Forty-Two DVD-VX Plus for Mac3.3

I had the same problems with serial not working, I've emailed support 3 times in 2 months and had no reply. I did launch the program the other day and it notified me of an update that resolves this problem. I downloaded the latest version and it works fine now. I've now got version 3.3, I had 3.0.9 I think the developer is aware of the problem but should make a greater effort to inform his customers.

This developer is operating fraudulently - he/she/they will take your money and supply a serial which will (as in my case) work for a limited period of time only before ceasing to work altogether. My email requests for support/help/information concerning this problem have been ignored - so much for the meaning of DVD and it seems there's nothing I can do about it...ho-hum.

DUH! I didn't read the admin's comment about the 'unavailability' of the file. Please use the link in the previous msg at your own risk! I think I'll leave it for a bit.

Don't know why the header for this app says 'Currently unavailable' just above the 'More info' link, but this is where I got the app ... http://www.kaisakura.com/Forty-TwoDVD-VXPlus33.zip?Submit=Download+3.3+Now I'm going to give it whirl and see how it performs.

I have been using version 3.0.8 since December 2006 - now, as of 12 December 2007 my registration key no longer works in version 3.0.8. Have emailed the developer and await a reply.

As for people's Reg problems, I got this from another site. "The registration keys are locked to a specific time window from when they were generated. Solution? Set your computer's clock back to the date you received your registration email and try again. Open program, paste in reg code, and like magic, it accepts the key. Admittedly, a dumb way to do registration".

Interesting to read the comments. Developer has released v3.2 which is Leopard compatible so there appear to be signs of life. Perhaps he should be contacted again?

Must add my voice to everyone else complaining about this software developer. The software is very good since around version 3.0, but their support is non-existent. I've been a registered user since Feb 2005, but have been unable to use it since May 2006 because they DO NOT RESPOND TO EMAILS. No user's registration code worked after version 3.0.8, and the company didn't reply to complaints from ANY registered user after 3.0.9 was released. Even after sending dozens and dozens of e-mails asking how to get my old, fully-paid registrations to be accepted, I've never heard back from the company, the software engineer, their SUPPORT page, or any of the e-mails I can find. Stay away from this company!

Stay FAR away from this product. I am a registered user of it, and since the update, my registration code no longer works. Four emails and almost 2 weeks later, and no response. I've called them, but no one answers the phone except for a recording that tells you that no one is available. Something stinks here. If they even bother sending you a code after you pay, there is no assurance that it will work, and if it doesn't, you'll never hear back from them when you complain. Dispicable people.

What a long-winded name!

This WAS the absolutely best program - hands down - for H.264 conversion to PSP. It was slow and not optimized for Intel, but it worked reliably nearly every time. And it still remained the only straightforward DVD to H.264 option available. However my license stopped working after several months in the new version, and the developer has disappeared and is not longer available for support. As of this writing, the support forums have been taken down, and they are no longer responsive by e-mail. It has been about one year since I was able to contact Chris, one of the developers. 1 for value because I purchased it and cannot any longer even use it. 3 for stability because its implementation for some reason seems highly unstable in its interactions with mplayer at certain points. Of course, check out ffmpegx and Handbrake/Instant Handbrake for a better, free option. As of this writing, Instant Handbrake has no H.264 support for PSP, if that's important to you.

This software does work well, but there is absolutely no developer support, as indicated in some of the other reviews. Stay far away from this product or any other coming from this company - RnSK Softronics. I misplaced a serial number as well, and they don't respond to repeated emails. I had a similar experience with iPSP, except worse - it was buggy garbage, and I demanded a refund that I never received. Stay away.

I paid for an cross grade to forty-two dvd plus and the serial does not work. I have sent daily email messages to support. I have also left messages on there voice mail. I have not gotten any reply whatsoever. The local phone number listed for the developer says " no longer in service." This company should not be allowed to continue collecting money for products that do not work.

If your serial does not work, then re-set the date of your computer to the date of the confirmation e-mail from the developer. After that, your serial may work, and you can set your computers date back to today. That worked for me. These developers, Chris Long and Kai Cherry, should definitely not abandon their day-time jobs.

3 months of waiting and no reply from support regarding dysfunctional serial at all. MacUpdate should seriously consider to delist the apps of such irresponsible developers.

After downloading the demo and playing around with it, I found it to be a very workable program. So I dished out the $20. That was two days ago and even after 4 or 5 e-mails from me, still no serial number or reaction. In other words: $20 down the drain. Don't buy it! Even if you get a serial number, with this service, or better complete lack of it, it's wasted money. Marco

So I did my homework... went through all the forums and felt that fortytwo looked liked it had some potential. From a usability perspective I was impressed... and so I purchase the software online and install it. I start with trying to rip a dvd...and 12 hours later it still has 6 biziilion minutes to go. OK so I think well the software cannot do all DVDs.... So I get another one from my collection and start the process and many hours later I come back to my machine to find out there is an error and I am offered options "continue", "report" and quit... and it tells me it encountered an error it cannot recover from ... andnone of these options work... escept you guessed it "quit" So learn from my mistake... do not judge this book by its cover. Surprisingly after having to researchwhat the hell was wrong...I have found other frustrated people like myself. The biggest frustration is that there is no documentation... yes they say it is integrated with mac help etc... but it is all brochureware type stuff. Botton line.. I have yet to get my money out of this... should have spent my $$$ and given it to the red cross instead.. (I will still do that)

UPDATE: I finally got a reply (after emailing them again) and got my serial to work (i typed it all in, instead of copy/paste). They informed me that their forums are being changed and should appear again, and that they have an internal build that supports the new iPod resolutions, but that it needs more testing before release. So, there is still hope :-)

This program used to work great, and I've had good response from the programmers in the past, but it seems they have more or less stopped their business: 1. Their forums are no longer available (the link is on their web site but goes nowhere) 2. I've emailed them twice to ask if they plan to support the new iPod video resolution (640x480) but have gotten no reply. 3. I recently upgraded to an Intel iMac and my serialnumber no longer works - I've emailed them about this but have not gotten a reply. Unless they "resurface" I would suggest you spend your money elsewhere or they could be "lost".

I emailed support twice for problems with their registration number, but they don't bother replying. I can not recommend any software of any developer with such lousy support. As this is totally unacceptable, and just as a matter of principle, I may go legal and sue for damages if there is no reply by September 12, 2006, business closing hours. I have done that before and it was VERY effective. Companies with this lousy attitude do not deserve anybody's business.

Very fast utility. Default format is AC3 for sound which seems incompatble with QT but okay with VLC Is not very successful at encoding .eyetv files recorded from DVB where there are multiple soundtracks. It seems to pick a soundtrack at random to encode. I e-mailed the developers but received no reply. This cannot be taken as a criticism when one considers that Toast 7 has the same problem with these files. Roxio's response was that they did not understand.....

Crash's sometimes when a movie has finished converting. Rather annoying if you're trying to que up a heap of movies and it crashes after the first one. Also crashes sometimes when i try and add a movie.

I was testing both Forty-Two DVD-vx Plus and freeware iSquint. Had some concerns as usual about freeware, but Forty-Two let me down like hardly any app before. I dragged both an AVI and MOV file into the app and choose to convert for iPod TV format... after some four seconds I get a MP4 file that is 4KB in size. This happened with all formats and all converters I tried. On the other hand, iSquint did a tremendous job that took a while but saved loads of MB without sacrificing on quality. And no... it ain't the codecs. I got a whole bunch of them.

This version resolves an issue causing output height to be squished when encoding from some DVD's. That held me off from buying Forty-Two DVD-VX Plus. Now that this problem is fixed I bought this app in an instant. It has some nice features but an overly simplistic interface doesn't give you a lot of choices. Either way, it works better than the freeware Handbrake for me and I recommend it to anyone having problems with Handbrake. A nice addition would be the ability to encode on the newer H.264.

I encountered several program bugs and it froze up on my first attempt to encode an mpeg4 file. The interface is very simple, abit too simple and lacks several features that are found in most all other similar products. I finally got one file to encode, so with a little persistance it will work. I've worked with several video encoding software packages and I was dissappointed in this one. If this were freeware I would not complain but with it's stability issues and lack of features, I can not say that it is worth $20. With additional enhancements I believe the product has potential.

Nice quality and nice speed (ab 42 min for a Video TS of a movie 1h40min long on a macmini dual, 1disc mode of compression best quality). But there is a big but....... How to select the language?? It looks as not possible. Like that has no sense to make any Video TS compression.

I've been using the application since v3.0.2, about a month and a half, with excellent results for iPod Video, and lately, for the Epson P-2000 Multimedia Viewer. I just finished making four 2-hour feature length movies (2 hours each) for the iPod, and for the P-2000, using 42DVD-VX Plus and I couldn't be happier with the results from v.3.0.4. I'm using MTR v3.0 r-12 to rip the movies into a Video_TS file first, to save time, then I let 42VX do its thing. For iPod it's pretty self-explanatory: use MP4 format/MP4 audio/320 Resolution/Quality two clicks over from the left, toward Best Quality, generating a 2-Pass encoding sequence. About 3 hours later 42VX will finish the movie, and it's ready for import into iTunes. I always check the movie out in QuickTime Player Pro first, just to make sure it's good and the audio's synched, but that's about it. For P-2000, things are a bit more complex, but with a fast Mac CPU and Tiger 10.4.5 42VX eventually does an excellent job of getting a prepped movie, ready to be finished with QT Pro. Use these settings: Format MPEG4/Audio MP4/Resolution 640/Discs 1DVDR/Quality one click over from the left, generating a 1-pass encoding run. For a 2-hour movie, 42VX will take about 5-6 hours to make a 640-pixel VGA movie on a G4 1.8GHz DP CPU with 1.5GB RAM, for example. Then QTime Pro gives the movie a finish, because I've found that the P2000 is very, very picky about the kind of file it will play, and even with 42VX the sound will be out of synch unless you run the movie through QT Pro's Export feature: Export Movie to MPEG-4/Video Format "MPEG-4 Improved"/Data Rate 1000kbits/sec/Image Size 640 x480, 640x360, or 640x352/Frame Rate 30/ Key Frame Every 24 Frames--Then There's Audio to deal with: Audio Format: AAC-LC (Music)/Data Rate 192kbps/Channels Stereo/Output Sample Rate 44.100khz/Encoding Quality Better Voila! I flat guarantee that a movie done as above will play PERFECT in the P-2000 Multimedia Viewer. It takes about 10-12 hours with a fast G4 CPU to do the job, but it's worth it IMO. The P-2000 screen is incredible, and at 3.8" and 212ppi/264K colors, it makes a Video iPod look like a toy. Anyway, I give 42DVD-VX Plus 5 Stars for iPod, and 4 Stars for the P-2000. It's an excellent software package, and can do a lot more than I've written here including burn to disk, etc.

So far works great. I have had a very hard time converting videos recorded from my DVR (m2t files) into ipod files. Works great, so far no audio sync problems.

Well, I surely appreciate the fix for turning off the bell sound. Very quickly too! I have no problem with this app, it does what I need it to do and with no bugginess. Pretty darn fast compared to some of the other conversions apps too. Thanks alot Chris :)

Works okay but you can't turn off the dum little bell noise when it finishes converting in a queue...so every time one gets done it's waking you up with a stupid bell if you like to just let it go and go to sleep. Might not seem like a big thing to some people but I use my Mac for an alarm clock too, and with the volume up loud this little lack on the author's part is VERY ANNOYING.

Crap app. Crashes all the time when converting to PSP movies. Tried three different titles. 2 pass encoding.

Would me nice to add subtitles to PSP movies.

I want to uninstall the several third party files DVD-VX installed -- could someone list them quickly???

The iPod settings work great with my new iPod video.

Rapide mais de gros pixels ??? Sur quel codec faut il encoder pour iPod Video ?

This app has saved me a huge amount of time. I'm converting my video collection from Divx to iPod compatible video. The speed of 42's encoding is excellent. On my 1.25 ghz G4 it takes about 1.5 times the length of the video to encode and the quality of the output for the h.264 video is great. While I regret the loss of quality from my 2000 kb/sec Divx to 320 x 240 768 kb/sec, I've found the video to be relatively artifact free and very watch-able on my 19 inch monitor from about 5 feet away (where my bed is.) Truthfully, from that distance I can't tell the difference between the old and new video (with 20/20 vision). Plus, the videos are about a half of their original size, saving me money on HD space. No crashes or issues so far and I've encoded about 20 videos. Also, don't use the mp4 option on the iPod presents, the quality is terrible even at 480x480 (for some reason it encodes at 400 kp/sec on that setting!?!). Use AVC instead.

You better change the name of this application. It is way too long and somehow strange. Names matter.

I paid for this quite some time ago, and it has been pretty much flawless for me. I use it for my PSP to rip some of my DVDs to watch when I travel. The picture quality is excellent, and it's one of the fastest I've used. You can't ask for much simpler. Drag the DVD to the window. Choose the format you want your output to be, and start. The only "issue" is that it doesn't remember my settings for the number of passes and quality between runs. But this is not a big deadl.

I use this program for preparing my movies to be seen on the PSP and now on my iPod. For that use the global performance it is very good and fast. Encode a divx w/h QT Player 7.0.3 (H264) and probably after 20h. using a PowerMac double G5 u are still waiting (quality very good of course). Here the re-encoding takes ab 1h with good result. Never seen problems of stability at all.

I paid for Forty-Two in July 2004, but never got it to work. I emailed the developer in Jan. 2005, but got no response. Forty-Two was good in its time, but $15 for this now is nonsense, especially since it's not reliable. Handbrake can do the job much better and it's free. Unlike others who post who haven't paid for it or actually use it, I have. So the ratings are: Features=3 stars Ease of use=4 stars Value=1 star Stability=1 star

Impossible to download, blind URL. Would like to try it.

This program isn't bad at all, and when it first came out it was one of a kind. But D-Vision does a much better job, the developers respond quickly, even though English isn't their native language, and the program is well supported. And, it's free. If this does the trick, then buy it. But try D-Vision first.

Poor developer response and for the same $15, you could get ffmpegX, the do-it-all swiss army knife of video tools!

I used to use Forty-Two all the way back to when it was only the free version, and I have to say it's always had its benefits. I switched to DivxRay a year ago, but when Tiger came out and I was forced to upgrade from DivxRay 3 to XRay Video 4 I was very dissappointed and gave Forty-Two another try. Version 2.5 is great! It runs totally fine for me on my 1.33ghz powerbook, and the updates in this 2.5.1 release fixed the few problems I had with it (primarily an issue with VOB files that's now fixed). I'm only using this app from now on. So simple, intuitive interface, and gives me the results I'm looking for. Thanks and keep up the great work.

v2.4 still works for me, but v2.5 won't even start up -- it crashes every time on startup under Tiger. hmm...was looking forward to the new features

Suddenly it stopped working with this new software.

I've been using Forty-Two for a while now. I could not get the latest version to work and tried contacting the developer, but got no respponse. I think they left after cashing in on our money. Too bad. It was a nice little program.

This programs sucks because it does not convert all .wma files many times it make a file quicktime file that is zero kb.

I've used this app for about 6 mos. now, and it has yet to work better than 10% of the time. This is just horrible, what a poor app it is. Usually when I try and convert a .wmv, the start button never lights up, so it um....hardly ever works!

Hi - I'm trying to convert the audio from a DVD to .wav files using this program (just bought it), but when they are finished they have this 'skipping' sound to them, similar to a cd skipping. There is also a popping sound throughout, which eventually leads to this horrendous buzzing noise through the audio. I tried copying the files to my hard drive, then converting them, but that didn't solve the problem. Can anyone help? Thanks!

ça ne marche pas avec l'archos av480 l'image n'est pas synchro et le son déconne.ce n'est pas vrai que c'est compatible.

Is any other program other than Forty-Two DVD-VX Plus that can convert Windows Media Movie files into something quicktime can read. If there is is it free.

I still haven't been able to create a DivA file that doesn't end up out of sync between the Audio and Video. I've tried about 6 movies and have had the same issues with every one of them. Can't say I'm pleased with the product, especially after shelling out the money for it.

Just to contrast those who seem to be having support difficulties, I inadvertently erased my prefs (containing my serial number), and when I tried to re-input it, it didn't work. I emailed their support, explaining the problem, and received a response with a new working serial number within about 30 minutes. I still use Handbrake much of the time, but I've found DVD-VX very useful for situations with DVDs that were problematic sync-wise, or where I've needed subtitle support. I just hope that they've really worked out the audio crackling/popping issues in this release.

I too have had problems that have gone without response. My serial number seemed to disappear and unfortunately I could no longer find it. I sent an email detailing the purchase and requesting my serial number. I've made two attempts to contact the developer by email to get this resolved, but I have received no response whatsoever. Very disappointing. I recommend against purchasing this product as a result. If and when I get some resolution I will update my review

OSex, bbdemux, diva/3ivx, mac3dec all free nuff said

Note1: your MacUpdate link goes to the 'MP' product link, not to the 'VX' product link. Note2: downloaders: you may need to do a Save Link as or Download Link to disk (or related command, esp if using IE).

...I would like to bring the following to anyone's attention who is considering "investing" in this company and it's software. What follows is an email sent to thhe company after 3 months of trying to get support from them. Dear Mr. Cherry I am writing to you AGAIN in the hope that you might actually be able to spare a few moments to give SUPPORT to someone who has purchased one of your products. This is the THIRD email in regards to obtaining a new license for your Forty-TwoDVD-VX-Plus application - why am I asking this? Because recently I upgraded my Macintosh and have found that the serial that was supplied to me is no longer working when I install YOUR application onto this machine. I DID ALSO ask you about a transfer of license to my partner - but my request to date has fallen upon deaf ears. I am confused to what actually is meant by "support / General Questions / FAQ" as listed upon your website. AS TO DATE YOU HAVE FAILED TO GIVE ANY. Whilst your product is excellent - any aftersales service is totally lacking and that has left a bad taste in my mouth and a feeling of regret that I should of handed any money over to your company. I am tired of asking for this - this will be my last time to email yourself or the company - however I should bring to light the conduct of your service to others by posting this email on various mac-related forums so others are more fully informed about the product. I am hoping you will reply to this email and follow up by actually giving support to one of your customers. Yours regretfully XXX XXXX XXXXXX My purchase details as issued to me: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 31 Mar 2004 19:17:35.0375 (UTC) FILETIME=[D2C0A9F0:01C41754] Thank you for purchasing a Forty-TwoDVD-VXPlus2.0 Upgrade Serial.' Name: XXXXXXXXXXXXX Serial: XXXXXXXXXXXXX Contact Info Sales: sales@kaisakura.com Support: support@kaisakura.com Note that you have been automatically entered into our Prize Giveaway! Kai Cherry Ronin no Sakurakai Softronics, LLC. mrkai@kaisakura.com http://www.kaisakura.com ... So as it stands - I am still waiting for help from these people. And although I DO recommend the product, I just wish to say "buyer beware"...

I too have grown tired of being "milked" everytime an upgrade comes out for "Forty-Two" software. I have purchased licenses for both VX and MP and I am tired of the upgrade costs. I have switched to Handbrake and I have been satisfied ever since!

****************************** hey dudes.... dont waste your time or money go for "HandBrake"... awesome utility, easy to use, dont need additional instalations and its TOTALLY FREE! Uh! *****************************

I bought version 1.5.7 - worked fine with some user interface quirks. The Upgrade to 2.x costs $10, about the same price as the original 1.5.7. I positively won't upgrade, Handbrake does all I need.

if you read all the other comments below this one on this page you will soon realise that there is an application called handbreak, that is not only better but free. I hope this clears things up for you all. love jon

Well, there is at least another ripper around there that works well and is free.. Could the developer of 42 DVD-VX Plus tell us what features worth the shareware fee his program offers over HandBrake?

Tried it and it didn't work very well or fast even on a dual 2.0GHz G5. Handbreak is 200% better. It takes on hour to convert a dvd to avi on a G5.

why pay for this software thats a pain to install when you have Handbreak that removes ccs and rips your DVD to avi? (that would be a rhetorical question!)

works well but it has free equivalents

I tryed to run your software, My Icon just shows a question mark. I checked the Forty-two folder and it there but can not get it to run I payed you also Gillmary1234@netscape.net

Mencoder, Division, OpenShiiva, and Mpeg2works do a better job of moving DVDs to other media (avi, mov, etc). And free. -x

if anyone is having problems, a source of info can be found at dvdrhelp.com http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=9&topicdays=0&start=0

$15, it is slow and it doesn't work very well. Useless.

Notice that they keep coming out with bug fix after bug fix after bug fix after....?

thanks, but osEx and Diva stomp a mudhole in this program. did i mention they were free too?

If you are having any trouble launching the application we have had some corrupt images on the servers. They have all been replaced so please redownload if you are having any problems. Sorry for the trouble.

Once heralded as a great, ground-breaking program for the Mac (it was the first of its kind to combine all the steps of backing up DVDs into one), this software takes too long to be practical for home use. Locks up your computer for hours (longer for sub 1 GHz single processor machines) just to get final results. Eventually stopped using this program and gave up DIVX all together in favor of the better quality DVD-R with DVD2oneX (www.dvd2one.com) -- yes, it is more expensive, but worth every penny I've spent.

everyone who says "this should be free" - there /is/ a free version of forty-two. this is an amazing piece of software which finally brings DVD archival to the non-professional user, and the author is giving it away! don't complain that you have the /option/ to pay for a more polished version! i think the lack of gratitude here comes off as unbelievably selfish. i say THANK YOU Ronin no Sakurakai.

lol i stopped using this non-functional bugWare BEFORE they started charging $10.

Slow, $10, and requires other software. As others have indicated, there's something fishy here.

If you have not received your registration code yet please let us know by email. chrislong@gol.com. Whe have had 4 emails bounce back to us.

I purchased it 2 days and still have not recieved a registration code.Thought I'd let you know what kind of customer service to expect.

This software, besides taking to long to decode, it uses somebody elses decoder, wrapped all together. So it really sucks. There are tons of FREE software around that do the same thing. ALso I have notice that the costumer service is really bad and they are usually moody.

Making money with a gui wrapper. Even if it is complex, it's still a rip off: they should give a lot more credits to the softwares they use. Anyway, based on the price they're asking, it is very obvious they aren't paying royalties on any patents they use (mpeg2 decoder, ac3 decoder, mpeg4 encoder, etc): if you pay for it, you expect to have the right to use it. Try something like OpenShiiva, or Diva + mac3dec. Needs 2-pass, denoising, better quality scaling, more types of inputs/outputs, normalizing, etc... Again, this should be freeware.

Forty Two Plus is a great little program. Takes a while to rip, unfortunately, but does a good job with it. Mac Daddy: DVD2One simply compresses DVD down to a smaller size so you can burn it on to a DVD-R disc...if you don't have a superdrive there's not point

Forty-Two is an excellent program, but I've found I like DVDibbler a lot better. It is fast and very efficient. Just my two cents.

for gods sake....dont waste your time with forty-two, try DVD2ONE

I've used Forty-Two before, and while being one of the easiest to use DVD rippers for the Mac, if you wanted to simply rip a DVD to CD, then you had to "go round the houses", so to speak. With this app, it's made it insanely simple to do this task, something which has been a long time coming to the Mac.

9 to 18 minutes to rip a DVD with DVD Decrypter on an Athlon XP 2100 / Win 2K. 1h30 to encode VOB to DivX (1 pass) or 3h00 (2 pass) with Vidomi, same computer. DVD Decrypter and Vidomi are free (and fast). WTF happens to the Mac community, where are the good coders? We already have DVD2One (shareware), VLC (freeware) and MPlayer (freeware). We are still lacking a good freeware to rip and encode.

This is actually the easiest-to-use DVD ripping software I have seen for OSX. Click and drag the DVD icon from the desktop onto the window, and BOOM! you've got info about the disk and various encoding options. Select your language (be sure you do this - I ripped Animatrix into Japanese w/o English subtitles...oops) and the chapters/titles you wish to rip (open DVD Player, play the portion you're ripping, and check info for exact numbers), and start it going. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to encode - my iMac 800 FP (256 MB RAM) ripped 1:42:00 in about 10 hours, averaging 10 minutes DVD-time per hour of real-time. But the quality is decent - the only other complaint is that the resultant AVI file is not indexed, meaning if you try to play it as is through QuickTime (DivX Validated or not), you can't seek. Use mplayer, as it has an indexing function that allows you to fast-forward and rewind easily. It's a worth-while program, and hopefully future updates will quell these relatively minor problems

That's funny how lamers try to make money with DVD ripping tools on Mac OS X. Can you believe it, these applications are free for Windows. L-A-M-E-R-S !!!!!!