Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore insists
 

Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore insists on transcoding

Here is the latest example of what Adobe have buggered up in their newest CC update that causes hours of fruitless work & frustration.

I hit this a couple of weeks ago & thought that it was a problem with my Encore setup. Now I hit it again & after some testing & searching on the Adobe support forums discovered that there is a bug in the latest version of Adobe Media Encoder included with Premiere Pro 7.1. When you export a video from Premiere Pro using a preset for H.264 Blu-ray then Encore still insists on re-encoding the video file instead of recognising it as a valid Blu-ray file & labelling it Do Not Transcode it leaves it as Untranscoded.
Adobe Community: Premiere Pro CC 7.1 Update Kills Bluray (H264) Exports...help!

The workaround that they mention on the forum is to roll back Premiere Pro to 7.0.1 but that looks messy. The Adobe folks have reproduced the bug so hopefully it will be fixed soon Adobe Community: Blu ray movies now appear untranscoded encore cs6 premiere 7.1

The workaround that I have found is to use the preset MPEG2 Blu-ray which if the duration of the video is not too long still has decent quality if you use a high bit rate. It also encodes really really fast on my machine (just about real time) much faster than encoding to H.264 Blu-ray.

It's not clear whether the problem is that the preset for H.264 Blu-ray in Adobe Media Encoder is not producing a valid file for Blu-ray or whether the file is OK but Encore doesn't recognise that it is valid and doesn't need transcoding.

I hope that this heads up will save others wasting hours of time as I have trying to find the cause of the problem.

Re: Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore ins
 

Yes that is a bug.
I export with lagarith and then encode in AMECS6.
Mpeg2 is a lesser codec. H.264 is more effecient and better picture quality.

Re: Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore ins
 

I've only just broken my "I will not pay Adobe each month to 'rent' software" rule, and signed up, and totally missed the fact that CC doesn't have an Encore version - all my work goes to DVD, so the internal link feature that I use all the time is now gone!

Re: Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore ins
 

When I was still on CS6 I never used DL (more or less a leftover from CS5. As that version flipped the fields when going from HDV to DVD via DL.. Exported everything from Premiere.
Now its a bit of a hassle having to encode twice.

Re: Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore ins
 

I agree but 40Mbps MPEG2 video is pretty decent quality & I doubt that any of my customers will notice. I deliver wedding videos on DVD & Blu-ray & the latter looks way better quality than the DVD with 8Mbos video.

Re: Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore ins
 

I gave up using Dynamic Link as it was so buggy & erratic. When it worked it was brilliant but I could never rely on it & it would spontaneously decide that assets had changed when they hadn't & force re-encoding.

If you do go through the route of encoding twice the fastest & best quality way is to export from Premiere Pro in a lossless CODEC like ProRes or Cineform.

Re: Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore ins
 

I am on a PC so no Proress and I do have Cineform but it does not export properly on my machine.
So 'stuck' with Lagarith...

Re: Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore ins
 

Clearly Encore needs to be put back into the toolset. Optical is still a big part of many folks' businesses. I was worried that this workaround of going back to CS6 to use Encore was not going to work for long while CC was growing forward.

Re: Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore ins
 

Happy News...
Looks like Blu Ray files transcoded from PPro CC and AME CC are now accepted by Encore CS6 as compliant and not requiring further transcode.
I'm not using optical as much as I used to, so I haven't tried in a while, but I just now transcoded a PPro CC AVCHD timeline using my prexisting (from PPro CS6) preset for Encore compliant Blu Ray h.264.
This time when I import the transcoded file into encore as a timeline, I get the desired "do not transcode" notification.
Sure enough, Encore quickly built & burnt a BD for me that plays like magic on BD player and looks stunning on HDTV.
Last time I tried this, Encore CS6 kept insisting that my file would need to be retranscoded no matter what.
All the workarounds looked pretty grim to me- but now seems like Adobe has fixed the bug
Many thanks...

Re: Latest version of Adobe Media Encoder creates H.264 Blu-ray files that Encore ins
 

Sorry, I should have updated this thread. Adobe shipped the fix in the latest update a few weeks ago.