. You must use a
VFR compatible player to view it properly.

Enjoy!

GREETS

ESiR, CtrlHD, EbP, NTb, MMI, IDE, FTO, TayTO
and a.b.hdtv

Encoder's notes
The HD remaster was done at 4k, but there's only so much you can do with 16mm.  It took lots of
bitrate to keep these looking good, and they still have that kind of furry look from all the grain.
A 1080p encode would likely need to be larger than the source to look good, so I'll only be doing a
720p.

The levels on this source were somewhat clamped, so I used levels() to stretch the dynamic range
back out.  Even so, the backgrounds on the title screens and credits are dark grey rather than
black.  I stretched the levels out as far as I could without crushing blacks or blowing out whites
in other areas of the film.

All 9 episodes have commentary tracks, but the commentary doesn't run the entire length of the
episodes.  I used ordered chapters to create a second edition called 'Commentary Only' in each mkv
that will play just the sections that have commentary.  You'll have to use a matroska
splitter/player that is capable of switching editions to be able to take advantage of that.
Otherwise, there are long gaps of silence in the audio track and audio cues telling you when each
commentary section is over.

I also included most of the extras from the Blu-ray set.  The complete Shelby Foote interviews are
just raw scans of the film with no cleanup done on them.  I encoded those as is, with no attempt to
correct for the frame jumping around.  As as result, there are black borders in parts of the
encodes.  I cropped to the max area used, so even if part of the video has black borders, there's
some part of the video that fills them in.  The raw look really goes with the interviews anyway.

The extra "Making 'The Civil War': 25 Years Later" is encoded VFR as it has a mix of film and video
content.

I excluded two of the HD extras. "'The Civil War' in the Classroom" was just plain dumb.  You'll
thank me for saving you this displeasure of watching that. "Remembering 'The Civil War'" is just a
shorter version of "Making 'The Civil War': 25 Years Later" but with upscaled scenes from the films,
so I left it out in favor of the new one.  And of course I left out the extras that were completely
upscaled.[/hide]