The Official LOTR: FOTR - Extended DVD Specs (1 Viewer)

[Randall Dorr]

So if this release has thirty hours (and the theatrical version has five and a half hours), and TTT and ROTK follow the same release pattern (two disc theatrical version and four disc extended version), when it's all said and done, there should be eighteen discs with over a hundred hours of programming and supplements.

Has there been any dvd that had seven or more totally different audio tracks?

Fight Club has seven tracks.

 

[Sean Moon]

Seven Platinum Series
Dolby EX
DTS ES
Dolby Stereo
Three Commentaries
Isolated 5.1 Score with Commentary

7 audio tracks, Two Hour and 7 minutes film, reference quality picture and sound. All this was done 2 years ago. Fight Club as well. Both are reference discs that make lots of stuff coming out today look bad.

I think New Line is too smart to mess up the picture quality on this release if people are worried. I am not. If they can cram all those audio tracks and reference picture on a longer movie(for one disc) two years ago then I totally believe they can do it now.

Also, the original Fifth Element is considered reference quality, and that was only a single layer! Same with Dark City, another single layer film, and NEW LINE to boot!

 

[Dan Hitchman]

It is a remixed DTS-ES Discrete 6.1 track.

Dan

 

[oscar_merkx]

just saw the specs for all 4 discs
wow
can't wait for nov 12 to come around

 

[Simon Young]

Oh. My. God.
The only niggle I had with the specs for the 4-disc set was that it had no isolated score. I hoped that, perhaps, one of the commentaries would have snatches of isolated music, a la Se7en. But an isolated score, in 5.1? AND an isolated effects track? It sounds too good to be true!
For me, isolated scores are one of the best things about DVD. It will be great to be able to hear every bit of music composed for the movie, including half an hour of completely new music! In 5.1, no less! Also, I've never seen a feature-length isolated effects track on a live-action movie. That'll be great.
Also, as someone who has great fun making trailers, this set will be perfect material. Once I've ripped the MPEG-2 files, I can grab the dialogue from the center channel of the Dolby Digital 5.1 track, and the effects and music from their own respective tracks. Load them all into Final Cut Pro, and....voila!
Can't wait, seriously can't wait.....

 

[ChrisLee]

Cool.
So do we know if the 2nd movie disc starts imediately or begin with a menu screen?

 

[Aaryn Chan]

This is collector's edition. I think there won't be any frenchie things. Btw, i refrained from buying some dvds just because of the french cover.
Order the set now!

 

[Bingo]

The web master at this Canadian DVD site posted the following a while back:

(August 20th 2002) Well it looks like Lord of The Rings: Extended Edition will have a French track after all. Considering the box set, it's hard to imaging how this will be modified to make a bilingual cover (ugh). Now, nothing concrete has been said from Alliance on this yet. I'm still waiting on their reply on the matter. Hopefully nothing will be added to something this big and only a sticker on the wrapping will be added. I'll keep you all posted on that matter when an answer comes my way.

I emailed him this morning to see if he has received any word from Alliance.
Everyone from Canada cross your fingers.....otherwise, I can see A LOT of cross border shopping happening!

 

[Brian Kidd]

Peter Jackson is the HT Geek to end all HT Geeks. His FRIGHTENERS LD box still stands as my favorite set. The FOUR HOUR documentary is a must-see for all fans of PJ.

 

[DonRoeber]

So the movie is going to have an additional 30 minutes added. Is all of that 30 minutes going to be extended scenes, or is that time being taken up by the extra extended credits (the ones that list the fan club charter members names)?

Either way, fantastic set. I'm only upset because I can't have my copy until Christmas.

 

[Sean Moon]

Disc two will more than likely start with a menu, so that you can select the sound format of your choosing. Unless the disc has a way of telling the player to remember, then booting without asking.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Interesting, am I correct that the bit budget will be something like this:

English Dolby Digital 5.1 EX - [448 kbps]
English DTS 6.1 ES - [768 kpps]
Isolated 5.1 Sound Effects Mix - [448 kbps]
Isolated 5.1 Music Track - [448 kbps]
Commentaries - [192 kbps * 4]
This leaves 7360 kbps for the MPEG video track... Hope it's enough!

Exactly my concern. I'm not worried about average bit-rate...there's more than enough room for that. What I'm worried about is *peak* bit-rate...will the image have enough bit-rate for difficult scenes that require a peak or burst of bit-rate to avoid compression artifacts???

I really hope the image looks at LEAST as good as the current disc. I've seem some DTS discs that look "softented" to minimize the compression needed to encode them (Apollo 13). And I certainly don't want the same video detail only with visible compression artifacting!

I want a Super-Bit LOTR SE!!!

-dave

 

[Sean Moon]

I still think it will be enough. Bitrate is only as good as the compressionist. Like my examples before, some of the best looking discs out there dont reach very high bitrates a lot, like Fifth Element.

Also, didnt New Line say they would only include the DTSES track if it didnt compromise picture quality?

 

[DaViD Boulet]

That would be good. I would gladly give up a music-only track or DD 5.1 score to keep that DTS if P.Q. requires it.

-dave

 

[Sean Moon]

I for one would not scarifice the 5.1 score to get DTS. I am all for DTS tracks, love em to death. But the original DD EX track was so unbelievable I could live with it again if that meant an isolated score. This is one film begging for a 5.1 score!

 

[Jeremy Allin]

Everyone from Canada cross your fingers.....otherwise, I can see A LOT of cross border shopping happening!

I can tell you right now, that if even ONE thing is changed on the Canadian version (packaging or disc contents) I won't hesitate to pick up the US version.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Exactly my concern. I'm not worried about average bit-rate...there's more than enough room for that. What I'm worried about is *peak* bit-rate...will the image have enough bit-rate for difficult scenes that require a peak or burst of bit-rate to avoid compression artifacts???
I really hope the image looks at LEAST as good as the current disc. I've seem some DTS discs that look "softented" to minimize the compression needed to encode them (Apollo 13). And I certainly don't want the same video detail only with visible compression artifacting!

David,
I did the math.
The current disc peaks at about 8.5Mbps, of which about 7.85Mbps is available to video.
Even if the new disc uses 384k for the isolated tracks, and peaks at the full 9.8Mb/s, only about 7.11Mb/s would be available to video. My math may have a little rounding error, but it's pretty close.
The new release will have at least around 10% less peak bitrate available to video. Average bitrate may be notably higher than the 5.34Mb/s of the current release, but it is entire possible that extremely detailed scenes, action scenes, water, or fog/smoke could suffer in the new release. This could mean visible compression artifacts, but would more likely mean that detail will be filtered out before encoding.
Frankly, I'd buy a "superbit" type release of these films (2 discs, no more than 2 soundtracks) in a heartbeat.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

208 minute Extended Cut
Anamorphic Widescreen (Aspect Ratio 2.35:1)
English Dolby Digital 5.1 EX
English DTS 6.1 ES
Isolated 5.1 Sound Effects Mix
Isolated 5.1 Music Track
Commentary Track One with the director and writers (Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens
Commentary Track Two with members of the design team (Grant Major, Ngila Dickson, Richard Taylor, Alan Lee, John Howe, Dan Hennah, Chris Hennah and Tania Rodger)
Commentary Track Three with members of the production and post-production team (Barrie Osborne, Mark Ordesky, Andrew Lesnie, John Gilbert, Rick Porras, Howard Shore, Jim Rygiel, Ethan Van der Ryn, Mike Hopkins, Randy Cook, Christian Rivers, Brian Van't Hull, Alex Funke)
Commentary Track Four with members of the cast (Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Sean Astin, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee and Sean Bean)
Disc Three - The Appendices Part I: From Book to Vision
J.R.R. Tolkien-Creator of Middle-earth featurette.
From Book to Script featurette.
Visualizing the Story section featuring Storyboards and Pre-viz featurette.
Designing and Building Middle-earth section featurette.
Designing Middle-earth featurette.
Costume Design featurette.
Weta Workshop featurette, design galleries including The Enemy, The Last Alliance, Isengard, The Fellowship, Rivendell and Lothlorien.
Interactive Middle-earth Atlas with timeline.
New Zealand as Middle-earth intertactive map with video.
Disc introduction with director Peter Jackson.
Disc 4 - The Appendices Part II: From Vision to Reality
Filming section featuring a production photo gallery and the The Fellowship of the Cast featurette.
A Day in the Life of a Hobbit featurette, Cameras in Middle-earth featuette.
Visual Effects section and featuette.
Post-Production section featuring Editorial featuette and a multi-angle presentation.
Digital Grading featuette.
Sound and Music featuette and Sound Design Demo.
The Soundscapes of Middle-earth featurette.
Music for Middle-earth featurette.
The Road Goes Ever On featuette.
Disc introduction with director Peter Jackson.

Whaaaaaaaat?!?!?
That's it???!?!???

Chuck

 

[Sean Moon]

Yeah...to bad they couldnt put more features on the disc Would have liked a function where the disc removes itself from the HUB and puts itself in the DVD player and plays, that is a SPECIAL feature!

 

[BarryS]

Wow. I'm really looking forward to this one. I've only seen the theatrical cut 3 times so far and now the extended cut is a month away from release. I'm really happy that all of the features on the 4-disc are exclusive. It would really suck to have the features from the 2-disc showing up there as well. I hope the picture and sound are as good as the 2-disc, which was itself glorious. Coming from New Line, I know it will be good.