Sizzle 0.5b2

[bullitB]

http://thegoods.ath.cx/~hmason/sizzle/

Fixes a lot of stuff, has a lot of stuff, is faster than before...a recommended update.

[galactica]

Great!
Ill give her a go and report back to you

[bilestyle]

so is that sarcasm about NO ONE requesting the scratch feature sarcasm or anger towards a barrage of emails? i know i could never use sizzle due to this problem b/c i never have more than 1-2 gigs free on my boot drive. (which is funny since i have 500 gigs total..)

[AntnyMD]

I was never able to try out Sizzle fully because of the scratch disk "feature." ... Perhaps I'll now see what the good word is.

[galactica]

whats this "scratch disk" you all are talking about??

[tgpo]

whats this "scratch disk" you all are talking about??

Under the preferences. It is the temp area where Sizzle processes the files.

[galactica]

ohhhh well i know that. but whats the deal with it?! causing problems?!?

[bilestyle]

b4 this version you didnt have the option of where to save scratch files.. it saved to /tmp which is on your os boot drive, and if your os boot drive doesnt have alot of free space (about double what you need for the dvd) then you couldnt use sizzle at all.

[FCPguy]

Glad that they fixed that (it makes a lot of sence). What I would like to know, is why is sizzle mentioned here so much (I backup most of my stuff using the (galactica method- MTR (or DVDbackup) then if need to compress: DVD2OneX- then toast.) It works perfect.
1. I was wondering if sizzle is different than toast... cause it makes a menu? (I use DVDSP a bit so I have access to a menu (maker))
2. Would you guys suggest sticking w/ DVDSP2? (wait is this all about when you only want certain chapters? (Like putting some simpsons and family guys on one dvd? for example)? (I would use DVDSP for that now)
3. thanks for not getting pissed that I'm new to some of this stuff Peace

[galactica]

i would not suggest going from dvdsp to sizzle. Sizzle is a free and very very simple but wonderful dvd authoring app. it in no way compares to dvdsp.



i have a 180 gig drive with over 100 gigs free. Guess thats why i never noticed the problem

[llee782]

Very glad to see the continued work on Sizzle, bullitB! It's a very integral part of my tutorial for getting more than 90 minutes of video into an iDVD disk, which, which by the way, works just as well to get more than 2 hours, provided you make logical changes to increase the size of the "half" project parts and reduce the size ot the resulting DVD image with something like DVD2ONE.

That scratch destination selection alone will make it worth the price of admission. Uh, er, I guess I mean more than twice the price of admission. Uh, that's not quite right either. Change it to "makes it worth much more than the price of admission!"

Keep up the good work!

[deadsierra]

so is that sarcasm about NO ONE requesting the scratch feature sarcasm or anger towards a barrage of emails? i know i could never use sizzle due to this problem b/c i never have more than 1-2 gigs free on my boot drive. (which is funny since i have 500 gigs total..)

I don't think anyone is going to make a smartass comment about that being an excessive collection of pornographic media. Thats kinda sad.

Speaking of which, I should try the new sizzle out. I hope he adds snapping guide markers soon.

[bullitB]

Yeah, it was sarcasm. Everyone and their dog apparently felt the need to remind me I left that feature out. Sorry guys. 8)

[bilestyle]

I don't think anyone is going to make a smartass comment about that being an excessive collection of pornographic media. Thats kinda sad.

Speaking of which, I should try the new sizzle out. I hope he adds snapping guide markers soon.

sorry to disappoint you deadsierra but thats not what it is at all... i have the entire simpsons collection, south park collection, futurama, family guy, invader zim.... mostly mpeg-2, it adds up, i also have almost all the audio cds i own (1000+) backed up onto my computer as well...you think 500 gigs is alot?? pfffft i know people who have archives that go past the 6 terrabyte mark.. just because you are a mass hoarder of porn doesnt mean we all are

[deadsierra]

I don't think anyone is going to make a smartass comment about that being an excessive collection of pornographic media. Thats kinda sad.

Speaking of which, I should try the new sizzle out. I hope he adds snapping guide markers soon.

sorry to disappoint you deadsierra but thats not what it is at all... i have the entire simpsons collection, south park collection, futurama, family guy, invader zim.... mostly mpeg-2, it adds up, i also have almost all the audio cds i own (1000+) backed up onto my computer as well...you think 500 gigs is alot?? pfffft i know people who have archives that go past the 6 terrabyte mark.. just because you are a mass hoarder of porn doesnt mean we all are

Actually, I don't even have the hard drive space to be a mass hoarder of anything. Apparently laptop drives above 80GB are rare, or something. I plan on getting a G5 with dual 250s sometime though, and maybe then I can start hoarding things. I could rip DVDs and connect the G5 up to my TV, and have them playback at will. Thats a good idea actually. Hrm.

[llee782]

.5.0b2 won't accept my mp2 files for audio. I get the immediate format error after selecting the file. Previous version (.5.0b1) processes the same file no problem. Anyone else?

[macbos]

Same prob. here, can't choose mp2, when i use an muxed .mpg it works fine, but when i wanna ad sub, i end up with a video_ts folder thats about 700k ????, never got sizzle to work.

[sqkurt]

.5.0b2 won't accept my mp2 files for audio. I get the immediate format error after selecting the file. Previous version (.5.0b1) processes the same file no problem. Anyone else?

ME TOO !!

[thoughton]

To the two posters above: I'm pretty sure it says in the help that it will only accept ac3 sound (although I too remember using mp2 sound in sizzle 0.1 ...)

On a different subject: does anyone know if it is still possible to make a menu-less DVD (a la Sizzle 0.1) with this new version? I mean a DVD you can stick into a set-top player and it will start the movie immediately (no menu, no clicking). I can't for the life of me figure out how to do it, I've authored about 5 broken DVD's so far Luckily I haven't burnt any of them...

[llee782]

From Sizzle help:
AC3, MPEG Layer-II, or Linear PCM

MPEG layer-II = .mp2

Worked fine in b1. Help hasn't changed on that topic since b1.

I would also like to know of a way to convert the PCM data extracted from an iDVD burned DVD to the linear PCM that Sizzle will accept. I already know how to convert it to mp2, which b1 will accept (not b2, apparently).

From Sizzle help:
Make sure that you don't forget to have a button for a title in the TOC. This will make the title impossible to access.

I guess "impossible to access" means "impossible to access".

I think there may be a control on standalone DVD players to work around that, but I'm not sure about Apple DVD player.

If you can get by without menus at all, then version .1 should accomplish it. If you need both, then I don't know.

[thoughton]

My apologies for the ac3 mistake. I thought I had seen something to that effect in the help. Evidently I was mistaken. PS 0.5b2 accepts my ac3 files, perhaps you can convert your iDVD sound to that?

MPEG layer-II = .mp2

Thanks for that. If you hadn't pointed that out I would have never guessed what mp2 stood for.

From Sizzle help:
Make sure that you don't forget to have a button for a title in the TOC. This will make the title impossible to access.

I guess "impossible to access" means "impossible to access".

Yes. I was able to read that as well. I merely assumed that the functionality from 0.1 would still be present in 0.5, foolish me. In DVDSP (where you also must have a button in the TOC) you can achieve an menuless movie by setting the firstplay tag. Sizzle 0.1 did it automatically. Sizzle 0.5 seems unable to, which you apparently don't find strange at all.

[llee782]

You may be just the person I need to talk to, then. I'm able to take PCM audio out of a VOB and turn in into aiff with a52decX. From there I've been able to take it anywhere except to an AC3 file that Sizzle or anything else will read. FFMpeg says it turned my aiff into an AC3, but Sizzle sure won't read it. How do you create an AC3 on a Mac from aiff, mp3, or wav? Thanks.

[thoughton]

Hrmmm ... ac3s which I've created using ffmpegx work for me. I've tried both movieaudio->ac3 and audiofile->ac3 and both were accepted by Sizzle 0.50b. Sizzle does seem to check the sampling, it'll complain if it's 44.1 but will let you use it anyway (most DVD players should be fine with that). I don't know if Sizzle has any preferences regarding bitrate.

Do you have A.pack?

[llee782]

Do you have A.pack?

No. I'll use your information to try again with FFMpegX. Thanks.

[sqkurt]

Hrmmm ... ac3s which I've created using ffmpegx work for me. I've tried both movieaudio->ac3 and audiofile->ac3 and both were accepted by Sizzle 0.50b. Sizzle does seem to check the sampling, it'll complain if it's 44.1 but will let you use it anyway (most DVD players should be fine with that). I don't know if Sizzle has any preferences regarding bitrate.

Do you have A.pack?

hi,

my results with ac3 sound files created with ffmpegX 0.0.9d are the following (MacOS 10.3.3)

sizzle 0.5b1 works
sizzle 0.5b2 DOES NOT ACCEPT IT
toast 6.0.3 work

sizzle 0.5b2 does neither accept mp2 nor ac3 files that 0.5b1 or other prgramms accept !!!

regards

sq

[thoughton]

Just to clarify, I made a typo earlier. The version of Sizzle I was using is 0.5b2 (not 0.50b as I said earlier). I'm afraid I don't know why it doesn't like your ac3.

Hmm, are you decoding with mplayer or quicktime in ffmpegx? I don't know if it makes a difference, but I've been using quicktime in ffmpegx and have the insanity ac3 QTcomponent installed...

Sorry this wasn't more help.

[llee782]

I've been using quicktime in ffmpegx and have the insanity ac3 QTcomponent installed...

Where does this ac3 QTcomponent come from?

[thoughton]

Sorry I meant to link that, here you go: http://www.insaneness.com/ac3.html

[DVmadman]

On a different subject: does anyone know if it is still possible to make a menu-less DVD (a la Sizzle 0.1) with this new version? I mean a DVD you can stick into a set-top player and it will start the movie immediately (no menu, no clicking). I can't for the life of me figure out how to do it, I've authored about 5 broken DVD's so far Luckily I haven't burnt any of them...

I too would like to be able to do this. I don't want to have to push a bunch of buttons. I want my media to play when inserted and have the chapter button skip to the next "title" just as it did with version 0.1. But I would like to use version 0.5 to take advantage of the Save Document feature. Is this possible?

[llee782]

I want my media to play when inserted and have the chapter button skip to the next "title" just as it did with version 0.1. But I would like to use version 0.5 to take advantage of the Save Document feature. Is this possible?

I don't think so. But what's worse for me is that I can't make an .mp2 file that Sizzle .5b2 will accept, and now I've discovered that even a perfectly good .ac3 file won't be accepted if it's too small (mine was 2.9 megs, for the menu background music).