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  1. aBigMeanie aedipuss's Avatar
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    with 36 seconds to go in an hour long encode Mediacoder pops up an demands money to continue. F*** them. Off my list of recommended encoders and off my computer forever. Others that are just as good.

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    "a lot of people are better dead" - prisoner KSC2-303
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  2. Member zoobie's Avatar
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    Well, that's a fine how-do-you-do.
    Did it work on other videos before you got the prompt on this one?
    I just like to know how some companies business ethics work...or if they actually have any.
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  3. Can't you just answer the question and continue?
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  4. Banned
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    i think you can but that means you have to keep an eye on the encode you can't just set it and walk away.
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  5. But then it's not ransomware, just veryannoyingware.
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  6. Ransomware or veryannoyingware.

    I use an older version without this feature when I need unattened batch conversion.
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  7. Banned
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    Probably almost nobody donates anything and the author is unwilling to continue his work for free. We've also seen the first disturbing signs that ImgBurn is moving in this direction, although it hasn't gone this far - yet.

    One of the problems of this is that it starts a vicious circle where the author is now in pissed off mode all the time because "nobody is donating". Some people do respond to this sort of thing by paying, so he will get some more donations, but it will also piss off as many or more people than it gets money from, so his expectations won't be met in terms of number of donations and amount. He might abandon the program permanently in anger over this. The program that people donated for will continue to work as it is but it may not work any more in future versions of Windows. See VCDEasy for an example of this very scenario.

    It's not unethical to switch mediacoder to a pay version or to hold it hostage like this, zoobie. That fact that you don't like it and it's a bit of a jerk move doesn't in and of itself make it unethical. Unethical would be to send you a message that you had 5 minutes to make a donation and enter a code and if you didn't, it was going to start deleting random files on the hard drive in a way that bypasses the Recycle Bin (it is possible to do that).
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  8. Banned
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    here's my take on this: i can understand wanting to be paid for your work but here's the reality:

    1) once you get people used to "free" it's very difficult to move them to "paid", people see it as either a "bait and switch", a scam or they think it's a dick move.

    2) if you wanted to be paid for your work then you should have decided that at the outset. based on what Stanley has said over the years i always assumed that he coded media coder a) because he wanted a sort of "fame" within the community as the author of a popular piece of software and b) as a sort of functional resume he could show prospective employers. things changed a couple of years ago when he graduated college and announced he was now a married man with a kid on the way (i think he said he has a daughter). now all of a sudden he started trying to monetize his software and started offering commercial licenses that from what i remember are quite expensive and i remember thinking to myself at the time "who the hell would spend this much on a commercial media coder license.

    Stan is going about this all the wrong way, he should keep the current version free as it always was but he should work on creating two cash cow versions, one dedicated to vp9 encoding and one dedicated to hevc encoding, he could charge a nominal licensing fee of say $20 per license with online authentication in order to prevent piracy and i think he could make himself a few bucks with that.

    but the real monetization opportunity with media coder is as a sample of his work to a prospective employer that has the money generation infrastructure already in place and can pay him a good salary to keep doing what he's doing or alternatively teaching in a university in china, with his background and fame i'm sure they would hire him to teach some comp sci classes.
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  9. aBigMeanie aedipuss's Avatar
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    yes you can answer the question and continue as i found out later. but i wasn't at the computer when the ransom demand popped up. i had set it to encode before going off and watching a baseball game. i'd never seen anything like it before and i've occasionally used mediacoder for years as one of a bunch of encoding guis. it's never been a primary go to program and it's not something i would ever consider paying for with so many other choices. it's a collection of other freeware tools, it's not like the author programmed the encoders himself, i don't see why he should profit from the work of a lot of other talented programmers. yes it's a nice gui and it doesn't crash too often, but if the author needs to make money he ought to abandon mediacoder not resort to what appears at first glance to be extortion. he sure wouldn't be the first or last one to end development of a free tool.
    Last edited by aedipuss; 19th Sep 2013 at 13:29.
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  10. Member
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    Mediacoder is just another half assed front end for a number of free programs. To say the guy coded it is a little misleading IMO.

    I'm well aware that it's routine to do that and then charge money for it but I don't think that's particularly ethical and I won't bite.

    And to do it after giving it away for years, without giving you any significant added functionality, is just a stupid business practice.
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  11. Member
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    I went to download the free command line encoder a few months back and couldn't find a download anywhere. Finally I found a link back to his site for the free download which led me to another link for a free trial of the command line encoder that sent me to another link that said I had to pay over $300 to purchase a license before I could download it.

    I had tried the free version of the gui years ago but never really used it and downloaded it again when I found out it used CUDA but found out it had turned into adware. After the last version crashing all the time and then finding out about the CLI version, I got rid of everything I had from mediacoder.

    As stated, all the encoders that he uses are freeware. He can do as he wishes but I'll never download anything from mediacoder/mencoder again.
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  12. Hi! I'm workin on a Workaround at this Moment. if it is done, i will post the AutoIt3 source of it here. Stay tuned
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  13. Ok Done...

    Here is the Code i wrote in AutoIt3.

    Code:
    #cs ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
     MediaCoder do not anoy me 0.1 Alpha
     Author:         DJBeatstar
    
     Script Function:
    	Kills the Bagging for Donation in MediaCoder
    
    #ce ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    ; Script Start - Add your code below here
    
    while 1
    	if Not ProcessExists ("MediaCoder.exe") Then
    		Exit
    	EndIf
    
    	$var = WinList()
    	For $i = 1 to $var[0][0] Step 1
    		If Not StringInStr( $var[$i][0], "Continue in") = 0 Then
    			$varText = WinGetText ($var[$i][0])
    			FileWrite (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt", $varText)
    			$varMathline = FileReadLine (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt", 8)
    			FileDelete (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt")
    			$varMathlinetemp1 = StringReplace ($varMathline, "Let's do a simple math:", "")
    			$varMathlinetemp2 = StringReplace ($varMathlinetemp1, " ", "")
    			$varMathlinetemp3 = StringReplace ($varMathlinetemp2, "=?", "")
    			$aMath = StringSplit ($varMathlinetemp3, "+")
    			$math = $aMath[1] + $aMath[2]
    			ControlSend($var[$i][0], "", "Edit2", $math)
    			ControlClick ($var[$i][0], "Continue", "Button2")
    		EndIf
    	Next
    	Sleep (50)
    WEnd
    I hope it is usefull.
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  14. Thanks for great script, djbeatstar.
    But for work fine, change the number "8" for number "11", else the result storaged in var when read temp.txt is the string "Validate" and script not work correctly.

    Original:

    $varMathline = FileReadLine (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt", 8)

    Modified:

    $varMathline = FileReadLine (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt", 11)
    Now the script read the line with numbers of the sum.

    Thanks man! So usefull your script!
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  15. Member
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    Originally Posted by djbeatstar View Post
    Ok Done...

    Here is the Code i wrote in AutoIt3.
    ...
    I hope it is usefull.
    GREAT!!!!

    Thank you.
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  16. Member
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    Hello

    I've found another script.
    How is it different?
    It seems shorter but it uses a #include <StringConstants.au3> line.

    http://wojwa.com/index.php/en/programming/9-nag-screen-in-mediacoder

    Code:
    ; Script removing the nag screen in MediaCoder.
    ; The script tries to find the nag window every 5 seconds. If it finds it,
    ; it reads all the window contents, then calculates the math, enters it,
    ; and presses Continue.
    ; Source from http://wojwa.com
    
    #include <StringConstants.au3>
    
    while 1
      If Not ProcessExists("MediaCoder.exe") Then
        MsgBox(0, "Remove nag screen", "No instance of MediaCoder found. Exiting...")
        Exit
      EndIf
    
      $windows = WinList()
    
      For $i = 1 to $windows[0][0] Step 1
        If Not StringInStr($windows[$i][0], "Continue in") = 0 Then
          $winText = WinGetText($windows[$i][0])
          $matches = StringRegExp($winText, ".* math: (\d+) \+ (\d+) =.*", $STR_REGEXPARRAYMATCH)
          $mathResult = $matches[0] + $matches[1]
          ControlSend($windows[$i][0], "", "Edit2", $mathResult)
          ControlClick($windows[$i][0], "Continue", "Button2")
        EndIf
      Next
      Sleep(5000)
    WEnd
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  17. Looking at http://www.mediacoderhq.com/donate/ and reading http://blog.mediacoderhq.com/about my guess is that donations dropped and since he did quit his job and works full-time on mediacoder that means his income is dropping, so he might simply be getting nervous.
    (didn't know that mediacoder was a one-man project and that the author works full-time on it)

    -> don't like the tool, don't really like the way 'the donation harvesting is implemented', but I get the general problem.

    Cu Selur

    Ps.: User donations must have been really high at one time for him to decide to drop his job.
    users currently on my ignore list: deadrats, Stears555
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  18. These scripts need an update, the guy who makes mediacoder has changed it so it will randomly ask a subtraction problem
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  19. And once the scripts are updated to detect whether the question is addition or subtraction, he'll change the numbers to pictures of numbers rather than text. Then you'll need to use OCR to figure out what the numbers are.
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  20. Of course, if you find the software useful enough to be willing to go through the trouble of finding scripts to bypass his math question popup maybe you should consider donating a few bucks to get a licensed copy that doesn't have that nagware.

    Besides, as it stands now MediaCoder doesn't support 4k content in the nagware version, you need to buy a license to use that functionality.

    In all honesty, I think most people would be best served sticking with XVID4PSP, Handbrake or VidCoder, possibly Hybrid. It would be nice if one of these added support for the new NVENC hardware encoding chip found on Maxwells, some guy wrote an Adobe plugin for this encoder and it's pretty good, supporting all of the functionality found on the 750ti.

    Even better would be if any or all of them also added supported for the HEVC encoding features of NVENC chip found in Maxwell.
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  21. Originally Posted by sophisticles View Post
    Of course, if you find the software useful enough to be willing to go through the trouble of finding scripts to bypass his math question popup maybe you should consider donating a few bucks to get a licensed copy that doesn't have that nagware.

    Besides, as it stands now MediaCoder doesn't support 4k content in the nagware version, you need to buy a license to use that functionality.

    In all honesty, I think most people would be best served sticking with XVID4PSP, Handbrake or VidCoder, possibly Hybrid. It would be nice if one of these added support for the new NVENC hardware encoding chip found on Maxwells, some guy wrote an Adobe plugin for this encoder and it's pretty good, supporting all of the functionality found on the 750ti.

    Even better would be if any or all of them also added supported for the HEVC encoding features of NVENC chip found in Maxwell.
    he wants a ******* UBSURD amount of money for what is basically a front end Gui, his GPU Edition - IE what I need he wants a ******* astronomical amount for again is just a front end gui!

    If I could pay $25 and get full functionality of the gui I would, but no, he ******* wants $170 for a front end gui!

    **** that shit, I'll use his client to the point of exploiting him, what he's doing is basically illegal to boot.

    Its one thing to ask for donations, what he's doing is ransomware for stuff he never made himself other than the gui
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  22. It would be nice if one of these added support for the new NVENC hardware encoding chip found on Maxwells, some guy wrote an Adobe plugin for this encoder and it's pretty good, supporting all of the functionality found on the 750ti.
    Problem is not writing support for some tool, someone would need to write a command line encoder wrapper for nvenc which supports input via std::in and does take additional parameters instead of using a config file. (like netcasthd and I did back in the day for nvuenc)
    -> I thought about it, but I really lack the time and motivation to a. setup the CUDA SDK stuff, read into the nvenc library description and adapt the nvEncoder which comes with the new NVEnc SDK.

    Its one thing to ask for donations, what he's doing is ransomware for stuff he never made himself other than the gui
    Ransomware is something totally different. It's his choice to want money for his work, if you don't want to pay the amount he asks for simply don't use the tool. I enough people decide that the tool isn't worth the money he will either lower the amount he asks for, drop development or think about another way to make money with it.

    Cu Selur
    users currently on my ignore list: deadrats, Stears555
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  23. Originally Posted by Pattaka View Post
    he wants a ******* UBSURD amount of money for what is basically a front end Gui, his GPU Edition - IE what I need he wants a ******* astronomical amount for again is just a front end gui!

    If I could pay $25 and get full functionality of the gui I would, but no, he ******* wants $170 for a front end gui!

    **** that shit, I'll use his client to the point of exploiting him, what he's doing is basically illegal to boot.

    Its one thing to ask for donations, what he's doing is ransomware for stuff he never made himself other than the gui
    He's not doing anything illegal, you keep saying it's just a GUI for other tools, which isn't entirely true. Yes, there are many things that Media Coder includes that where coded by someone else, ffmpeg, mencoder, x264, xvid, x265, but the CUDA encoder, the NVENC encoder and the Intel SDK encoder are his work as is the Segmented Video Encoding feature Media Coder has, that's all his work.

    Additionally, despite the fact that you mock his work on the GUI and downplay it's importance, you clearly find it very useful because you're willing to complain about it, rant about it and try to find ways to get around the protections built into it.

    If "it's just a GUI", then I'm sure you would have no problem not using it, just write a simple batch file like many of the more experienced ffmpeg/x264 user do and use that in conjunction with some custom avisynth scripts to do what you want to do.

    As I pointed out already there are at least half a dozen full featured GUI's that offer similar, and in some cases, more functionality than Media Coder yet despite acting like a child and claiming it's just a GUI not worth the asking price, you still won't switch to a legally free alternative, you try to pirate his work all the while claiming he's the one doing something illegal.

    I think you really need to check yourself and grow up.
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  24. Originally Posted by sophisticles View Post
    Originally Posted by Pattaka View Post
    he wants a ******* UBSURD amount of money for what is basically a front end Gui, his GPU Edition - IE what I need he wants a ******* astronomical amount for again is just a front end gui!

    If I could pay $25 and get full functionality of the gui I would, but no, he ******* wants $170 for a front end gui!

    **** that shit, I'll use his client to the point of exploiting him, what he's doing is basically illegal to boot.

    Its one thing to ask for donations, what he's doing is ransomware for stuff he never made himself other than the gui
    He's not doing anything illegal, you keep saying it's just a GUI for other tools, which isn't entirely true. Yes, there are many things that Media Coder includes that where coded by someone else, ffmpeg, mencoder, x264, xvid, x265, but the CUDA encoder, the NVENC encoder and the Intel SDK encoder are his work as is the Segmented Video Encoding feature Media Coder has, that's all his work.

    Additionally, despite the fact that you mock his work on the GUI and downplay it's importance, you clearly find it very useful because you're willing to complain about it, rant about it and try to find ways to get around the protections built into it.

    If "it's just a GUI", then I'm sure you would have no problem not using it, just write a simple batch file like many of the more experienced ffmpeg/x264 user do and use that in conjunction with some custom avisynth scripts to do what you want to do.

    As I pointed out already there are at least half a dozen full featured GUI's that offer similar, and in some cases, more functionality than Media Coder yet despite acting like a child and claiming it's just a GUI not worth the asking price, you still won't switch to a legally free alternative, you try to pirate his work all the while claiming he's the one doing something illegal.

    I think you really need to check yourself and grow up.
    I was informed he did zero encoder work on this project, and my anger is that it was all just a front end GUI and profiting off other peoples work, if he has made his own NVENC and Intel SDK encoder which is what I use I will buy this instantly. Thanks!
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  25. Even if he did 'just' a frontend, that in it's own can be a lot of work! So I think it's not really a problem for him to want money for it.
    users currently on my ignore list: deadrats, Stears555
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  26. Originally Posted by djbeatstar View Post
    Ok Done...

    Here is the Code i wrote in AutoIt3.

    Code:
    #cs ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
     MediaCoder do not anoy me 0.1 Alpha
     Author:         DJBeatstar
    
     Script Function:
    	Kills the Bagging for Donation in MediaCoder
    
    #ce ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    ; Script Start - Add your code below here
    
    while 1
    	if Not ProcessExists ("MediaCoder.exe") Then
    		Exit
    	EndIf
    
    	$var = WinList()
    	For $i = 1 to $var[0][0] Step 1
    		If Not StringInStr( $var[$i][0], "Continue in") = 0 Then
    			$varText = WinGetText ($var[$i][0])
    			FileWrite (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt", $varText)
    			$varMathline = FileReadLine (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt", 8)
    			FileDelete (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt")
    			$varMathlinetemp1 = StringReplace ($varMathline, "Let's do a simple math:", "")
    			$varMathlinetemp2 = StringReplace ($varMathlinetemp1, " ", "")
    			$varMathlinetemp3 = StringReplace ($varMathlinetemp2, "=?", "")
    			$aMath = StringSplit ($varMathlinetemp3, "+")
    			$math = $aMath[1] + $aMath[2]
    			ControlSend($var[$i][0], "", "Edit2", $math)
    			ControlClick ($var[$i][0], "Continue", "Button2")
    		EndIf
    	Next
    	Sleep (50)
    WEnd
    I hope it is usefull.
    Please, do not post any LOL smileys, but could you tell me, what exactly should I do with this script ?
    Thanks in advance.
    Quote Quote  
  27. Hi,

    I did a quick and dirty upgrade for the "-".

    Code:
    #cs ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
     MediaCoder do not anoy me 0.1 Alpha
     Author:         DJBeatstar
    
     Script Function:
    	Kills the Bagging for Donation in MediaCoder
    
    #ce ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    ; Script Start - Add your code below here
    
    while 1
    	if Not ProcessExists ("MediaCoder.exe") Then
    		Exit
    	EndIf
    
    	$var = WinList()
    	For $i = 1 to $var[0][0] Step 1
    		If Not StringInStr( $var[$i][0], "Continue in") = 0 Then
    			$varText = WinGetText ($var[$i][0])
    			FileWrite (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt", $varText)
    			$varMathline = FileReadLine (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt", 11)
    			FileDelete (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt")
    			$varMathlinetemp1 = StringReplace ($varMathline, "Let's do a simple math:", "")
    			$varMathlinetemp2 = StringReplace ($varMathlinetemp1, " ", "")
    			$varMathlinetemp3 = StringReplace ($varMathlinetemp2, "=?", "")
    			If Not StringInStr( $varMathlinetemp3, "+") = 0 Then
    			   $aMath = StringSplit ($varMathlinetemp3, "+")
    			   $math = $aMath[1] + $aMath[2]
    			Else
    			   $aMath = StringSplit ($varMathlinetemp3, "-")
    			   $math = $aMath[1] - $aMath[2]
    			EndIf
    			ControlSend($var[$i][0], "", "Edit2", $math)
    			ControlClick ($var[$i][0], "Continue", "Button2")
    		EndIf
    	Next
    	Sleep (50)
    WEnd

    For Killing Joke or others, you have to :
    - download and install Autoit3 : https://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/downloads/
    - save the code above in a .au3 file
    - run the file while mediacoder is running (double-click the file, autoit will execute this script)
    Last edited by flocrok; 9th Feb 2016 at 04:55.
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  28. Excellent job flocrok, thank you.
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  29. I donated years ago and got a code which usually prevents these annoyances but I've since moved on to using Ripbot264 and Handbrake. I might use Mediacoder if I run into a problem but it's few and far between.
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  30. Member
    Join Date
    May 2016
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    Garden of Eden
    Search Comp PM
    @flocrok

    I've changed your script to support the new YES/NO windows advertising the benefits of premium version:
    Code:
    #cs ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
     MediaCoder do not anoy me 0.2 Alpha
     Author:         DJBeatstar
     Modified:		 Dune
    
     Script Function:
    	Kills the Bagging for Donation in MediaCoder
    
    #ce ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    ; Script Start - Add your code below here
    
    while 1
    	if Not ProcessExists ("MediaCoder.exe") Then
    		Exit
    	EndIf
    
    	$var = WinList()
    	For $i = 1 to $var[0][0] Step 1
    		If Not StringInStr( $var[$i][0], "Continue in") = 0 Then
    			$varText = WinGetText ($var[$i][0])
    			FileWrite (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt", $varText)
    			$varMathline = FileReadLine (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt", 11)
    			FileDelete (@ScriptDir & "\temp.txt")
    			$varMathlinetemp1 = StringReplace ($varMathline, "Let's do a simple math:", "")
    			$varMathlinetemp2 = StringReplace ($varMathlinetemp1, " ", "")
    			$varMathlinetemp3 = StringReplace ($varMathlinetemp2, "=?", "")
    			If Not StringInStr( $varMathlinetemp3, "+") = 0 Then
    			   $aMath = StringSplit ($varMathlinetemp3, "+")
    			   $math = $aMath[1] + $aMath[2]
    			Else
    			   $aMath = StringSplit ($varMathlinetemp3, "-")
    			   $math = $aMath[1] - $aMath[2]
    			EndIf
    			ControlSend($var[$i][0], "", "Edit2", $math)
    			ControlClick ($var[$i][0], "Continue", "Button2")
    		 EndIf
    		 If $var[$i][0] = "MediaCoder x64" Then
    			ControlClick ($var[$i][0], "No", "Button2")
    		EndIf
    	 Next
    	Sleep (5000)
    WEnd
    Thank you and all other members.
    Quote Quote  



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