Big 3 is a Big Bust for me.

[BackwoodsYahoo]

Well, if I add up all the hours and days of repeatedly trying to follow your guide, and watching your programs such as NuMenu4U fail repeatedly try after try, after going over and over the set up directions in your Big 3 guide, I've finally had enough of your Big 3. It seems pretty clear to me that this process is in it's infancy and still requires much needed work to make the entire overall process more compatable to different user PC set ups and more user friendly. The guide could be a little more user friendly to those who have never used the Big 3 process before, and the programs are just too unreliable (beta). After weeks of following this guide, I haven't been ablt to make it past the NuMenu4U process with out the programs stalling or giving me some sort of error. I'm fed up up with the Big 3. It sure would've been nice to have menus on my DVD back ups, but I relent, and I'm returning to the tried and true DVD2SVCD - A.K.A. - DVD2DV Movie only. At least I know it works with out fail. Some of you may think this post to be a bit harsh, but I can't be the only one experiencing such disapointment with your process. There is much improvement needed here.

Backwerdz:(

[Mac Sidewinder]

It may be only NuMenu4u that you are having problems with. De-select it from the options menu in DoItFast4u and see if the process runs all the way through. If it does then we can try to find out what is causing the problem in numenu. Don't give up without posting what problems you are having and giving us a chance to help you.

Mac

[Darklistener]

You have to improve yourself thats all

[Matthew]

Nice to have the confidence to know you are right and a great number of other people are wrong :)

[Trahald]

I have to say.. i agree.. backwerdz

Ive 'bust'ed out 200+ perfect backups with big 3 ;)

[The Edge]

Originally posted by BackwoodsYahoo
.....After weeks of following this guide, I haven't been ablt to make it past the NuMenu4U process with out the programs stalling or giving me some sort of error.....

Mate....I left my crystal ball at home so I won't be able to help you with that error.

Look, a bit more info needed. Like the others I have used this method many times. Admititly, it can be tricky to get used to and setup but it is really so easy. Used to be alot harder I tell ya

So, if you could reproduce the error message we'll try and figure this one out. We need to start somewhere ;)

[jel]

these are not the posts i like finding on a monday morning ...

first, to matters of courtesy and social 'netiquette' ...

would you be appreciative if i walked into your home and declared that your wife/partner/significant other was a complete failure because their culinary skills did not match my expectations?
come on, be serious. no-one is forcing you to do anything you do not want to. if you dont like these apps, dont use them. there are plenty of other tools you can use to make a back-up of your dvd's, so why come into this forum only to belittle other peoples hard work?

BUT...

if you would like to learn how to use these tools, there are plenty of options avaliable to you.

as has already been pointed out by The Edge, if you have a problem, please post your error messages and we will work through a solution with you. that is why we are here .. to help.

although you have been a member of the forums for longer than i, you have only made onbe other post in the 'big 3' forum, and that was in regards to automate scenarist/numenu4u, which zeul responded to with an updated fix. did this work, or do you still receive errors?

as for questions peratining the revised guide, i have already stated in the sticky at the top of the forum: Updated Big 3 Guide - DoItFast4U/NuMenu4U/ScenAid/BatchCCE/BatchIfoUpdate (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86322), 'if you have any comments/queries regarding the set-up and usage of these programs as detailed in the guide please post in this thread.'
please, if you have any issues about the guide, let me know and i will do my best to explain in greater detail, or fix the incosistencies. trust me, writing/revising guides is definitely NOT an easy task.

anyways, you have made your announcement and other members have responded with their thoughts and observations. the question now is whether you will accept these offers of help, or turn to the nearest one-click alternative.

the choice is yours ... either way, good luck

j

[Zeul]

I am waiting for info to help diagnose ......

[BackwoodsYahoo]

It was not my intent to slam, slander, or debunk the hard work and effort put in to creating the Big 3. Please understand that my post was generated from a build up of anger and frustration from spending accumalated time in the period of weeks in trying to get this process to work. When I authored the above post yesterday, I snapped from shear anger and frustration because I REALLY wanted this to work. In my angered state yesterday, I deleted all Big 3 programs from My PC. Upon seeing the tremendous support being offered from the generous people in this forum, I've decided to try it again. As in the guide, I'm trying "The Big 3" using Spiderman 2, but NTSC not PAL. I've set all program settings exactly as specified in the guide. I begin by right clicking on my default folder and selecting DIF4U in this folder. When DIF4U starts up, I assume as per the guide that the main movie is already selected. In the guide it states:

"From this point on all our settings apply to the currently selected VTS set, so come back to this selection and select the next VTS set when you're done configuring. Below I'll illustrate my setup for the main movie VTS set (VTS 01)."

Does this mean that once I've gone through this entire process for the main movie portion, if I wanted the extras I would then have to go through the entire process again, seperatly for the extras? As a person who has never successfully been through this process, I find this part of the guide confusing. Another point in the guide I find confusing is:

"In case you're not using NM4U with DIF4U, the No Scenarist option results in NM4U only creating a Scenarist script, and not actually importing it and compiling. Import Script Only would get one step further, writing a Scenarist script and importing it, and last but not least, Import, Compile , will create the script, import it and start authoring, but Scenarist won't be closed when compilation has completed. This allows you to see eventual problems during the compilation phase, you will then have to manually run the Update_Menu_Ifo.bat file to update the menu .IFOs and move the re-encoded filed to the correct directory."

I see no mention of this step futher on in the Beginning the actual process section of the guide. "you will then have to manually run the Update_Menu_Ifo.bat file to update the menu .IFOs and move the re-encoded filed to the correct directory."This leads me to believe that perhaps I'm missing a step some where, and what is the correct directory?. Could this be where I'm going wrong??

With the main movie in the guide preselected upon starting DIF4U, and self assured that my settings are correct. I begin the precess. NUMENU4U is started and gets all the way to Scenarist v2.7. As stated above Scenarist says it's finished. It has created Audio, Subpicture, and Video assets, I select ok. Don't know if I'm supposed to or not as there's no mention of it any where that I can see in the guide, I go to the Layout Editor tab and create the Layout. When done, I manually close scenarist. That's as far as I can ever get. nothing happens past this point. NUMENU4U appears to stall. Windows XP Pro still recognizes it as a running program, but nothing ever happens. The Overall Progress bar in NUMENU4U stays fixed at approx. 3/4 of the way done. I've even walked away from it for hours only to find it in the same state upon coming back to it. If I manually shut NUMENU4U down DIF4U is in the same stalled state and won't proceed any further either. The log in DIF4U displays "starting NUMENU4U Automated Scenarist" or something to that effect. There are never any error messages displayed, just programs that don't seem to get beyond a certain point. So after weeks of this, you can see how frustration, disapointment, and anger can build. If some one can help solve this mystery & help me to get this to work It would be greatly appreciated. For now I have no choice but to revert back to my original method using DVD2SVCD, as I'v got 25 movies to back up before Christmas. Any how, if there's any other info I can offer to help get closer to a better understanding of what went wrong please let me know. PM me as well if you wish. Oh, one other note, when running these programs, I've always made sure that ALL other programs such as NAV2004 and ZoneAlarm are disabled. The Big 3 Programs are the only ones running. I've made certain of this to prevent any interference and to keep as much of my P4 2.0Ghz CPU free for the process. I've got 1Gb of memory as well, and plenty of hard drive space. It sure will be a happy new year if I can get this mystery solved.

Thanks in advance.

Merry Christmas All.

BackWerdz:)

[BackwoodsYahoo]

although you have been a member of the forums for longer than i, you have only made onbe other post in the 'big 3' forum, and that was in regards to automate scenarist/numenu4u, which zeul responded to with an updated fix. did this work, or do you still receive errors?

No it did not work. I still have the same problem as descibed in the above post.

Backwerdz

[jel]

okay ... now we have something to work with :D Does this mean that once I've gone through this entire process for the main movie portion, if I wanted the extras I would then have to go through the entire process again, seperatly for the extras?what that part of the guide is discussing, is the various options that apply on a PER VTS basis in DIF4U. This includes the selection(keeping)/deselction(not keeping) of the subtitle and audio streams, and how the video type is processed.
the big 3 method will keep ALL assets/structure of the original DVD in tact. by default it does not remove anything, however by selecting the vts in DIF4U, the asset will be re-encoded, and any audio/substreams you deselect in a processed vts will be removed/dummied.
so, no, you will not have to run the process again to get extras, it is only the options that apply to each vts individually that need to be configured at this stage.
hmmm...hope that made sense.

the other issues you have seem to be involved with the numenu4u stage of the process. as you already have a thread on this topic, NUMenu4U Error When using DoItFast4U (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86319), i suggest we direct all discussions on the error to this thread. i would also recommend downloading the latest build of numenu4u/automate acenarist - see the new sticky at the top of the forum.
once you have downloaded the revisions and installed them, i would suggest you run numenu4u as a standalone application and monitor its progress. please remember that for full control of scenarist to be goven to numenu4u, you must have 'import/compile/close' selected in the 'scenarist options'
if everything works out, then restart the process via dif4u, so that all programs are integrated.
if you are still having problems, all is not lost.

as Mac Sidewinder pointed out, you can remove numenu4u from the loop until a definitive fix has been made. this will also allow you to process a title and get the hang of the programs.
so....

in your dif4u preferences:
deselect - 'post processing > do not copy menu files'
and
deselect - 'global options > re-encode menus using numenu4u'

try this option on a title which has a small menu that will not benifit from processing and see how you go.

sorry if any of the guide is confusing, however the advanced nature of the programs and the extensive control they give, results in MANY options which need to be explained ... although it may seem overwhelming at first, its pretty easy once you get the hang of it
:sly:

good luck and keep us posted on your progress

cheers

j

[Zeul]

I believe your trouble is coming from automate. This is a program that D3s7 and myself have written to allow our apps (NuMenu4u & Scenaid) to control Scenarist automatically. Unfortunately it does seem that occasionally things do not go as planned :( You shouldn't need to do anything yourself with regard to scenarist. When it hangs what is the last thing that is shown in the log window (You can enable/disable this window from the option in NuMenu4u Scenarist settings).

[influenza]

I do not want to put Zeul in the cold here :) but how big is your menu. If it's smaller than 200 MB you might want to consider leaving it untouched (no reencoding). To do this set a higher treshold for reencoding menus in dif4u. This is my personal setting btw. I don find too much trouble/too less gain to encode menus smaller than 200 MB (sorry zeul ;)). If you do this the menus will just be copied over.

This way we eliminate one step of the process and we can see if the rest will be fine.

I think you should consider yourself very lucky that you get all this support. I do understand that things can get very frustrating if they don't go your way. This is no reason to start some form of flaming though. I'm glad you see this as well and hopefully you'll be able to make some succesfull backups. :)

[BackwoodsYahoo]

the other issues you have seem to be involved with the numenu4u stage of the process. as you already have a thread on this topic, NUMenu4U Error When using DoItFast4U , i suggest we direct all discussions on the error to this thread. i would also recommend downloading the latest build of numenu4u/automate acenarist - see the new sticky at the top of the forum.

In compliance with Jel's request, I will post my results at the old thread. I have downloaded and installed the new scenarist automate for NUMENU4U and installed it. I'll try it out tonight. How do you tell the menu size? How do you tell which portion of the VTS set in DIF4U is the menu? Thanks for everyone's help. It really is greatly appreciated.:)

Backwerdz

[influenza]

The menu is usually the _0.vob file of your main titleset.

But like I set you can specify in dif4u how large a menu should be to have it reencoded with numenu4u. Besides that you can specify in both numenu and scenaid if you want the scenarist part to be completely automated. So it`s not an automate scenarist problem perse (although they tend to happend quite frequently unfortunately). If you do not specify to automate scenarist completely it will just be sitting there waiting for you manual intervention of course ;)

[BackwoodsYahoo]

I've posted my results at the old thread as Jel the Moderator instructed. I still need help. Please go to the old thread to continue. Thanks.

Backwerdz:)