scenarist compile not working

[TimIacobucci]

I am using the big 3 to backup Evil Dead. I have used this method successfully a few times before and I have had compile errors that I either figured out on my own or solved with searches without having had to post before. The thing is with this one I get no error it just never does anything. I manually open the created .scn file and everything looks good as far as I can tell but when I start to compile, it starts chuggin and the program becomes unresponsive as usual. The processor load is pegged at 100% and the scenarist processes (there are 2, there are suppose to be 2 right?) are running fine with the cpu load and memory usage fluctuating normally not at all like a crashed process, but not a single byte is ever written to the selected directory after hours of intensive processing. It never finishes and never crashes to give me any sort of error information or log output. I have no idea how to troubleshoot this. Has this happen to anyone else or is there anything I should try to remedy this?

Also as this is my first post I want to thank all you guys for the fine programs and all the support given on this forum regardless of the time you have or don’t to help me with this current problem.

[Eyes`Only]

That is really strange. My suggestion would be to start Scenarist manually, maximize it, and then import the .scp. Do NOT click off of the Scenarist screen, so you can pay special attention to exactly what the log says as it's being imported. What's the last thing it says before freezing?

Btw, you can highlight and copy the log in Scenarist, but you can't right click, you just have to highlight it with the mouse and then press Ctrl-C to copy it to clipboard.

[TimIacobucci]

I did as you said and imported the .scp, fullsized with information window up and hit start. It freezes before anything new even loads into the display. The last thing is says is that the import was successful. Thank you for the help is there something more I can try?

[jel]

hi TimIacobucci and welcome to the forum!

to be honest the only times i have scenarist freeze is on import. usually the only time i have errors on compile, is when there is something scenarist doesnt like and usually bombs completely (HLI buffer underruns anyone? ;) )

maybe if you can provide us with some additional infomation it might give us some more clues.

1. please provide a list of programs used, and their version numbers

2. please provide a detailed workflow of your back-up method - scenaid? RA? batchcce? batch encode? etc and order of use.

3. did you do any pre-processing of this disc with an external application?

4. you state that you have successfully used this method a few times before. was this recently? have you changed any harddware/software/drivers since then that might conflict with scenarist?

5. scenarist states that the import was successful. could you please check in the 'import tab' - bottom left window - to see if there were any warnings/errors reported?
cheers
j

[D3s7]

Originally posted by TimIacobucci
I did as you said and imported the .scp, fullsized with information window up and hit start. It freezes before anything new even loads into the display. The last thing is says is that the import was successful. Thank you for the help is there something more I can try?


Only time I've ever seen this happen is when there's something wierd w/ the script...

After you import, see if you can go to the tracks tab and navigate through the tracks... my guess is on one of the tracks (probably one of the first ones) your going to see the same issue... Scenarist will just lock up or pause for a long time when you hit that track.

If you can find the track that will help troubleshoot this as well

[TimIacobucci]

Hi, all and thanks for the input. I went through answering jel’s questions in order but got to one that seemed much more relevant than the rest. So I have all the other information at the bottom.

5. scenarist states that the import was successful. could you please check in the 'import tab' - bottom left window - to see if there were any warnings/errors reported?
cheers

I’m not sure why I didn’t check this before, I guess I must have assumed I would get a more obtrusive warning if there were errors on the import and thought all was fine when it said it was successful. I guess that was stupid not to check it before, I am pretty new to scenarist. Thanks for putting that so nicely too and not saying did you actually check the log it generates on import which is the whole damn point of importing the .scp that way.

Well I looked again more thoroughly and found one series of errors and one warning about a track not being there and making it a placeholder.

Error "Video Track "VTS03_001_Track"" has only Wide display mode for Subpicture Language "Not Specified". Please assign both Wide and Letterbox display mode to this subpicture stream, or create a different stream for Letterbox.

This occurred for all 8 tracks of this vts. So I checked the letterbox option for these subtitles as well.

Then I went and looked at the missing track and everything was set for this to be encoded but there was no mpv in the same vts folder with the other 7 chapters. I manually encoded this and imported .scp again and it complains of a change in the duration of this mpv.

I have saved this and compiled again and it seems to freeze just the same.
I will leave it going for a while in case it is working and this is where I am at as I post this. I will update again saying whether it actually finished though I sort of doubt it will.

What is a reasonable amount of time to wait for a compile? The few I have done in the past didn’t take very long at all if I remember correctly maybe a few minutes. Also does scenarist always appear as if it has died accept for processor load fluctuation when it is working? I only began really paying attention to it when things starting going wrong so I’m not really sure how to tell if it is dead or still chuggin.



1. please provide a list of programs used, and their version numbers


I am using dvd decrypter 3.5.4.0, doitfast4u 1.4.0, scenaid 1.0, batchccews 0.9.1.5 beta, numenu4u 2.0.6 (though I didn’t use it this time), cce sp 2.67, scenarist 3.0


2. please provide a detailed workflow of your back-up method - scenaid? RA? batchcce? batch encode? etc and order of use.

I backed up to iso with decrypter.

Doitfast4u deselected numenu4u. I’ve had a few weird things with numenu4u in the past and the menus for this title were not very large so I decided to skip this step to avoid this until I can better figure out what is happening. I think it is something simple with the selection overlay aspect ratio it isn’t too important so I thought I would mess with it a bit and search more before I asked about it.

Scenaid and then batchcce manually import cce list because there is a weird thing with the scenaid auto load of batchcce. It cannot find the cce executable opening in this fashion for some reason.

Encode goes fine and then open script with scenaid and compile in scenarist.

3. did you do any pre-processing of this disc with an external application?

I didn’t do any pre-processing specifically because I am new at this and didn’t want to muss anything up. I tried to keep it as clean as possible to get the process down good. I have been removing stuff I don’t want like the commercials post with pgcedit. What sort of pre-processing can tend to cause errors?

4. you state that you have successfully used this method a few times before. was this recently? have you changed any hardware/software/drivers since then that might conflict with scenarist?

It wasn't that long between this one and the last successful one. Possibly a few software changes but nothing I can think of that would affect scenarist. Not that I really know what would or wouldn’t affect it but I don’t think I did anything major. Sorry to be vague on this but I have been stuck on this for a while now maybe a few weeks before I posted here I can’t really remember to well what I may have done in between this and the last one but I really don’t think anything that would cause this.

I wish I had the hd room to try another and see if I get similar errors to rule this possibility out. I need to encode some other stuff before I burn it to clear some room though, and unfortunately that requires more space itself. I may just have to scrap this for now and try some other ones and come back to it so I can get my 20 gb back. That would at least solve this hardware/software question. Are all you guys better at hd space management? 6 hard drives and I am still always juggling for room between them.

Only time I've ever seen this happen is when there's something wierd w/ the script...

After you import, see if you can go to the tracks tab and navigate through the tracks... my guess is on one of the tracks (probably one of the first ones) your going to see the same issue... Scenarist will just lock up or pause for a long time when you hit that track.

If you can find the track that will help troubleshoot this as well

It never froze on me when I was navigating through the setup. I could look at all the tracks and scenario and all. Thanks everyone for the help here I really appreciate it.

[jel]

just a few observations (i'd post more but a bit busy at work today :p)
What is a reasonable amount of time to wait for a compile? really depends on the amount of subtitles and number of vts'es, but generally i find anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes. I am using dvd decrypter 3.5.4.0, doitfast4u 1.4.0, scenaid 1.0, batchccews 0.9.1.5 beta, numenu4u 2.0.6 (though I didn’t use it this time), cce sp 2.67, scenarist 3.0 might i suggest a little updating?

i really think that updating from scenaid 1.0 to the latest version 1.6 may well help your situation. D3s7 is making improvements and bug fixes by the day :)

i would also suggest using batchencodem2v, instead of batchcce, until batchcce can be updated and thoroughly tested. also bem2v (is this what we're calling it? or bem? or batch'em? or biatch'm :D ... sorry i digress...) has some pretty cool options to use freeware and alternative encoders, plus it automatically checks for angle type, can write the .vif file out (is this option released yet?) etc etc etc.

i have also heard some very negative comments as far as scenarist v 3.0 is concerned ... i would suggest either upgrading to v 3.01 or downgrading to 2.7.

btw, what movie is this that is bombing? and region code.

cheers
j

[D3s7]

I have to disagree w/ Jel on the Scenarist part

Scenarist 3.0 is a very decent solution, has it's own bugs but is fairly stable. If your going to change, downgrade to 2.7 or 2.6

Avoid 3.01 as if it was a plague.... it has horrible issues

[TimIacobucci]

The scenarist version is 3.0.1. The dvd is evil dead region 1. I have updated the other programs and tried again with the same issues. Would just having the most recent version of scenarist cause this? That seems fairly insane to me to think such an expensive and professional software such as this could have such major problems as to be entirely non functional. I mean the rest of the program doesn't really matter if it won't compile. I don't even think I would consider that a bug, thats like a hey manybe we really shouldn't release this to the public yet sort of deal.

Also sorry for the wait between responses, I had some crazy weird connection issues and I couldn't post a reply.

[D3s7]

well as I said... avoid 3.01 / 3.0.1 it's evil