Digital Juice Closes down their forum

[Roger Bansemer]

I used digital juice but I found their interface was a pain to use so I gave up on it.

Roger Bansemer – PaintingAndTravel.com

[Stephen Mann]

Good – it wasn’t just me.
I was initially excited about their new Vegas projects, but the problems I was having with Juicer was really driving me nuts. I would load the product but about half of the previews would not be available in Juicer.

I probably spent five hours on the phone with their support person, and even gave them remote access to my PC a couple of times as they kept escalating the issue. Juicer and the Ready2Go products were reinstalled at least a dozen times. Libraries and indexes were deleted and rebuilt three or four times. I think I was my case that precipitated build 370. I was watching an engineer from the Juicer team look at, delete, build, move and otherwise examine my installation remotely when he said they would call me with a solution. About an hour later the support guy called me back and told me to download build 270 and try again. It still didn’t work.

I went away on a planned vacation, and when I got back, my case had closed due to non-response from me. (Sound familiar?) A week ago I threatened to expose my problems on the video editing forums I frequent. No response from DJ, so here it is.

What problems have others had?

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Tyson Onaga]

I have some DJ stuff and have had a few issues but none like what Stephen mentioned. My observations:

a. Some DJ stuff can be used w/o the Juicer. Editor’s Themekits, ETK Pro Singles, Animated Collections, etc. can be used directly in Vegas. These are jpg, mov, wav. The mov are QT PhotoJPEG or QT Ani(mation) if an Alpha is included.

b. Music, although the final output is wav, must be Juicer-ed. DJ uses a proprietary format (STX?). Eg, w/ MusicBOX you can select the tracks, then export. I only exported full length wav(s).

For DJ products requiring the Juicer …

c. Make an ISO image(s) first. I think Stephen’s the one who suggested this. Use Virtual Clone Drive to mount it when needed. Leave the friggin’ DVD in its case thereafter. These are on an ISO images ONLY HD.

d. Mount each ISO for Juicer installation. This is a separate HD for third-party content.

e. For Ready2Go products, I’ve only exported 1920×1080-30p. I let Vegas handle moving to any other targets (1080-24p, 720-30p, 720-24p, …) rather than re-Juicer. Again, I only Juicer-ed the WHOLE project; it is easier for me to find what I need from the Juicer-ed directory rather than re-Juicer.

f. I HATE DJ naming conventions. Eg, given project Foo, DJ’s SECOND variation is Foo Option 1 or Foo_Cop 1. I rename these to be Foo_v1, Foo_v2, Foo_v3, …

g. I have seen bugs in a few Ready2Go projects. One was ghost text on a .mov. Fortunately, the .mov was taken from Compositor’s Toolkit so I grabbed a similar .mov and replaced the problem one in the Ready2Go .veg

h. I have had problems reading one of their DVDs. I assume it is their DVD supplier vendor, not DJ directly. Tried 3 different computers. On the third copy they sent me, Windows was able to read/copy the problem .mov file.

Summary:
I try to spend as little time with the Juicer as possible. Eg, for a R2G product, I’ll ISO-image, Juicer install, Juicer export the WHOLE collection. Thereafter, if I need something, just copy the necessary Juicer-ed files, which in many cases is only the .veg files.

[Steve Rhoden]

Seems the forum was deliberately closed. Anyway,
I use a lot of digital juice content, and have no issue
with them at all, because, i only use the after effects
versions and use the juicer only once to extract the project
files and save them on a dedicated external drive, and
use whenever i am ready, without having to go back thru juicer.

Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia
1-876-832-4956

[Stephen Mann]

One thing I’ve learned the hard way – make an iso copy of the discs as soon as you receive them. DJ will only replace them if you can’t install the disc within ten days of shipping.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Tyson Onaga]

Stephen,
Can you give me some examples of Previews you can’t see in the Juicer?
– T

[Steve Rhoden]

Or if downloaded, extract and back up everything on
a hard drive.

Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia
1-876-832-4956

[Stephen Mann]

I bought four of the Ready2Go packages. The first one installed and ran beautifully, but when I installed the second one, half of the previews weren’t showing in Juicer. Even more odd, half of the first installed previews disappeared.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Tyson Onaga]

I only have a few R2G packages. We could try compare a directory in Juicer’s source tree and see if the installed files match. E.g.:

[dr]: / DigitalJuice / Juicer 3 / Catalog / R2GSVPRO_V##INS / [project] / [project]Sources

Best I can think of.

[Francois Blawat]

I too have had issues with some of the physical products I get in the mail. I used a special program to make sure the DVD was readable but there was a rash of bad DVD’s I was getting from them.

I am thinking maybe they should have stayed in Flordia making the DVD’s instead of shipping all of those things to India where the President/CEO of DJ lives.

I certainly hope they bring back the forum but if they do not, then my theory of them squelching the complaints still holds true.

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FixitMAD