DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

I'm thinking of getting the AdobeCS5.5 Master collection, and of course included is Encore.

While DVDA has served me well, it is glitchy with menus. Like when you hit the menu button in the middle of the movie, it goes to the menu page you were last at, not the main menu. Very irritating. (I might be mis-remembering the weird thing it does, but it's something similar to that).

Anyway, if you've used both extensively, are there downsides to Encore, and what are they? Does it handle dual layer discs fine?

I know the reputation for Encore is very good, but the learning curve seems steep, and I'm lazy, I'm the first to admit. Are there advantages that make it worthwhile? I have played with Encore CS3 and it was pretty awkward to me.

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

Hey Jeff,
I love it.......now. It was doing my head in for a while trying to set up some highlight pictures over chapters etc. but now all is good.
This will get you going if you haven't seen it-
VIDEO COPILOT | After Effects Tutorials, Plug-ins and Stock Footage for Post Production Professionals
Once you start making your menus out of short movies and overlaying text and pictures in Photoshop via Encore, you will never look back.
FWIW I never let Encore recompress anything, just render out of Vegas, drag into Encore, then build menus and finally the iso.

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

Thanks Gerald, I'll watch video!

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

I'm another person who will be watching the video.
With the rollout of new office computers this past summer, my company bought a site license for the Adobe Master Collection and it's standard on all machines.

Gerald, I have two questions for you.

Do you render MPEG-2 and AC-3 streams from Vegas for Encore?

I'm sure the answer to my next question is is NO but I'll ask anyway.
Is there any way to import markers from Vegas into Encore?

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

I dont know a way to import chapter markers from Vegas to Encore,
but you could,
Option 1.
split your track at all chapter markers in Vegas,
Save as AAF from 32bit Vegas,
Open in Premiere Pro,
Set Encore chapter markers at all event splits,
Use dynamic link "Send to Encore".
Then replace media in Encore with the "whole" file that you render out of Vegas.
Option 2.
Render out chapters from Vegas and re assemble in Encore. With some other DVD programs I would get a pause on every chapter change, but with Encore, for some reason I dont notice it at all.
I usually just use one file and chapter markers, but both ways work.

Re AC3, I normally let Encore compress the audio from PCM, but just checked and it will use AC3 from Vegas without re compressing.

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

Thanks very much Gerald.
I have a student who just finished editing a church play (I converted him from Premiere to Vegas!!) that he now wants to author in Encore so I passed your tips along to him.
I'll let you know how things turn out.

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

You're welcome Mike.
:)

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

Try changing the End Action>Destination to the top menu. In any case, I've never seen that problem, and producing DVDs for commercial sale, I check each one meticulously.

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

I'll check it David, but as I recall when I brought it up no one had a solution. As I said, I'll check it on this project when I make the DVD today, thanks.

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

Also, on many remotes, there's a Menu button but also a Top Menu button.

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

i was also going the encore route but the first few months of creating menus it was just so frustrating with glitchiness and crashing. my opinion is that encore is just not stable enough on my end. i do like the sw though since it is a very powerful system. definitely, you are right about the steep learning curve. I use DVDA, and you can definitely make things work close to what you can do with encore, just not so much the complex motion stuff.

Re: DVDA and Adobe Encore
 

I have CS5 and tried Encore on the first project I did after getting it. I will never go back to DVDA as it's so much simpler/cleaner/less glitchy.

I input .m2v and .ac3 files from TMPGENC into Encore.