I'm looking for some up to date info on PyFF'ing practices, from looking around I see that pyffi3k is the best version and I have that installed. However catastrophic failure resulted from pyffi'ing all my meshes with it. I used http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=37463 to automate the process and then repacked them in uncompressed BSAs. This crashed the game a few times and and then started up but with all the meshes missing.

Am I doing something wrong here? Are my methods out of date?

Stupid question: Did you set the proper archive flags on your BSAs?

I used PyFFI 3K briefly (before I found out that WB was still relying on Python 2.7, so I went back to 2.1.11), and I didn't have any problems with it. I did not, however, use the batch files (couldn't get them to work).

What flags? I just reset the timestamps on them and thats it

Use BSAOpt and you won't have to worry about whether you're setting the flags right. Just don't use it on "Oblivion - Misc.bsa" - for some reason BSAOpt messes it up.

I had no issues with PyFFI 3k and the meshes bsa, although I did repack as compressed. From what I've heard, most computers are able to decompress zip-stuff faster than they are able to read in, so you'll get more resources per second if you make it as small as possible. I also didn't use the optimization kit, as the PyFFI download should have everything you need. Just drop in "in", run the batch, and wait an age. Make sure to merge the out folder over the in folder, as there will be a lot of meshes skipped.

Tried with BSAOpt, total failure again. Game crashes or loads with messed up or missing meshes and then crashed.

Doesn't look like I'll be able to PyFFI anytime soon

I thought he'd fixed that? I did mine not too long ago with 1.6.2, and it works fine.

Just so you know, BSAOpt has similar functionality as Pyffi - Pyffi just does it a little better. You can do a whole BSA without unpacking it, AND get better compression in the end. I love it - it's cut down 500 MB from my Data folder.

That optimization kit is out of date and buggy to boot. PyFFI has all of the optimization written into itself now.

Yes, I see that now. Im going to see if doing it with just pyffi helps then

Success!, I knew I was doing something wrong here. Thanks all

Heh, could be - I'm still using 1.5

PyFFI's currently installed on my C drive, and I want to do the batch toaster thing, but I don't want to do it on C (its a relatively small SSD and I generally try to avoid doing a lot of copying to and from that drive), can I just move the "Toaster" folder to another drive and use it there, or does it have to be in the main PyFFI install directory?