forty-two, improvements and future.

[KaiCherry]

I still have hopes for 42, but I'm not going to pay a cent until I actually get it to do something that I need. I don't do SVCD or VCD.. so maybe I'm not a 42 customer. If thats the case, then it won't get run on my computer. But if it can approach the DVD to DVD-R speed and success that a 96kb PC program can do, then I'd pay $44.00 for it!

thanks for stopping by to read this!
have a great day!
MacDaddy

Well "MacDaddy"...its like this:

forty-two is free. It is developed thru the grace of god and the generousity of others. No one *has* to pay for it. This isn't a trick of symantics, its a truth.

It's kinda funny too. People around the world have told us that they wanted something *just* like this and want us to keep it up.

People have also told us that they in effect want a custom piece of software, written specifically for them, and we are a disgrace to the Mac community because we haven't done this for them yet.

Mac Users are, strange, strange creatures, indeed...like "crabs in a basket" oftentimes.

Because of, and even in spite of this, forty-two continues to improve every day.

It is however, unfortunate that forty-two, its goals and our philosophy are "worthless" to you.

Hey man, its your platform, too. Don't forget that.

Perhaps the 1.02 Udater we are about to release, or our upcoming 1.5 version will show some merit or worth.

Perhaps not. I've decided to not even get the least bit upset about it anymore. There are those that "get it" and that's enough for us.



-K

[tgpo]

Forty-Two is the best program on my computer right now! If you look at the old guides I wrote for OS 9 long ago you'll see that a DVD->VCD conversion took about 48 hours. And even that was if you started the next step right as the previous step finished. I love this program. I click one button and I end up with a vcd. That's in sync. I no longer have to play around for hours, which I have done, with QT Mutator to sync a movie.

If forty-two isn't what you want, THEN DON"T DOWNLOAD IT. And stop complaining about how it is worthless. It is a vital asset to me. Thus making it very valuble. I'd rather read posts about how people are using it then read posts about how people are not using it, because those are just a waste of time.

[mcaswell]

Where did I trash 42? I felt that I gave it a rather honest review. It hasn't been able to do the DVD-DVD-R conversions that I'm wanting to do, but I did say that I still hold out hope for it in the future. I'm not asking for more features, I'm content to wait, watch, try and if it's there like I need it to be, DONATE! BUY!! Whatever word you want to use!

You guys need to chill out and re-read my post!

relax!

MacDaddy
:P

[KaiCherry]

Where did I trash 42? I felt that I gave it a rather honest review. It hasn't been able to do the DVD-DVD-R conversions that I'm wanting to do

What is it failing to do? Perhaps if I had a better understanding of this, it could be fixed.

If you mean a dvd in an hour, this isn't gonna happen, sorry. Totally beyond my control.

-K

[bilestyle]

Forty-Two is the best program on my computer right now! If you look at the old guides I wrote for OS 9 long ago you'll see that a DVD->VCD conversion took about 48 hours. And even that was if you started the next step right as the previous step finished. I love this program. I click one button and I end up with a vcd. That's in sync. I no longer have to play around for hours, which I have done, with QT Mutator to sync a movie.

If forty-two isn't what you want, THEN DON"T DOWNLOAD IT. And stop complaining about how it is worthless. It is a vital asset to me. Thus making it very valuble. I'd rather read posts about how people are using it then read posts about how people are not using it, because those are just a waste of time.

we appreciate the kind words tgpo They mean a lot. Couldn't have learned a lot of stuff i did about mpeg and convertin if it wasn't for surfin endlessly on vcdhelp. Anyways the program gets better daily, i think everyone will be very pleased with 1.5

[Wiqd]

Hrmm, ok first off i don't want this to sound like a "FORTY TWO SHORTCOMING" rant, cuz its not. It's just late and i have early classes so if i miscommunicate something, call me on it. BUT... i was wondering, is it because of your choice to not support VOBs that 42 will "never be able to do a DVD > DVDR in an hour"? or is it something else as far as encoders that the mac community doesn't have access to? Just wondering. Oh, and one other thing. I validate your argument on not wanting to support this or that because it has the potential to make your program eligible to "steal" dvds or copyrighted material... BUT it can be used for that already. People can just as easily spend 4 or 5 bucks to rent the movie and rip it with 42 as they can back up their own stuff. If you put a knife in the hand of a killer, he's gonna kill with it. If you put the same knife in the hand of a chef, he will create something marvelous with it. Alls I'm saying is, I hope you aren't cutting out possibilities of making a completely efficient program because of something you "think" people may or may not due. Of course, this program may be targetted at something else BESIDES easy dvd decoding as well and I could be totally off base *shrugs* I would just hate to see something with as much potential as this program not live up to it. And I've already credited 42 as being very useful, so like I said, im NOT trashing it at all. And perhaps it already HAS lived up to the potential that the developers wanted. If that's the case, and there are other people out there who think they can make it better by improving on it and adding the ability to create DVDRs from DVDs in an hour, open source the code and let em take a shot *shrugs*

Wiqd

[KaiCherry]

Hrmm, ok first off i don't want this to sound like a "FORTY TWO SHORTCOMING" rant, cuz its not. It's just late and i have early classes so if i miscommunicate something, call me on it. BUT... i was wondering, is it because of your choice to not support VOBs that 42 will "never be able to do a DVD > DVDR in an hour"?

Nope..its because the stuff we control can't do it.

I validate your argument on not wanting to support this or that because it has the potential to make your program eligible to "steal" dvds or copyrighted material... BUT it can be used for that already.

First of all, its steal, not "steal". The fact that folks can use it for an infringing purpose is irrelevant, and we most CERTAINLY don't intend to implement a feature that will A) aid in the quest and B) won't sync.

forty-two is designed to sync people, and even if we every add some sort of feature that will let you process later, it *will* require the DVD to be in the drive (the EXACT dvd, cus we are checking the keys) and it won't work with the junk vobs people ripped last year with 0SeX or whatever, because they won't sync.

We've tested it.

People can just as easily spend 4 or 5 bucks to rent the movie and rip it with 42 as they can back up their own stuff.

Ssssssooo? we aren't facilitating a feature we KNOW is 99% for "e-z piracy"

Whine all ya' want it ain't gonna happen

If you put a knife in the hand of a killer, he's gonna kill with it. If you put the same knife in the hand of a chef, he will create something marvelous with it. Alls I'm saying is, I hope you aren't cutting out possibilities of making a completely efficient program because of something you "think" people may or may not due. Of course, this program may be targetted at something else BESIDES easy dvd decoding as well and I could be totally off base *shrugs* I would just hate to see something with as much potential as this program not live up to it. And I've already credited 42 as being very useful, so like I said, im NOT trashing it at all. And perhaps it already HAS lived up to the potential that the developers wanted. If that's the case, and there are other people out there who think they can make it better by improving on it and adding the ability to create DVDRs from DVDs in an hour, open source the code and let em take a shot *shrugs*

Wiqd

I actually gave some thought to what tricks could be used to speed it up, or perhaps maybe a "compromise" mode like D-1 size or whatever...

But in all honesty...I know what people want VOB support for, at least the most vocal "proponents" of it. And even if I wanted to (I actually, for about 15 mins 2 days ago, really gave it thought) Bilestyle says he does not want the software to do it.

So it won't.

For *legitmate* users, we are seriously looking at some sort of deferred-processing and recovery mode, post v1.5...but it will only work if the original CSS'd (or if it was never encrypted un-CSS'd) DVD is in the drive.

No legit user would ever have a problem with this

-K

[Mauserman]

Yo, forty-two dev's!!

I have been reading this thread about donations, when users will pay and so on. I'm from sweden so i look at it with my eurpoean eyes.

First of all, in the early days of forty-two (two weeks ago?), someone stated that forty-two is going to be a software that someones mother, or even grand mother could use. That's how easy it was going to be.

if thats still the goal, then all subs and audio language should be usable from the pulldown menues, you should not have to type country codes.

My mother wouldn't know what to do with the "custom rate" or the slider below. If she doesn't hang out in the mac video forum, that is. javascript:emoticon('').

And last about the donations. I fully agree with the person that stated that other payment methods are needed. Me for example don't have a creditcard or paypal. And i don't want to get those either, but i would like to contribute if you just gave me the chance.

Cause i can see that you guys are working hard with this, and so far it looks great javascript:emoticon('').

Have you considered other language localizations? If so i'm willing to help with the Swedish translation, My grandmother would be soooo thankful javascript:emoticon('').

I hope you find my criticism constructive and not offensive in anyway.
Keep up the good work, cause your work IS GOOD.

[toisanji]

kai,
If you are a jobless student with kids, I think you have your priorities pretty messed up. I think you should either charge for the program or work on something that you will charge for.
Freeware/Nagware never paid anyone's bills.

[bilestyle]

yep as kai said i am 100% against adding VOB support... not only does the fact that TONS of users are like "i have all these vobs sitting around on my 800 gig hard drive, so will i be able to successfully steal them now?" in so many words. First off those junk crap vobs that osex ruins would NOT work to sync properly, we want a program that works, not something where u pop in content and cross your fingers that it works whenever it finishes. We're not getting into a discussion about this VOB support thing again because its NOT an option EVER not 1.5, not 2.0, not 5.0 NEVER. Plain and simple as that. We can only do so much to keep users in check from using our software for illicit purposes, we aren't about to fuel the flame of piracy by adding something like VOB support. It really irks me that we have gotten bugged about this so much, if we have said no SOOOOOO many times about it, why would ppl still persist? its not going to happen, deal with it and move on.

[KaiCherry]

kai,
If you are a jobless student with kids, I think you have your priorities pretty messed up. I think you should either charge for the program or work on something that you will charge for.
Freeware/Nagware never paid anyone's bills.

Do you *ever* have an *encouraging* word to say?



That statement alone just goes to show that folks *still* don't get what we're all about.


-K

[Wiqd]

Well I dont want Kai or Bile to think I'm tryin to beat a dead horse in VOB support, because that's not my point. You guys have decided on something, and that's kewl. If people want to steal something, they're going to steal it one way or another. If they can't do it with 42 they'll find a pc and use dvd2one *shrugs* My main point was, I was just hoping you guys weren't NOT doing something based on what people may or may not do. I mean, it IS pretty apparent what most people use software like this for AND i HAVE TO SAY RIGHT HERE.... that I've noticed a HUGE speed increase in 42 since 1.02 put the CPU thing in (dunno how to quite phrase it succintly). Its taken WAY less time to get where it is than last time so, good job on that guys . I'm all for 42 and what you guys want it to do, so don't get me wrong. I was just making a point is all. Oh and Kai, the quotes around things in my previous points weren't a hint or a lean-to for any words, I was just quoting you Stealing is stealing no matter how you quote it. Anyways... Good job on the most recent release guys. My DVDs finishing up so I'll let you know how it goes.

Wiqd

[KaiCherry]

AND i HAVE TO SAY RIGHT HERE.... that I've noticed a HUGE speed increase in 42 since 1.02 put the CPU thing in (dunno how to quite phrase it succintly). Its taken WAY less time to get where it is than last time so, good job on that guys
Wiqd

Thank GOD! Believe me man, it pisses me off too

There are some "political" problems with what I did to make it faster so I hope it doesn't bite us in the ass later.

And Wiqd...its all good, man...its allll goood.

-K

[toisanji]

I am just trying to be realistic. And in terms of encouraging words, its a pretty neat program. Its the first mac solution that gives me in sync results. The only thing I wish for is the ability to select the subtitles/languages directly from the movies becuase I usually need copies in a few different langauges( different chinese dialects).

kai,
If you are a jobless student with kids, I think you have your priorities pretty messed up. I think you should either charge for the program or work on something that you will charge for.
Freeware/Nagware never paid anyone's bills.

Do you *ever* have an *encouraging* word to say?



That statement alone just goes to show that folks *still* don't get what we're all about.


-K

[CaseyComb]

OKay fine, so which program opens a .bz2 file? Because I'm running OSX 10.2 Jaguar and it isn't recognized.

[KaiCherry]

I am just trying to be realistic. And in terms of encouraging words, its a pretty neat program. Its the first mac solution that gives me in sync results. The only thing I wish for is the ability to select the subtitles/languages directly from the movies becuase I usually need copies in a few different langauges( different chinese dialects).

Why...thank you

As for the money thing, we're fine. My wife is working, and B and chris live at home while they're in school.

We aren't by *any* stretch of the imagination getting rich off this, or trying to. And donations aren't just cash.

Many, many folks don't have money, but have time, or dvds, etc.

We actually rent and test the dvds folks have problems with and make notes, etc. Lotta work, lotta time.

In fact, I think if I was working these last two months, there wouldn't *be* a forty-two...certainly not like it is now.

One of things *lots* of folks want is internationalization. Apple makes it look a *whole lot easier* than it really is, lol, but its in our sites.

The language/audio thing is *very* tricky. We are putting a lot of thought into the best way to do it. Its coming tho...we need it too

-K

[KaiCherry]

OKay fine, so which program opens a .bz2 file? Because I'm running OSX 10.2 Jaguar and it isn't recognized.

Stuffit Expander 7+

-K

[Wiqd]

StuffIt does .b2z2 files. If not that, then download the BSD binary of tar and do a tar -bxvf (i think -b is the bz2 option) from a terminal prompt.

Wiqd

[CaseyComb]

Okay I might have worded that wrong. Let me explain, Stuffit recognizes the .BZ2 file. I don't know the exact name, say... "FortyTwo V1DMG.BZ2" What I get after it unzips is a file called "FortyTwo V1DMG.BZ2.1" that isn't recognized by OSX. What's going on here? I want to support this program but dammit I need to try it myself first. A little help Please?

[Riot Nrrrd]

yep as kai said i am 100% against adding VOB support... not only does the fact that TONS of users are like "i have all these vobs sitting around on my 800 gig hard drive, so will i be able to successfully steal them now?" in so many words. First off those junk crap vobs that osex ruins would NOT work to sync properly, we want a program that works, not something where u pop in content and cross your fingers that it works whenever it finishes.

Aren't they already successfully stolen if they (the VOB files) are "sitting around on my 800 gig hard drive"?

As for "junk crap vobs" ... I've used DVD Backup 1.2 to back up a few DVDs (never again will I worry about the 3rd "Toy Story 2" disc falling behind the TV and getting destroyed on the floor ), and they all play absolutely perfectly in OS X's DVD Player app ... just like as if the DVD was in the drive.

Now, as for "cross your fingers that it works whenever it finishes" ... ahem.

Here's my own personal experience with forty-two and a single DVD ("The Filth And The Fury", a Sex Pistols documentary) so far:

(1) Encoded using "DivX Mid DVD" setting, all other settings default - test clip produced and plays in MPlayer; 1.2 Gbyte AVI file produced, plays OK with vlc 0.5.0 - so far so good!

(2) Encoded using "DivX Near DVD" setting, all other settings default - test clip produced and plays in MPlayer; 2.5 AVI file produced, but does not play with vlc 0.5.0 - vlc just sits there spinning its wheels and never displays a video window. (Does not play in QuickTime Player either, though I expected that) Not good ...

(3) Encoded using "DVD" setting, all other settings default ("Custom Rate" not enabled/set to 6000, "VBR Quality" set to 10, it appears) - 42 Mbyte test clip produced (~/testFILTH_AND_THE_FURY.mpg) and plays fine in MPlayer; but after that, the DVD is spit out (!) - why?!? and forty-two's status changes to "STATUS: Encoding Video..."/"0 frames of video..." and of course it just sits there from then on, doing nothing. (cat [...]/streams.yuv is left running, yuvscaler -v 0 -n n -0 DVD is left running, mpeg2enc -v 0 -Q 3 -r 16 -4 1 -2 1 -h -s -S 9999 -q 10 -f 8 -b 6000 -F 4 -a 3 -n n -M 2 -V 30 -o biles.mpv is left running, and dvdmp 1 /dev/disk2 FILTH_AND_THE_FURY.mpg DVD xx xx [pwd] xx xx blah blah ... is left running.) Not good again ... (Most obvious question - why is the DVD ejected after the test clip plays, when the main video hasn't even been encoded yet?!?)

Other things I noticed:

Unforgivable bug/annoyance - the requirement(?) to do a touch /.singwithme - what part of "Write temporary files to /tmp" don't you understand? No userland program should ever write files into "/".

Another apparent bug - the .skynet shell script in the Application Support stuff tries to do renice -20 <process id>. You can only do a negative renice/nice (renice -20) if you're running as "root" ...

In short, I realize that forty-two is mostly just a nice GUI interface and some added "smart glue" over the 3 core from-elsewhere programs (mencoder, mpeg2enc and mplayer), so it's not really forty-two's fault that this stuff isn't working ... but nevertheless - I'll gladly donate money when all 3 of these encoding options work, but it's hard to justify when it's only one in 3 - and it's the one that I'm least interested in.

Just my 2 cents.

[Wiqd]

I think if you took the patience to sit and read the issues they've been tryint to work out with 42, you'd see that they are trying their best to figure out the "spitting out dvds" thing. Kai even started a thread to post which dvds do this. Mine did it for a while, but hasn't since. I've never had to touch a single file while 42 has been running so I have no clue what bug that is. I've never had any files written to root. I also don't think calling it an unforgivable bug is quite kosher either, but that's me. I'm not lookin to pick a fight, I'm jus sayin read the other 42 posts to see if you're stuff has been addressed. As far as the other bugs, I don't doubt their legitimacy, but I do doubt your social skills.

Wiqd

[Riot Nrrrd]

I think if you took the patience to sit and read the issues they've been tryint to work out with 42, you'd see that they are trying their best to figure out the "spitting out dvds" thing.

Well, I don't know what's doing it, or why there is ever a need to spit out the DVD (I remember version 0.6 used to say "Ejecting DVD, we don't need it any longer", or somesuch - why not just leave it in there?). Given that the encoding programs need to access the DVD via the raw device (/dev/rdisk2) anyway, it seems like it should just leave the DVD in until the process is finished, no matter what. (The DVD has been unmounted as a Volume already, so you can still get it out if you want to - or you aborted - via the Eject key)

I've never had to touch a single file while 42 has been running so I have no clue what bug that is. I've never had any files written to root.

How would you even know? This stuff is being done behind your back, it's not visible to the user. Do you know about the files in /tmp/.thesalami (with the non-helpful names)? I suspect not.

I suspect it's a simple oversight - there's other temporary "dot" files written into /tmp, so someone knows where they go - but a heinous one nevertheless. (If you make the / directory world-writable so that the file /.singwithme can be touched/created, the sendmail daemon that receives incoming SMTP mail will refuse to accept new e-mails, for one thing. I kinda like to keep getting my e-mail ... )

As far as the other bugs, I don't doubt their legitimacy, but I do doubt your social skills.

Pointing out two small (but important) bugs that show deficiency in UNIX knowledge is hardly indicative of my social skills (or lack thereof).

Don't get me wrong - I think forty-two is a great idea in principle, and I'm glad that Kai & co. have tackled it. But (given the topic of this discussion thread) there is a conundrum here - they want money to fix things and make it better, but most people have a set of bottom-end threshold criteria (bugs/features/useability) for deciding if they'll contribute money to a project. And, as things stand, 1 successful encode out of 3 is below my threshold. I'll be more than happy to send someone money once that batting average is 3-for-3 on a regular basis ...

[Wiqd]

I agree with you 100% about not paying for something you're not happy with. And don't get me wrong, I believe you've encountered things other end users would merely glance over due to lack of Unix knowledge or perhaps in my case because nothing seems to be going wrong. It's a double edged sword when doing new software and bugtracking as I'm sure you can imagine. Perhaps the request for donations was made a little prematurely on Kai and Co.s part. And maybe I even took the whole tone of your post wrong, which is possible since its only type. But, I still don't think calling something an unforgivable bug is appropriate. Like Biles said, bringing things to like in a constructive manner is always appreciated by developers. But cramming something down someone's throat and then justifying your decision not to pay ... well I'm sure you get the point. You sound like someone who this entire process would benefit from.

Wiqd

[Riot Nrrrd]

But, I still don't think calling something an unforgivable bug is appropriate. Like Biles said, bringing things to like in a constructive manner is always appreciated by developers. But cramming something down someone's throat and then justifying your decision not to pay ... well I'm sure you get the point.

I don't feel like I was cramming anything down anyone's throat. I think it's important to point out notably serious problems. And I haven't made a decision not to pay - I'm just waiting to see if it can be figured out why these encodings can't be made to work. Again - I realize this might not be forty-two's fault. Perhaps mencoder is simply producing a "bad" AVI file when told to use "near DVD" quality DivX encoding. Or maybe the parameters being passed to it by one of the forty-two programs is wrong. Or maybe it's vlc's fault - maybe some other program might play it OK.

And - lo and behold - that's apparently the case. It is vlc's fault. mplayer actually plays the "Near DVD" DivX rip just fine. It's vlc that has the problem with it. Here's the debug output from vlc:

[...]
avi debug: stream[0] rate:299700 scale:10000 samplesize:0
avi debug: stream[0] video(DIVX) 640x346 24bpp 29.969999fps
avi debug: stream[1] rate:24000 scale:1 samplesize:1
avi debug: stream[1] audio(0x2000) 2 channels 48000Hz 16bits
main debug: looking for subtitle demux module
main debug: probing 1 candidate
main debug: using subtitle demux module "demuxsub"
[FOLLOWING LINE FLAGGED IN YELLOW:]
avi warning: failed to start subtitle demux
main debug: unlocking module "demuxsub"
[NEXT TWO LINES ALSO FLAGGED IN YELLOW:]
avi warning: cannot find idx1 chunk, no index defined
avi warning: broken or missing index, 'seek' will be axproximative or will have strange behavour
main debug: selecting ES 0x1
main debug: looking for decoder module
main debug: probing 11 candidates
main debug: using decoder module "ffmpeg"
main debug: thread 52592560 (decoder) created at priority 32 (src/input/input_dec.c:141)
ffmpeg debug: libavcodec initialized (interface 4654)
ffmpeg debug: ffmpeg codec (MPEG-4) started
macosx debug: stream has changed, refreshing interface

Perhaps the 3 yellow-flagged lines above mean something to the forty-two coders.

You sound like someone who this entire process would benefit from.

Absolutely! And I'll be more than happy to contribute, as soon as my threshold is exceeded. (While I'm on the soapbox - please find another way to make donations in addition to PayPal - you have to have a checking account to join PayPal, and I only have a Credit Union share account.)

[KaiCherry]

VOB rant ignored, not going to happen, moving on

Here's my own personal experience with forty-two
(3) Encoded using "DVD" setting, all other settings default ("Custom Rate" not enabled/set to 6000, "VBR Quality" set to 10, it appears) - 42 Mbyte test clip produced (~/testFILTH_AND_THE_FURY.mpg) and plays fine in MPlayer; but after that, the DVD is spit out (!) - why?!? and forty-two's status changes to "STATUS: Encoding Video..."/"0 frames of video..." and of course it just sits there from then on, doing nothing. (cat [...]/streams.yuv is left running, yuvscaler -v 0 -n n -0 DVD is left running, mpeg2enc -v 0 -Q 3 -r 16 -4 1 -2 1 -h -s -S 9999 -q 10 -f 8 -b 6000 -F 4 -a 3 -n n -M 2 -V 30 -o biles.mpv is left running, and dvdmp 1 /dev/disk2 FILTH_AND_THE_FURY.mpg DVD xx xx [pwd] xx xx blah blah ... is left running.) Not good again ... (Most obvious question - why is the DVD ejected after the test clip plays, when the main video hasn't even been encoded yet?!?)

because, as noted, its a BUG

Or rather...was We found, we fixed, update in the pipe

Other things I noticed:

Unforgivable bug/annoyance - the requirement(?) to do a touch /.singwithme - what part of "Write temporary files to /tmp" don't you understand? No userland program should ever write files into "/".

oh, feh! We'll move it to temp, whatever

Another apparent bug - the .skynet shell script in the Application Support stuff tries to do renice -20 <process id>. You can only do a negative renice/nice (renice -20) if you're running as "root" ...

you are nowhere near as clever as you think you are Hunt around some more and find out why you are not *exactly* correct.

LOL

In short, I realize that forty-two is mostly just a nice GUI interface and some added "smart glue" over the 3 core from-elsewhere programs (mencoder, mpeg2enc and mplayer), so it's not really forty-two's fault that this stuff isn't working ... but nevertheless - I'll gladly donate money when all 3 of these encoding options work, but it's hard to justify when it's only one in 3 - and it's the one that I'm least interested in.

Thanks. You're a bit off on some of your assumptions, tho' in this thread, but its nice to know you've got our back

The DVD is kicked out in a *proper* transcode becuase it takes sooooo much longer than a divx (which you can do overnight) that it would be insane to keep it in there What if someone once to listen to their Too$hort CD when answering l33t h@X0r posts, for example, to keep from being *too nasty* or *too rude*?

The kicking out BEFORE then however is a logic flaw, and thanks to the users who HELP OUT when we ask, we got the info we needed to make it right and put it in our 1.5 codetree.

BUT, since we know its driving folks nuts *NOW* and will enhance their usability *now* I backported the code to 1.0x

Expect an updater in less than 24hrs.

You WISH some other folks were this responsive and handled bugs this fast. Forty-two is for its users. They make it better everyday.

We thank and love them all. Even You

Perhaps we'll be at 2 outta 3 for ya...and that ain't bad

-K

[KaiCherry]

Well, I don't know what's doing it, or why there is ever a need to spit out the DVD (I remember version 0.6 used to say "Ejecting DVD, we don't need it any longer", or somesuch - why not just leave it in there?). Given that the encoding programs need to access the DVD via the raw device (/dev/rdisk2) anyway, it seems like it should just leave the DVD in until the process is finished, no matter what. (The DVD has been unmounted as a Volume already, so you can still get it out if you want to - or you aborted - via the Eject key)

Ok. I'm going make a *leeetle* suggestion here.

Before you post something else as wrong as the above snippet is, you *might* wanna look some stuff up.

Accessing via the raw device is *5 times slower*, is not required or necessary.

Like we didn't test that, heheh.

Really. I'm glad to see people are getting into unix, and th singwithme file not withstanding, you really, really need to make sure you are correct in your assumptions before posting so...authoritatively.

I don't recall *every* getting an email, or PM from you about any of this, so...

What's THAT about? I'm sure a PM would have both caught my attention sooner, and been more apropos.

Hrrrmmm.


-K

[Man Dat Ting]

Report on Forty-Two

Why I use Forty-Two:

I'm using Forty-Two (and similar programs) because the current studio policy for the DVD media prevents the exchange of culture and ideas among the international community. As you might know an Italian (as me) cannot see Japanese or American or Swedish or Greek movies unless that movie is interesting enough to the local distributor and the DVD is available for the Italian market. Most of the times titles become DVD only if they promise interesting sales. Some movies however never get released either because they didn't get a meaningful theatrical distribution or because their market is limited.

Of course this is true for Americans as the world DVD titles distribution is super limited in your country and even buying through Amazon which gives British, German, French and japanese titles, unless the DVD are region free (never) or you have a DVD region 2 machine you cannot see the world films: so the most advanced country in the planet has lesser access to other people products. You figure it our yourself why and what it does to you.

The current hard-soft combination prevents people from watching freely what is interesting to them. This is ethically and philosophically unacceptable. We live in a better world because our technology and standard of living are higher, therefore a better and simpler exchange of ideas is crucial to move forward in this direction. This apolling policy not only makes this exchange impossible, but it also lowers quality in filmaking. To gain international distribution movies can only be entertaining 'products' and quality dicreases accordingly.

Story telling is the simplest and oldest mean to exchange ideas, increasing curiosity and a better understanding of our world at large.

I understand the reasons for copyright in movies, software and so on, however I cannot accept protection of copyright when it is only a shield to protect large corporation revenues through misusage of legal jargon.

This point might be uninteresting to this community, however I believe it is substantial and this is my reason to open my report with my statement.


The report:

I used the same downloaded files for both my machines: 2 Tower G4/500 (dual processor, 1GB RAM, all bought at the same time) and 1 Powerbook G4/800 Titanium (1GB RAM).

Ripping Rented DVD is Illegal!
-TGPO

Titles:
Young Frankenstein
The man who wasn't there
Silverado

And some Italians DVD with no audio sub choice.

I decoded for VCD and SVCD formats only.

All DVDs transcoded in the slower and older desktop G4 although results were usable but unreliable (more later). The program never worked with the Powerbook.

I used the same DVDs in all machines.

Errors in the Powerbook:

Powered the machine fully equipped with several files and apps. Inserted a DVD which opened and played fine in DVD player. Launched Forty-Two, the program hung after a while and the machine died on me. I had to hard reboot it. Reinserting a DVD I got a message from DVD player telling me I couldn't change the region code and couldn't play the disk. Before relaunching Forty-Two I tried searching for the region preferences with File Buddy 7.3.2 in the HD gave no results, all files related to Region were gone. The DVD icon however appeared on the desktop.

Relaunched Forty-Two : dropped the DVD in the icon. Pressed `more option`. The box stopped forever in the "your DVD is being unmanted ..... " message and nothing in the box. I forced quit mplayer, and pressed Start.

I got :

Status: Phase 1 Analysis

I left things for about ten hours and nothing changed.

In the dock I saw the mplayer Icon and the DVD was gone from the dsktop.
Most of the times Forty-Two force quitted, but mplayer didn't. When both program force quit the DVD icon didnt appear in the desktop and pressing the eject key did nothing. Asking Profiler what was there however quoted the DVD among its devices. To eject the DVD I had to restart or force restart the Powerbook.

After the first ripping attempt: Erased the whole HD, reinstalled sys X with current original Jaguar disks (out of the box from the latest machine which do not support System 9). I also installed all the DEV disk file (except the extra DEV utilities and file examples). Then I upgraded the Sys with combo upgrade version. Searching for the region code files they appeared in FileBuddy results window. Then Inserted DVD and it played. As I installed upgraded and launched Forty-Two the program failed again. After hard rebooting and inserting any DVD, the DVD player messaged wrong region code. And the whole sequence as before.
The .yuv alias don't trash. I had to erase the drive to get rid of it.


I don't know what and why but I had to forget using the Powerbook although its a newer machine and it has CD writing facilities.

I guess something in the program is linked to the region coding system and for some reasons I don't know it does not function in this machine.

The G4 are fully loaded with hardware and software, but this made no difference to the program. The attempt to use the Powerbook only to rip failed.

TOWER G4/500

The software always works but the ripping results vary tremendously even as ripping the same DVD.

As I move the the More window, the program reads the Title, Audio and Sub files infos.

First Problem:
if I select English for Audio and English for subs from the pop up menu this simply gives me the first audio and Sub tracks encoded in the DVD. If the DVD is encoded in a different order I get which ever audio and subtitle comes first.

Only Silverado kept English as a first language both for Audio and Subs. In the other DVDs I got Italian as main audio for all and I got Italian subs for one, German sub for the other although I selected English. This was clear in your More Infos window.

Question:

As you give the option to see the audio and sub files, could you also give the option to select what the users want after reading the infos in your box?


More comments


The program rips both in VCD and SVCD formats in very acceptable times (about 3 hours for DVD with up to 6 GB data), so that's great.

However the transcoding process delivers different files even from the same DVD each time I attempted to rip. In other words ripping the Same DVD in VCD format gives different Files sizes for each Ripping process. This never happened in SVVD outputs however.


Why this is I cannot figure out.



Working example with the largest DVD i tried

Title The Man who wasn't there.


The DVD is encoded in one side and it's 7.36GB data

After a 4 hours process these were the results:

Although I selected English for Audio and Sub I got Italian for both, but this was reported in your info box, as Italian was language 1 for Audio and Subs.

Files

biles.mpv 899.9 MB
1-The_man.mpg (795.1MB)
2-The_man.mpg (7.2MB)
3-The_man.mpg 306.2MB
biles.mp 2178MB

The file 2 always repeats the same portion of the movie, this every time i ripped the DVD an no matter which output I choose). This portion of the movies is also decoded partially in the first and last file.

Ripped it again and got the same final 5 files with different data length. The differences are relevant. The number of files is always the same. The same happened in each DVD I ripped.

Question:

Can you ask the user to choose how large should be the final output.

Burning:
This part of the whole process is not covered in your manual and I don't know exactly how to handle it from your software. I had problems burning the files in Toast and finally edited the files in Final Cut to get rid of the repetitions and split them in 500 MB sizes.


After editing with Final Cut it was easy to burn the files, however the Toast VCD format is far from being standard and many players can't see it.

Could you give some simple clues on how to burn the files in a Mac?


During the ripping process the windows display different messages even if ripping the same DVD. At times when the Status tells me Encoding Video I have the final number of frames, and during the process the program updates how many frames it processed.
Other times it just tells the process is Encoding Video but the number of frames is always 0 (ex. 14606 of 0)
At tomes it tells me Encoding 15622 of 165424, but then at the end I read 185000 of 165424.

I think this could be only a cosmetic bug ... but this is what I see.

keep doing what you do as this seems to be the only package Virtual PC free around. I hope my donation will help you experiment.

[dubbayoo]

Please post any movies you have done a sucessful dvd-dvd conversion with forty-two here.

So far I've done only a few test transcodes with some of my DVDs, to gauge conversion speed, output file size, things like that. I've successfully done 5 discs so far (as it takes a long time to do the transcode, which is quite understandable given the nature of the operation and the fact I'm running a 700MHz iBook): JFK Special Edition (the Oliver Stone Collection version), Doctor Who: The Five Doctors Special Edition, The Beastie Boys Video Anthology (2 discs) and Pi.

All are NTSC/R1 and have worked perfectly. One was with the beta, the others with various iterations of the release version. So far, so good. The only feature not yet in a release version, which I have requested (and according to the progress page appears to be done -- THANKS!) is to allow the user to set a maximum filesize (chiefly for DivX transcodes) and to have the app auto-determine the optimal bitrates and such so the transcode can meet the desired file size and be as good as one can expect (obviously setting a size of 700MB for a 3 1/2 hour film like JFK will yield lesser results than a short film like something animated from Disney, something in the 80-minute range). That's the one thing I'm looking for in a "one-click" or "set it and forget it" (apologies for the Ronco line) conversion utility. So far I'm impressed... even using the "1 CD" option has yielded resulting files (using the default DivX settings) which truly fit on one CD as a result, even though that's not the true intention of the "1 CD" setting.

Thanks for the work so far, and I for one look forward to 1.5 and beyond. It's great to see developers who are so involved with the users.

[KaiCherry]

All are NTSC/R1 and have worked perfectly. One was with the beta, the others with various iterations of the release version. So far, so good. The only feature not yet in a release version, which I have requested (and according to the progress page appears to be done -- THANKS!) is to allow the user to set a maximum filesize

that was posted in error, actually...it doesn't do that

You *can* set whatever bitrate you want for 1CDR however. You can lower or raise it to try fit a longer movie on one disk.

It doesn't do any bitrate calcutations...sorry

Thanks for the work so far, and I for one look forward to 1.5 and beyond. It's great to see developers who are so involved with the users.

The info on the site is now very stale, hopefully updated soon. I'm glad you like v1...

We think folks will like v1.5 a *whole* lot better. We pulled out *all* the stops on this one, to make it into what we think is now the *definative* tool for normal users to change a dvd into either an avi Divx, a folder of bin/cues for vcd and variants, or a ready-to-burn .iso dvd disk image.

We've added a lot of what users were asking for, both Beginners and more experienced users.

It also works with more dvds and has more error checking. I even came up with a way around Apple's *incredibly stupid* column view Finder bug that was causing the stream.yuv grief.

Audio encoding for vcd et al is about 5x faster now. We have a neat way to let users pick different audio channels. You can even preview the audio with forty-two to make sure its the one you want.

We also have a CBR mode for mpeg encodes, so you can better control the size of your final output, if you want.

Also, for those of us with more pokey machines, we put in Quarter D1 DVD mode, which I personally find interesting. You sacrifice resolution for smaller files and faster overall encoding time, but you still get high DVD bitrates, AC3 Audio and anamorphic scaling. 1 min, CBR 7000K Video/AC3 audio is about 27MB. Its not as nice as D1 Full frame but its a whooole lot nicer than (S)VCD since it uses the full vertical 480 for widescreen stuff.

v1.5 also gives an Estimate of when mpeg video encoding will finish, updated through the process.

The setup GUI is fully localizable(not the stats stuff, sorry) , and is currently localized for English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Korean and French. We have a localization document ready for anyone who would like to help us, or if you don't have the dev tools or feel comfy in IB, then you can contact us and we'll meet you online and do it interactively.

And it works with, and detects PAL DVDs automatically.

You can install it anywhere you want, as long as there are no spaces in the path. Spaces in save paths are OK

It probably does a couple more things too I forgot to mention

We plan to have v1.5 released before the end of the week, barring any surprises.

We think people will like this version a lot. Assuming people like it enough to continue $upporting our development efforts, it will only get better still.

We still have an idea or two left

-K

[the_13th_saint]

*two thumbs up*
I'm impressed on how closely you've been working with the users, and also equally impressed with how well you have dealt with all the negative comments seemingly ignorant people make. Keep up the good work. We've needed someone to help us with our DVD transcoding for a while.

One quick question for ya.
I have two DVDs that have spaces in their volume names.
Any way to transcode them without too much of a headache?
Thanks,
-daniel