Dodgy Adobe Encore Transcode settings
 

ARGH!!

Finally finished my first wedding project. It's taken some considerable time but i'm finally happy with it.
The problem is I left Adobe Encore Transcode settings to "Automatic" on the understanding that it would then compress all the footage etc to just the right size to fit on DVD. After a good few hours of transcoding, it now says "Contents too large to fit on media"!!!

Does that mean the automatic settings just don't work!?
Whats the best way to solve this?
Do i now have to go about reverting to original files and then transcoding them all over again? Should i trust the automatic files to give it another go or set my own settings?

ARGH! I want it to be finished!

How long is your project?

Full movie of about 70 mins. Highlight reel of about 10 mins. Vid clip for motion menu of about 1.5 mins

Well, that should work. Eighty minutes shouldn't be to long. Click on the "Disk" tab and check if you have any DVD-ROM content that could be putting you over the limit.

Believe me, I know the feeling!

Can I do this in Encore?
 

I have an idea for a DVD menu to be made in Adobe Encore, but I'm not sure if the program can do it. The thing i want to do is, I have a strange-looking photoshop-made figure with a DV tape for a head on the left side of the screen, with a VX1000 in his hand. I want the menu to be animated so that when you have the cursor on a certain button, the camera in his hand will move to be "filming" the button you have selected. Is this do-able within Adobe Encore?

-Thanks,
JK

There are two ways you could approach this, one simple, and one complex. The simple method would be to use a series of menus, one for when each button is selected. You would have the buttons set so that when the viewer moves to each button it is auto activated to go to the appropriate menu, which would show the camera pointing at the selected button.

Of course with this method the camera would jump to pointing at the button, as it is a still menu; there would not be a smooth, animated tilt of the camera from one button to the next one. Creating such animated tilts would be a complex process, and I don’t know of a way to accomplish this in Encore DVD. I don’t know if any DVD authoring software under a $1000 can accomplish such a task (DVDLab ($100-$200) might be able to). Even with higher end software, while it may be feasible to accomplish such transitions seamlessly for navigating a series of buttons on a set-top DVD player where the viewer has to follow the buttons sequentially in one direction or another, I'm not sure it would work for viewing on a computer where the viewer can randomly jump from one menu button to any other menu button.

After putting some more thought into it, I think you could accomplish animated tilts of the camera from one button to another in Encore DVD.

You would have a somewhat similar setup to the simple method I described in my earlier post, but instead of still menus you would have to use motion menus. You would end up having to create more menus, however, as the animation would have to be different depending on which button the viewer is coming from.

Here is how you would set it up. Lets say you have a main menu with four buttons (A, B, C, and D). When the menu loads A is selected. From here viewers would have three possible button choices (B, C, and D). Thus, you would have to prepare three animations of the camera pointing from A button to each of the other buttons. You would duplicate your main menu three times and add the three animations as a video background, one to each menu. In the original menu, you would link the B, C, and D buttons each to the motion menu that would show the camera animated to the respective button.

You would then have to repeat the process you just did for the "A" button for each of the additional buttons. As you can see, you would quickly have quite a lot of menus (for this example you would end up with thirteen total for the main menu), and have a number of animations you would have to set up and render (twelve for this example).

Adobe Encore woes.
 

Question1: Is it possible to put several video- or audioclips in one timeline?

I've made multiple animated written documents and want to add chapters so people will be able to leaf through the pages. I also want music to heard all the while this timeline is playing, but dont seem to be able to put more than one clip at a time in the timeline.

Is there anyway of fixing this that doesnt involve me having to render all of it into a giant file?

Question2: I've made an intromovie with music(added in encore), and want the music to continue into the first menuscreen. Is there an easy way to do this?

Any help will be deeply appreciated,

Eirik

No, there is no way to do this.

Check out the section titled "Controlling menu display time and looping" in the Encore DVD 1.5 program help file or User Guide (it is on page 109 in the Encore DVD 1.5 User Guide). In the Encore DVD 1.0 help file see "Understanding menu display time and looping" (page 126 in the User Guide). What you need to do is set your intro movie and music as background video/audio for your first menu, and then set the point that you want your menu buttons to appear/become active (called the menu Loop Point, as the menu will loop back to that point once the end of the menu video/audio background is reached).

In the help menu, look for "Playlist". It's a way to string assets together. I think you still have to create seperate timelines for each clip but using playlists, you can string multiple timelines together.

Imagine this, you are doing a DVD of a rock band. You have 5 songs with interviews between them. Using Playlist functions, you can create a button to play a playlist with everything, 1 song, one interview, one song, etc. You can also create another playlist that plays only the interviews. You can create another one that plays only the music. Without playlist functions, you need to make several full versions to do this. A version of the full video, rendered and taking up DVD space for the full version, a full rendered version for the interviews and yet a third rendered version for the music only.

Playlists save tons of space giving more flexability.

Hope that helps.

Sean McHenry

That would work, but it sounded like he wanted a music clip to play continuously as viewers looked at the clips and moved between them ("I also want music to heard all the while this timeline is playing"). You can't do that with playlists.

Big thanks to you both. I'll check out both solutions and get back to you, might be helpful others. Great website btw.

Eirik

if you output all your video files as mpeg2's for dvd you will save a ton of room and you wont have to transcode... you could test that and see how it looks after you burn a test copy.

I need to output encore menu to tv for preview
 

Heh Guys,

I have tried outputing my menu in encore to dv camcorder and tv but no luck. I tried preferences video out and it just says offline. I click on buttons search etc, no go. I use tv output in premiere 1.5 all the time.
Preview menus on a DV device (Adobe Encore DVD 1.5)


Adobe Encore DVD opens the Menu Editor window when you create a new menu, import a menu you created in Adobe Photoshop, or open an existing menu.

I have copied this from adobe and have tried this-

To preview a menu in the Menu Editor window on a DV (IEEE 1394) device, set the Video Out preference:

1. Choose Edit > Preferences > Video Out.

2. Choose Show Menu Editor On DV Hardware.

3. Choose the DV device from the Device menu. (If the device isn't listed in the Device menu, make sure that the device is attached to your computer and turned on, and then click Search to refresh the Device menu list.)

4. Click OK.

Please help me solve this as it would save me lots of time in burning.
Regards, Rob

Sorry if you know this already but,
Your camera needs to be in VCR mode and your camera has to be able to accept incoming DV and send it out to the analog outputs. Not all DV camcorders will do this.

On my camera I have a menu that allows me to turn that off and on. Look in your menus for a function that allows DV In/Analog out or something like that. Hit the manual for the camera and make sure it can do that to.

If you are sure that is all OK, I can only tell you the output to DV function in Encore 1.5.1, at least for me is a by odd. Works on some things, not others.

Last, I seem to recall it only really works for me if I use "Preview" to watch the preview of the DVD. That means you have to render everything including your menus. If it isn't rendered, it won't play out to the monitor.

Sean McHenry

Thanks Sean. Yes I use this method in Premiere all the time. Seems encore are lacking control over the outputs for dv though. I output through a canopus storm bay but can not seem to get a signal in encore. I have everything rendered as you suggested and when I check the video out in preferences its all blank, how do I get it to talk to the camera. I have version 1.5.1 also. I will keep trying until another suggestion hopefully comes along.
Thank you.

Any other ideas please as I would like to find solution

Have you tried reading the Adobe forums? You probably have. Just wondering if this is something that never really worked right or if it's just us that have had issues.

Sean

Yes, I checked the adobe forums. They did not seem to know of any issues.
I will keep investigating though. Thanks for your help from Ohio, long way from Ohio America to Gold Coast Australia.

I'm also an Amateur Radio Operator. I'm used to the distances.

Sean McHenry (KB8JNE)

Update:

I wasnt able to find anything about playlists(using encore 1.0) so ended up rendering a long file and using chaptermarkers, works ok but the music will of course change when skipping back and forth.

For my second problem I just edited the music(snipped off the first five seconds for the intro and started five secs into the song on the menu) before importing into encore, works a treat :) .

Now I've burnt the project and everything works fine on my workstation and laptop, but I cant get it to play on my Xbox. Does anyone know if the Xbox is difficult to get DVDs to play on or will I have a problem getting the DVD to play on normal players?

I found that the greatest compatibility for DVD playback on most DVD players and game consoles is to burn a DVD-R (not RW) on the slowest speed possible. I purchased a couple of DVD players to verify compatiblity (Zenith/LG, a Sony PS2 and an Initial $39 player). It seems like the PS2 and Zenith have issues with DVD+Rs and high-speed DVD-Rs. That $39 Wal-mart special plays back everything I throw at it. But I've made it a habit to burn only 2x DVD-Rs for distribution (Imation and TDK I find to be the most reliable brands for PS2 playback). I have two DVD burners, on from Lite-On and the other from Toshiba, so I don't think burner brand is an issue.

I know that doesn't help you with your Xbox specifically, but try burning at a slow speed on a DVD-R and see if that works.

Archiving files with ADOBE ENCORE DVD ??
 

Can anyone tell me the best way to burn all my .jpgs, .wavs, .txt, and other misc. files on my computer using adobe encore dvd v. 1.0.1.. I cant figure it out.
thank you. These files are not part of any dvd project, I just want to get them of my computer.

Encore DVD is NOT the tool for this. Download a trial version of Nero and burn everything as a data disc.

Agreed. Technically, you CAN archive with it by adding content to the DVD-ROM folder of the DVD (see the manual or help for the steps), but it is not the most elegant solution. Far easier to use the software that is bundled with your DVD writer or one of the inexpensive apps like Nero or Roxio for those kind of tasks.

Adobe Encore 1.5 crashes my computer when doing the Motion Menu Rendering
 

I don't know why this is happening, but I recently upgraded my system (now have a Pentium Dual Core 2.8Ghz with 1GB DDR on Asus P5LD2) and when I click on Render Motion Menus in Encore's file menu the computer becomes unresponsive at first and eventually freezes completely. I sometimes get a few green bars, sometimes it even goes up to half the task, but it always ends up either crashing or completely locking up.

By clicking on Ctrl/Alt/Del I accessed the performance tab to monitor what was going on and I've noticed that when I click the Render Motion Menus in Encore, both CPUs (or should I say both cores) peak to 100% usage and stay there until the freeze. Now Encore is the only application that will bring the CPUs to their very limit. Even encoding MPEG2s or complicated effects in PPro 1.5 will only use between 70-90% CPU consumption. Note that this system is not overclocked.

So I'm thinking the problem is with either Encore overloading the CPUs (if that's even possible) or (gulp) a hardware defect, maybe overheating, not sure really, but before bringing the whole computer to the store and pay a premium price to have the tech guys figure it out, I thought I would ask here first if this is a known problem and if there is a known solution. Is Encore having compatibility issues with dual CPUs? Or should I dig deeper to find what's wrong?

Thanks for the help.

EDIT: After installing Asus PC Probe, I was able to see that normal usage temperature for the CPUs is 50-55°C (around 130°F). It climbs to 60-65°C when I try to render the animated menus in Encore. It looks like the computer becomes abnormally slow when it hits 60°C or just about. Now I might be way off here, but this doesn't seem like crazy values for a dual core CPU. If it was going up to 75-80°C I would be worried but 60°C? Can this really be the problem? Hmmm...

Hi David,

Hmmm, not sure on this one. Just guessing, but the only software issue I can think of is that Encore uses the same encoding engine (Adobe Media Encoder) as PPro, so if you haven't gotten the Main Concept update or PPro 1.5.1, it is possible that this is a variant of the "Cannot render video frame..." error people have gotten in PPro.

On the hardware side, I presume that the system is transcoding during the motion menu operation, which is very CPU intensive. If your CPU actually is getting hot enough for the system to throttle it back, it may be that it isn't actually locking but just rendering so slow that it seems like it? I would at least double check that the CPU fan is in fact operating properly, that the cooling fins are not clogged with dust, and that there is adequate air flow through the case (maybe even try leaving the cover off while troubleshooting).

Those are just wild guesses...hopefully they help but if not maybe someone else has a better idea.

Thanks for the suggestions Pete. I had updated the MainConcept encoder a while ago (I was getting errors), and it now works fine in PPro. The problem is exclusive to Encore.

As for airflow, the CPU is 1 month old, sparkling new, fan is working at optimum speed, no dust and I always leave the case cover off. I don't know what it is honestly, but I'm really starting to get the idea that either there might be an Asus defense mechanism that kicks in at 60°C, or that the CPU is damaged. I have operated applications at 100% CPU activity before, and although it makes it hard to use other programs, the task responsible for the high CPU usage should continue just fine. I'll call Intel on Monday to know a bit more about safe operating temperatures, but it would come as a shock to me if they said this high a temperature was risky. My last AMD CPU would regularly go as high as 75°C without a glitch.

You're right about it getting extremely slow, rather than completely stoping responding, but it becomes so slow that there is pretty much nothing else you can do. You can no longer open other programs, you can no longer click on anything, it is just no longer functional, and the render pretty much gets stuck at whatever number of green bars it was at when the performance started to go down the drain. Moreover, if I click on something fast repeatedly (I confess, out of impatience), the mouse freezes for a couple seconds and I get a beep sound from the BIOS. I then have to reset the computer. This doesn't sound good I'm afraid.

I don't think that is a good idea for optimal air flow. An average computer case is designed to have an airflow that has air drawn in at the bottom front of the case, and then flowing up over the CPU and out the top back of the case. Leaving the case open would disrupt this flow. It's okay for short periods of time if you are working on the computer, but I wouldn't leave the case open for long periods of time.

I know that Intel CPU's have a feature that throttles back the CPU should it get too hot to prevent damage to the processor; I'm not sure that AMD processors have a similar feature.

I get cooler temps with the case opened though. That's why I leave it that way for now. It's also because the only place I have under my desk to put the case is partially obstructed, making it hard to have proper airflow.

Today I encoded a few video files using my newly acquired Procoder software and it brought the CPU temperature to a whoping 72°C without any glitch whatsoever performance wise, so I now know my problem with Encore is definitelly not hardware related (at least not as far as the CPU temp is concerned).

Having done some additional tests with Encore, I can say that it progressively got much worse. I got abnormal operation errors all over the place and trying to create subtitles was a nightmare. It was so slugish and slow. I could count 5-10 seconds between finishing writing a line and being able to play back the MPEG2 asset once again. I then started getting some out of memory errors (got 1024MB). I just had to give up. I embeded the subtitles into the PPro timeline and gave it that way to the client. If not I would still be trying to figure out what was wrong. I don't think I'll use Encore again unless I find somewhere a fix for this. I might go the Ulead route instead for now (damn shame because I liked working with Encore/Photoshop so much).

I searched Adobe's Encore forum and found only a smattering of somewhat similar problems. Seems that the Matrox RTX100 Video editing card was associated with problems for some, and there was at least one who used a Pinnacle card. Another person accidentally exceeded the bitrate limit for a motion menu and got a freeze. So not sure what the problem could be.

There are only a few basic things I can think of to try:
- Double check bitrate settings for rendering (no extra 0's, etc)
- Disable as many tray icons and apps, and non-essential hardware as possible to seek out a driver conflict
- If this is happening only with a particular clip, try creating a new project and linking only the problem clip.
- Try transcoding in PPro first and see if the same footage imported as DVD-compliant MPEG still has a problem.
- If you haven't already done so, try uninstalling Encore, rebooting, re-installing and rebooting.
- If you have a second computer with a DVD burner and different hardware config available, try installing on that to see if the problem continues.

Sorry, I can't think of anything better than that so far.

Ah, I see.

By the way, Adobe has released an Encore 1.5.1 patch. Have you installed it? You can download it here: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloa...atform=Windows

Hi
I cant find in the original posting wether You are using a Matrox RT.X100, if You are try disabling the WYSIWYG, output to external TV monitor.


Regards.


Peter.

Encore 1.51 produced DVDs don't run on DVD player
 

Hi everybody,
I am producing DVDs with Adobe Encore 1.51 burning them to a Philips DVD+-RW DVD8631 (Firmware CD21) which is the newest firmware. Encore's preview function shows me perfect DVD menues, buttons, firstplay, etc. But, when putting them into a PC-based DVD drive, or stand alone DVD player (I tried even two different ones.) it spins around like crazy and then either never starts or starts with very slow, interrupted video with or without audio and in some instances even crashed my Bose Lifestyle 28 system--had to pull the plug to get it reset so I can get the DVD out again. Looking at the file system via Windows Explorer looks fine--I was even able to copy the bad DVDs without any improvement obviously.
I burned data DVDs with the same burner without ever having trouble.
What could be the reason?
I use Adobe Premier 1.5 Media Encoder to export to m2v files (High quality, CBR transcoding of DV content) MPEG2-DVD, NTSC, Maximum Bitrate [Mbps]: 8.0000 (high quality), PCM audio.
As stated, in Encore all looks cool: audio transcoded, video not. I build then with "Set Layer Break Automatically" set and more or less using the defaults. I define the first play which ends which has the menu as stop action. No subtitles or any fancy multiple audio settings, etc.

Any help would be appreciated. BTW: I used for two years more or less the same procedure but on a different computer, with an older version of Premier and an older version of Encore---never touch a running system, I know. But, the old box was too slow, I had to upgrade.

Any idea in which direction to trouble shoot?

Thanks!!!
Heiko

To pinpoint if it's Encore, build the DVD to a folder, then use Nero or whatever burning software to burn the Disc. If it works, it's Encore, if it doesn't it's your burner, or possibly the brand of DVDs.

Kevin

Are you burning dual layer? Pretty much the only decent dual layer DVDs at this point are Verbatims.

To find out what is the best quality DVD media visit http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

I've found that I burn more compatible discs if I burn at 1x or 2x. I usually test a DVD on three different players: a samsung stand-alone player, Sony Playstation2 and a cheap $30 Wal-Mart special before handing them off to clients. The Playstation 2 is the player that gives me the most trouble with 4x and higher DVD-Rs and +Rs.

For me and my LiteOn DVD burners, TDK seems to be the most reliable brand. Once the disc is authored to my clients satisfaction, I use Nero to dupe the disc.

Try doing a slow burn and see if that helps.

SOLUTION:
[QUOTE=Kevin Janisch]To pinpoint if it's Encore, build the DVD to a folder, then use Nero or whatever burning software to burn the Disc. If it works, it's Encore, if it doesn't it's your burner, or possibly the brand of DVDs.

Thanks for your idea and my late reply is due to the fact that I had to try it. I thought it is excellent reasoning and had completely buy in into your idea. As it turns out THIS WAS THE SOLUTION. The only funny thing is that is neither Encore nor the burner but the combination: I build a DVD folder and then used another burner to burn the DVD. Worked! But, when I used my burner to burn it it worked as well. So it appears that it is Encore building AND burning with the Philips DVD burner which causes the trouble.
Any, now its fine nad Kevin saved my day! THANKS!!!!

Heiko

No problem Heiko, glad I could help. I actually had a hanging problem while burning recently and did what I recommended to pinpoint what it was, in my case it was my burner.

Kevin

Encore Auto-Trimming?
 

I just got Encore the other day (yep, I'm a newb to it) and am trying to create my first DVD. My project has one menu, one chapter list, and one 1h 24m HuffYUV AVI file. It's a really simple project, but when I go to transcode and create the DVD folder (or even burn to disc), Encore only encodes the first 3m 19s of my video, resulting in a 300MB file! I then go back to the timeline and Encore has automatically trimmed the video track down to that 3m 19s (however the audio track is still the full 1h 24m).

Any ideas? This is driving me mad and I've been trying to get it to work for the past 7 hours...

TIA...