Freeman's Mind Conglomerated - PROJECT

[Box Tactics]

Hey! I have a vision for a sort of fan-recut of the Freeman's Mind series. It's somewhat akin to the "Freeman's Mind Movie"-type ideas that get posted around here, but I have more specific ideas on how to bring it about. Unfortunately, my computer is a colossal pile of shit, which has become slowly less able to play video games over its lifespan, let alone film them. However, I figure that I might be able to bring about this vision, nonetheless, through the magic of organization. My Freeman's Mind recut, designed to turn the entire series into one conglomerated thing-to-watch, entails the following steps:

1.Remove all introductory sequences and credits sequences from the series. Keep Freeman's thoughts over the credits sequences; just delete the video aspect of it.

2.Produce a new single introductory sequence and a new single credits sequence. The credits sequence in episode 68 might fit the latter? I'm not certain. If not, though, I'm sure we could just add some credits to it to cover those gaps.

3.Where appropriate, film new footage in Half-Life: Source, to smooth the transitions between episodes. This is the hard part, as the new footage, while generally brief, necessarily needs to start identically to where the one episode ends, and end identically to where the other episode starts; we will generally cut off the original footage early, as well, due to fade-outs. Keep in mind background audio during these transitions. Episodes that are separated by teleportation or unconsciousness are freebies; no new footage needs to be filmed!

 

And there you have it! It might be a long and tedious process, but every time a transition between episodes is completed, we'll have advanced. Ignoring the three special episodes, we have 68 episodes and therefore 67 transitions. A considerable number of those transitions are teleportation or unconsciousness; nearly all of the Xen episodes, for example. I think that if enough other people are interested in this we could get it done.

[Artlav]

I tried doing something like that...

Quit around episode 16, when the long list of problems culminated with a sound offset needing a full restart.

Then again, my video editing is normally limited to setting the frame rate and picking the right music.

 

It might actually be easier for Ross to do it - he have all the source files, and without the need to produce the sound track it should be a simple, automatic process.

He might even do something like that anyway - the episodes are in a mess of quality levels, resolutions and encodings. If he is going to recode them all, then making the marathon video is going to be a side effect.

 

Then again, how often would you like to watch all of FM in one go?

[Box Tactics]

Then again, how often would you like to watch all of FM in one go?

Maybe annually.

 

I seriously doubt Ross is going to do something like this; it's just not that important and it clearly requires a lot of extra work. I'm not sure if he even still has the files. But that's where motivated fans come in. New footage would absolutely have to be recorded in-game to account for the gaps, if you wanted to do it seriously.

[Artlav]

He said he still have all the files.

 

Problem is, the episodes vary in resolution, brightness and quality - to get a consistent movie would require re-recording them.

[Box Tactics]

The example I'm most aware of is the FOV change in the midst of the Uplink episodes, but I figure it should be pretty easy to patch that up with a video transition.

[ThatGuyWhoMakesThoseThings]

He said he still have all the files.

 

He has all the original video files and isolated voice tracks, but he didn't keep the demo files of the earlier episodes.

 

Q: Will you be updating all the old episodes to HD?

A: Unfortunately, no. I no longer have the old demos and project files necessary to do so. I never would have gotten rid of them if I expected FM to be as popular as it became.

(Source)

 

Also, episodes 1—16 are all in 4:3, so the aspect ratio change come episode 17 would be pretty jarring. Unless you're thinking of cropping all the widescreen episodes, but at that point I'd rather just watch the original videos.

[doggie015]

If you were to compile all of the episodes together it would be way too large to download and would use too much bandwidth to stream. It would need to be released on physical media

[BTGBullseye]

If you were to compile all of the episodes together it would be way too large to download and would use too much bandwidth to stream. It would need to be released on physical media

You apparently don't know much about torrenting. It really doesn't matter how big it is, as long as you have enough HDD space, and are willing to wait for the download to finish. (even if it takes a few months, with lots of breaks in-between downloading sessions)

[Nex]

If you were to compile all of the episodes together it would be way too large to download and would use too much bandwidth to stream. It would need to be released on physical media

You apparently don't know much about torrenting. It really doesn't matter how big it is, as long as you have enough HDD space, and are willing to wait for the download to finish. (even if it takes a few months, with lots of breaks in-between downloading sessions)

Fun fact; there's a torrent of Touhou music readily available that's so large, it breaks uTorrent because it's over 2TB.

[BTGBullseye]

That's µTorrent, not every torrent program out there. (I know it can't break Tixati for example)

[throttledan]

I remember a number of years ago someone did this for Episodes 1-31 and it was reduced in size to low resolution, and it took about 500 MB, but I used to watch the crap out of that file. Great for airports and road trips. I downloaded a bunch of the full versions but had a hard time getting a playlist working. I would love a full version of the full movie in all its glory.

[BTGBullseye]

I remember a number of years ago someone did this for Episodes 1-31 and it was reduced in size to low resolution, and it took about 500 MB, but I used to watch the crap out of that file. Great for airports and road trips. I downloaded a bunch of the full versions but had a hard time getting a playlist working. I would love a full version of the full movie in all its glory.

It was 1-28... I made it for my little MP4 player. I am still planning on making a newer version as 5 episode blocks at a lower bitrate for those low on space, it just takes time, and the full video files.

[Cranial Toxicity]

I don't think there would be any way to distribute this digitally without formatting it in a way that would degrade the quality. And as ThatGuyWhoMakesThoseThings said, at a certain point, it'd just become easier to watch the series via YouTube playlist, as I sometimes opt for. By physical distribution, of course -- but that would be pretty impractical as far as Fan Projects go.

 

It's a neat idea, but it'd be a ridiculously large file.

[danielsangeo]

It is possible to fit all of Freeman's Mind onto a single Blu Ray disc with reduced definition, or higher definition with multiple discs. The biggest problem, I see, is that physical distribution of such things is probably illegal due to the fact that it is essentially just a play through of Half-Life with commentary. Valve might take issue with this.

[BTGBullseye]

It is possible to fit all of Freeman's Mind onto a single Blu Ray disc with reduced definition, or higher definition with multiple discs. The biggest problem, I see, is that physical distribution of such things is probably illegal due to the fact that it is essentially just a play through of Half-Life with commentary. Valve might take issue with this.

Actually, depends on the size of the Blu-ray disk... I can likely fit all episodes on one disc with minimal quality difference at full resolution.