The Lord of the Rings (Score Edition) - Part 1 of 6

I love the music for the Lord of the Rings, but when I listen to the music, I often remember that it was written for specific imagery, and I do believe the music is married to those images, so I wanted to be able to enjoy both at once. But the Special Extended Edition DVDs don't allow you to choose an audio track where you can listen to the score only. So that's where I felt I could do something... Let me set one thing straight beforehand: this DVD is for everyone who loves the music of the Lord of the Rings. It's not be sold, but only to be shared freely. It's a project by a passionate fan for other fans, and not at all for the financial benefit of anyone! What I did was this: I took the SEE DVD of each movie and ripped the data stream to my harddrive, seperating audio and video stream. I was only going to work on the audio, the video would remain untouched apart from reducing the size of the stream so that the content would fit on a standard DVD. I don't think any loss in picture quality is visible. What I wanted to create was a version of the film that highlights the score. Thankfully we have the "Complete Recordings" of all three movies on CD by now. So basically I ripped the audio file of a whole DVD into a wave file, synchronized all the relevant tracks from the "Complete Recordings" with that huge file, and then cut out large sections of the original movie audio and did crossfades, so that any movie audio, which included score (4/5 of the movie!), would be replaced by the pure score recordings, meaning all sound effects, dialogue etc would not be heard. The music would come to the fore and would not be obstructed by anything else. For those sections that didn't have any score underneath, I simply used the movie audio, as silence during a fifth of the palying time would have been dull. That's what I did for the whole bloody thing. There'll be 6 DVDs, this is the seed of the first. These DVDs are in NTSC, as I took the NTSC SEE DVDs as the source. Why not PAL? Because the images are sped up in the PAL editions, so that you cannot synchronize the "Complete Recordings" with it! Yes, the PAL versions of the movie basically play too fast, and quite a bit too fast! But that's not a LOTR-specific problem. Small sidenote: working on this I noticed that the sound guys sometimes had a bit of fun with the recordings they were given. There are bits where they stretch notes to hold over a particular image, or they loop a bit of music so that it plays longer. I guess this was done because the movie was still being re-edited when the music was already finished. I tried my best to recreate what they did using the undoctored recordings, which were all I had. The only spot where it didn't work is Bilbo's narration about the Shire at the beginning, where I "flow in" the original movie audio (and a bit of narration) to close the gap where the sound guys had stretched the music. This project involved a lot of time and work (and still does, as the final 3 DVDs are not finished yet), and any feedback would be appreciated. I tried my best to do halfway decent menus etc with DVD-lab PRO, but I'm not a professional at DVD authoring, so please don't judge too hard. I scrapped the chapter division of the original DVD and used my own concept, which has bigger chapters and is connected to the musical structure. There are also subtitles (and their translations) for the sung passages in Elvish etc. I did my best with that, but there may be mistakes. Shore often only took bits and pieces, sometimes just syllables, not whole words from the texts he worked with, so chants like those of the Ringwraiths were a bit tricky. Consider it a bonus. Praise to the Lord of the Score, the incredible Howard Shore! - Michael PS: it'll probably take a while until the first people have the full thing, since my upload ratio is 40kb maximum. But I think the wait is worth it for those who are obsessed as much by this wonderful music as I am. Once other people have the full thing and keep seeding (please do!), then the download should go a lot faster.

udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80
udp://open.demonii.com:1337
udp://tracker.coppersurfer.tk:6969
udp://exodus.desync.com:6969

artificer (2008-06-24)

Michael,
Large amounts of kudos to you for what was clearly a labour of love. I too love the musical score to these films and I am really looking forward to hearing and seeing what you have achieved.
Very many thanks.
Dave

Wonsaponatime (2008-06-26)

Thanks, Dave!
Would be great if the people who finished downloading it and have watched it could leave some feedback.
And if anyone spots a error, please let me know that as well!

Wonsaponatime (2008-07-04)

Please keep seeding! This site doesn't have a share ratio, but please, if it's just two people it will go damn slow for anyone who jumps on.
And leave comments if you liked it. :)

artificer (2008-07-18)

Michael,
I haven't had chance to watch yet (been away on business). Am seeding now as well. Can't believe lack of interest. What about cross posting into music section under Howard Shore? I'm sure you would get more interest.
Dave

Wonsaponatime (2008-07-19)

Thanks for helping to seed, Dave! Yeah, this seems to be a slow burner. Constantly people downloading, but never many at once. And sadly most who finish don't keep seeding...
This cross-posting you suggested doesn't quite work. When I try to upload the torrent again in "Music", it tells me that the torrent already exists in the system.
If you know another way how to make it work, please let me know. Maybe it would indeed get more recognition in that section.

Wonsaponatime (2008-08-21)

Oh btw, if anyone wants to be notified when the following torrents go up, you can send me a mail at [email protected]

EradanIngolemo (2008-08-24)

How aboot just turning down audio of the flick and listening to the Complete Recordings at same time? Thus one can download only a gigabyte instead of 20. Worth trying.

Wonsaponatime (2008-08-28)

Well, if you're not keen on having movie and score in sync, then yeah, you can put in your DVD, turn the sound down and let the CDs play. But it would never match the scenes.
I wanted the score to be precisely where Mr. Shore wanted it. There's a lot of detail in the music that enhances specific moments. And that only works when it's in sync.

manolo002 (2009-01-08)

This is a really nteresting project. I have a couple of questions. You have The Complete Recordings, right? I assume the Recordings ollow the sequence of th film, right? I'm new to this. The page says there are 12 files here. Your title says LOTR Part 1 of 6. If I download this, am I getting the whole LOTR trilogy? Just the Fellowship of the Ring? Once I download these files, can they played from the hard drive or do they have to be recorded to DVD?