forty-two is dead :)

[KaiCherry]

Please stop sending me email about forty-two.

Its dead. Its over. We are thru with it.

It has been replaced with forty-two v1.0

We will begin beta testing within the next 42 hours. The beta will only be open to our loyal $upporters, who believed in our vision, and had the faith, and the forsight to see where we were going.

forty-two v1.0 has a completely redesigned UI, inspired by the *excellent* work of Mr. Darrin Filer, who showed us there was a better way.

Thank You Darren!

forty-two no longer uses the term. We have implemented our threaded slave app, threadSlave to control the engines and status updates. It has been re-coded, along with the core engines, not to suck up too much cpu from the encoders.

The status now lets you know how much you've done, and whats left to do (for mpeg) or how many minutes of video have been transcoded (for divx).

1 click install, via standard Mac OS X installer package, and a script on the dmg to help you assemble the support binaries we can't just quite hand out. 1 click, no term no nothing...takes seconds.

Oh yeah.

Sean Perkins...this is for you. You pretty much made it happen. Yours was the very first donation we received...way more than we would have asked.

You pretty much drove me to make it worth it Look for an email soon.

Check our site for updated progress and feature info...it should be there now, if not soon.

-K

[elreeko]

Man, I can't believe people are giving you guys such a hard time. Geez people, give it a break! Kai, Bile and company have been working there asses off. Be happy that 42 even exist!

I am just so damned happy to have an app that rips dvd > svcd/vcd/divx without problems. Went back and ripped a lot of the disks that gave me so much trouble before (just because I CAN - thats the word folks, thanks to these guys we CAN NOW DO THIS - the windows world is no longer ahead).

Can't wait to try out the new version (not that I have had any real trouble with the old version - the new non-terminal version sounds awesome). You will definitely get a donation from me in the near future (would have had one from me already, but we all know how personal finances can be)

[Flip Flop Frog]

We will begin beta testing within the next 42 hours. The beta will only be open to our loyal $upporters, who believed in our vision, and had the faith, and the forsight to see where we were going.

-K

Well, Kai, I doubted you at first, and I was wrong, what forty-two is and has been for me is nothing short of amazing.

What I am wondering is, the comment that you made above, does that mean any versions of forty-two from here forward are going to have to be purchased? no longer public? aka REQUIRE donation?

or is that just the beta?

I'm quite pleased with forty-two as it is, I can live with the terminal window. A threaded status window would be like icing on the cake.

Anyway Kai, thank you very much, and let me know.




-Flip

[KaiCherry]

What I am wondering is, the comment that you made above, does that mean any versions of forty-two from here forward are going to have to be purchased? no longer public? aka REQUIRE donation?

"REQUIREing" donation is extortion Of course not

Chris is working on our page that explains our philosophy; its a lot like NPR and Public TV:

"forty-two is made possible through the generous support of Users Like You."

None of us are working. Chris and B, are students, and I'm a casualty of the post 9/11 economy. So I know what its like for even a few dollars to be discretionary.

Our only hope is that while folks are sippin' those $5 coffees I used to enjoy (I looovvvee coffee. To me its almost as good as cash. Sad, but true. Starbucks owns me. Thank good for grocery stores. Sorry. Its early. I digress) and banging away on those spendy Macs we all love so much, that if forty-two saves you time, effort or in some way I guess, money, that you would appreciate it enough to support its development and improvement.

One of the early testers pointed out here that after I developed the logic for the engines, I made special versions that ran completely free of the gui. The GUI was basically done to help people get past the maddening frustration of using un-maclike software, waiting forever and getting results that would never, ever sync. And having to do things on their own that the software should have been doing in the first place.

Mac people know good stuff from bad stuff; that's why we use macs. They realize the value of things, and why good enough just *isn't* when it comes to computing.

Our hope, and mission, is to make forty-two that way. Believe me, there is weeping, moaning and gnashing of teeth going on when we have to bite the bullet and change things to make it better.

But we know its the right thing to do

-K

[rockinsage]

So Kai,

Sounds like you'd appreciate a donation in the form of Starbuck's gift certificates?

:: rockinsage ::

fellow Starbucks addictee

[KaiCherry]

So Kai,

Sounds like you'd appreciate a donation in the form of Starbuck's gift certificates?

:: rockinsage ::

fellow Starbucks addictee

Bwahahaha! Oh hell yeah! I'm not sure if Chris and B. would go for it but I ain't turnin' down Starbucks. When their a-sleepin' I'm a-bangin' away and there is nothin like some smooth french roast to keep you toasty in the wee hours.

Or for breakfast. Or Second Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, Snack, Afternoon Personal Coffee Clutch, Supper, Dinner...

-K

[kaneda006]

Kai & Co.
Wow. Wow. Wow. I have been 'on the scene' for the past 3 years, I went back to mac 6 months ago, and was saddened at the state of ripping/encoding on the mac. I applaud you and your crew for their efforts, thanks to you I ripped a 3.75 hour film, while importing/editing/exporting DV and all kinds of other stuff. I too am a student, and film school doesn't come cheap, but donations will definitely be coming your way. Could you post an email for paypal-ing?

Thanks,

jeremy

[Macnewbie]

So you'll be sending a link to the beta software to everyone you sent you a donation?

[KaiCherry]

So you'll be sending a link to the beta software to everyone you sent you a donation?

We will offer them the opportunity to participate in the beta. Its a bit more than "Grab this and go."

Thanks to the nature of the 'net, we can get immediate feedback test things, make changes dynamically, and discuss changes.

If someone is willing to actively participate, then that's who we are looking for.

The "first right of refusal" goes to those who have donated. The folks who tested the first release will tell ya...I hunt folks down for bug reports

-K

[CJ of FL]

"forty-two is made possible through the generous support of Users Like You."

I have $20 sitting in my Paypal account just burning a hole in my pocket. It's your's if you'll help me DVD>DVD-R. I've tried 42 as well as Osex/ffmpegx without results.

[akpslp]

thanks....you guys are doing all the work....it was the least i could do.....

s-

[WiseWeasel]

I have $20 sitting in my Paypal account just burning a hole in my pocket. It's your's if you'll help me DVD>DVD-R. I've tried 42 as well as Osex/ffmpegx without results.

With 42, were you able to encode the m2v stream (named biles.mpv in the temp folder)? How far did you get? If you got that, then you can extract the audio track separately, and combine them into a dvd using either DVD Studio Pro, or the free tool Sizzle.

[CJ of FL]

On Spiderman, no where. See my post here for the error...
http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=139681

I even tried The Big Hit even though it's just a single layer disc (I'm just looking for ANY kind of success). After a few hours it finished, but everything in the output folder was old and small (50mb or less). I had some larger files in the temp folder (1.3gb), but they were seemingly incomplete (about 1/2 the movie).

[rockinsage]

After a few hours it finished, but everything in the output folder was old and small (50mb or less). I had some larger files in the temp folder (1.3gb), but they were seemingly incomplete (about 1/2 the movie).

Yeah, the 'output' folder you select is actually a temp folder (it's used for temp files for creating the test clip), and the 'temp' folder you select is actually output folder (for the full encode of the DVD).

[mrbiiggy]

Are we going to get title/chapter selection? Or is it already implemented and I'm missing something?


Nice app, and thanks for all your hard work!

[AntnyMD]

I know that 42 is dead, and I shouldn't ask questions or bug the developers, so this is a question for everyone else -- I was using 42 to make a DivX, because I never got the SVCD functionality to work. I encoded a music video (Stone Temple Pilots "Plush" from the DVD-Audio of Core). I used the highest quality setting and was surprised to find the DivX file was larger than the original MPEG-2 file (DivX: 127mb; VOB: 107mb). Is that common and/or to be expected?

I also experienced a sync issue with this encode, in that the beginning of the video appeared slightly out of sync -- the middle totally in sync -- and the end slightly out of sync, but less so than the beginning. Does anyone else have access to this disc to test that out?

[fab98]

actually I do have it.. I'll test it with the new 42 v1 i have and reply back when its done. Guys, you are gonna love this new version! I can't believe how nice and easy everything is. Everything works amazingly well...

[fab98]

Ok.... Here is the report
size 119.3 mb's DivX qDVD setting
sync perfect! I looked very closely and didn't see anything off

(where did you see the non-sync, time wise? Maybe it was a player issue on your end?)

[AntnyMD]

One, are we surprised that the qDVD DivX setting yielded a final file size too close to the original MPEG2? -- question being that if the file sizes are roughly equal, what is the point of DivX?

Two, I suspected player issues in the two encodes I made of "Plush". On the highest setting in the original 42, I experienced the sync issues noted earlier, but I figured it was because DivX needs a lot of processor power to play back (is that still true? I remember that from my PC days). Going on that, I re-encoded "Plush" using the next lowest setting. Sync was better (not unfailingly perfect but acceptable -- I could say Weiland was being weird, or blame the director for purposely filming out of sync to the audio [which sometimes happens in music videos]) and the file size was remarkably small (50% smaller than the original).

Is the forthcoming 42 including recommendations of minimum system requirements including processor power, speed, configuration, etc? I'm rather impressed with the picture quality of these encodes (my PC DivX encodes sucked big time and I was always convinced it was something I skipped that caused bad quality) and would love to, say, cram an entire season of a TV drama onto 1 DVD-ROM in DivX.

[KaiCherry]

Hello, fellow Marylander!

One, are we surprised that the qDVD DivX setting yielded a final file size too close to the original MPEG2? -- question being that if the file sizes are roughly equal, what is the point of DivX?

Well mine are certainly smaller

It depends on the content, mode of conversion and if or not the software you use has bugs

Two, I suspected player issues in the two encodes I made of "Plush". On the highest setting in the original 42, I experienced the sync issues noted earlier, but I figured it was because DivX needs a lot of processor power to play back (is that still true? I remember that from my PC days). Going on that, I re-encoded "Plush" using the next lowest setting. Sync was better (not unfailingly perfect but acceptable -- I could say Weiland was being weird, or blame the director for purposely filming out of sync to the audio [which sometimes happens in music videos]) and the file size was remarkably small (50% smaller than the original).

for absolute smallest possible divx, use 1CDR setting. Also remember: you gotta run these things thru divx validator for proper playback in QuickTime.

Is the forthcoming 42 including recommendations of minimum system requirements including processor power, speed, configuration, etc? I'm rather impressed with the picture quality of these encodes (my PC DivX encodes sucked big time and I was always convinced it was something I skipped that caused bad quality) and would love to, say, cram an entire season of a TV drama onto 1 DVD-ROM in DivX.

This is certainly possible with the fixed 1CDR setting I think. Also remember too, that there is room for improvement...and as long as people like and support forty-two that improvement will come

The jump from our initail release to v1 will bear that out. I believe it has for thise who have used it; perhaps they will post their thoughts, etc here.

-K

[yoyogi]

Hi,
I am very new to a mac and quite frustrated about pc's. For a while i tried make divx backups of my dvd's but it seemed to daunting a task. Forty-two makes it very easy.

In the last post KaiCherry mentioned the 1CDR setting. The first dvd i tried was a strokes music video collection. Everything worked fine (with some test movie errors, but ended up ok) with good quality. I was so suprised by how easy everything was! BUT, when i copied the file to my pc it worked but it had this weird jagged edge on the extreme right border. Like it was about as thick as the scroller bar in IE and kinda tilted things on an angle. I tried to take a screenshot but it just came up black. The sync and everything else was fine. This was also the case on the middle divx setting, and but the neardvd played fine on the pc (but it was way to big).
On both pc and mac I just have the latest divx codecs from the divx website.
Also, for the strokes DVD it couldnt make a vcd because it said the audio was the wrong type or some other error.
Sorry for my not clear feedback, but I am on my pc now. I might go buy a 12 inch powerbook today!

anyway, great work... your software is very impresseive. Usually there is great interface but horrible functionality, or the other way around. you have best of everything.

yoyogi