Well, I've tried some other ideas. I tried to just transcode the file, without adding it into a timeline (create a new project and imported the AVI, then transcoded). I also turned on the logging. There are no errors in the log files, but it just outright stops at 5200 frames or thereabouts. It then does a second pass (2-pass VBR) and then 2nd pass goes up to about 5000 frames, and then the transcoding "completes". No errors tho.

Are there known problems with Encore 2.0 handling HuffYUV files? Could my AVI file have some sort of corruption in it?

I finally figured out that it was a problem with my file.

Adobe Encore I've Tried Everything :( I Think
 

I'm hoping someone out there knows how to fix this problem.

I was seeing interlacing artifacts in between clips so I thought it might be because of the way it was transcoded, but I tried many different combos of the transcoding and tried upper, lower and progressive for the fields. I'm also having issues with the dvd stopping to load on certain chapters for a second.

I am using Premiere 2.0, Encore 2.0, a hp zd7000 laptop, and I tired maxell DVD+R, fujifilm DVD+R and RW, and a Memorex DVD+RW

The footage is a mixture of 24p and 60i which both are getting these artifacts or lines.

So..what is going to fix this?

Thank you!

James

So nobody has any ideas?

I've been trying to solve this problem for a long time and I'm not having any luck, I know someone out there will have some answers...


James

James, what file are you importing into Encore? I always do my transcoding before I get to Encore and the program seems to be happier. You may want to try using After Effects to de-interlace before you go to Encore.

James,
You need to deinterlace before you import into Encore. I used to have the same problem. You shouldn't have the artifact with the 24p footage, though. What do you mean "between clips". Interlace artifacts are visible during the clip. As far as the delay between chapters, I think that's just the way Encore works. I haven't found a solution, and it prevents you from continuing an audio track from one chapter into the next. If you figure a way around it, please post it.

I'm not sure that a delay between chapters can be blamed on Encore DVD. My previous set top DVD player seemed to have a habit of pausing for a second when switching tracks and/or chapters. My new DVD player does not share the same habit.

Thanks for your help!

I just exported a standard avi. file from premiere.

I did deinterlace all of my movie in premiere, except for anything that I had slowed down. I don't have after effects either.

When I say "In between" clips I mean that in between one shot to another you can see like weird horizontal lines for a split second. My daughter noticed those lines when I played it back on our tv. So I can't have that.

Its also unacceptable to have the DVD stop for a moment to reload. Do you think that may be because the rate is too high?

Does anyone have any recommendations for a different DVD tool if I can't fix all of these issues?

I appreciate your help,

James

Encore DVD 2.0
 

Can anyone recommend some reading material for this prog? I find myself wanting to embrace it but not knowing how. Damn the learning curve! Damn it!

Thanks in advance!

I'm not personally able to recommend any specific book. However, Adobe has quite a few clips from Total Training and a number of PDF tutorials available for free on their web site, so that might be a good place to get a jump start:

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/tutorials/

Wrigley Video
 

Wrigley Video has some excellent and very short video tutorials to get you started - check out http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotut...tut_encore.htm

lynda.com
 

25 bucks a month no minimum buy and you can watch all the videos you want. Encore, After Effects, Premiere.......

Encore 2.0: How do you loop motion menus without looping the music?
 

I have a 40sec video I want to use as a video menu in Encore 2.0. The menu also has music, a song that lasts 5min. So I want the video to loop until the music ends, but if I have to make a 5min. video file it's going to be way too big. Any way to set the video and audio loop points independently?

What If I want the music to keep playing (not start over) when you click on a button and change menu (go to a chapter menu for example)?

The audio and the video in DVD menus are somewhat coupled, so things such as loop points or jumping to a new asset (due to a menu change) always affects both. This is not a limitation of the authoring software, but rather the DVD specification.

Not knowing Encore myself, here is what I would do to solve your particular problem: use Premiere (or whatever your editing software is), put the music on an audio track, and copy a sufficient number of copies of the 40-sec video clip to the video track. In other words, do the looping of the video manually to end up with a five minute clip for both audio and video. Then use that clip as the background for your DVD menu.

It's possible that Encore can do this for you in an automated way - like I said, I don't know Encore.

- Martin

Thanks Martin. Thing is, if I loop the video file in premiere and import that, it will create a huge file and I'm afraid it could be too big. But I'll give it a try, maybe when compressed to MPEG2 it won't be that bad. I think I'll cut the song in half, it was created with Sonic Fire Pro anyway so I can have it at any length.

Also, I could swear I saw some commercial DVDs that had navigating chapter menus and the music would not stop each time you changed a page (say going from chap. 1-4 to chap. 5-8, etc.). It would be pretty weird having the music restart every time you switch page in the chapter submenu.

Yes, that would be annoying.

I just did a search on this topic, and found an explanation on Adobe's user forum FAQ pages. Do a google search for the following phrase:

"Spanning Audio across multiple menus and timelines"

(including the double quotes) and you will be led to the following description:
"Audio is always tied to either a timeline or a menu. Switching menus will always switch the audio as each timeline or menu has it's own Audio stream multiplexed into it."

Again, this seems to be a limitation of the DVD specification, and has nothing to do with specific authoring software products.

Other places discuss possible workarounds, but they all seem to revolve around timing the video and music to make the transition more seemless in some cases.

If you find a workable solution for the chapter submenu pages, by all means please share it with us!

- Martin

Yes Martin I think you're right. Sometimes memory is an inacurate thing.

I just checked a bunch of commercial DVDs of mine and they all stop the music for the chapter selection. Guess it is indeed a limitation of the DVD specs.

bummer.

Encore 2.0 vs. PPRO 2.0 vs. Sorenson 4.5 for DVD Encoding
 

I have Encore 2.0, PPRO 2.0, and Sorenson 4.5... Which is the best to use for encoding DVDs?

Avoid Ppro's Mpeg encoding like the plague. Yuck yuck yuck. I think a lot of people will steer you away from Encore's encoding as well. I use TMPGEnc and love it; I get that crisp picture with zero artifacting that I'm always looking for.

Thanks Ben. I checked out the website and they have numerous products listed. Have you used TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress or do you use a different version?

Yes, TMPGEnc XPress is what I use. Costs like $30 or something.

What's my alternative to Encore 2?
 

Encore 2 keeps crashing during the build phase and frankly I'm tired of rebuilding my DVDs because Adobe won't provide patches to commonly known problems!

I'm producing a DVD that needs to go out to replication on Monday so and I'm looking for another DVD authoring program to get the job done. My project will go on a Dual Layered DVD with motion menus (preferably with seamless transitions.)

I've come across DVD-lab Pro 2.2 and DVDit® 6 Pro. Any thoughts on these? or are there better choices out there? If it's under $500 then I'll consider it.

Thanks in advance!

Personally I would troubleshoot my computer rather than go out and buy another software, then spend the time learning how to use it. As many, if not all digital media related programs, Adobe software is often the victim of conflicts generated by incompatible codecs and/or other programs that configure codecs their own way.

Just my opinion... I also had most of the problems I am reading about on this forum. So I erased my hard drive clean, reinstalled only XP and the drivers and voila, all my problems are gone! No crashes, no slow-downs, the Adobe Suite 1.5 runs like a charm.

Excessive Motion blur in Adobe Encore
 

I just finished a film that I shot at 24p with the XL2. I edited and rendered it as a 24p video file and then I go to make a DVD in encore 2.0 with it and after I import the file, it says that I have to re-transcode it. It gives me 5 or so options for different VBR settings. I have tried the progressive scan 7mb high VBR one and when the disc finishes and I watch it on my TV, there is much more motion blur than there was before. I have burned files at 24p to DVD and never been prompted to re-transcode in the past and they all looked on the TV the way they looked on the computer, which is what I'm going for. Can anyone give me anymore info on this. I need some help because the final version of it is needed in about 24 hours. Thanks.

Mitch

What editing program are you using? What file format are you rendering out from it? What specific settings are you using for that format?

If you want to let Encore DVD handle the encoding and retain the highest quality, make sure to render to an AVI. If you are rendering to MPEG-2 from your NLE, make sure it conforms to the MPEG-2 DVD specs (the Encore DVD help file/manual lists the MPEG-2 specs that the program can import without having to re-encode the file).

So if I output to avi, encore will take care of all additional encoding? I had been outputting to a 24p video file and it came up to re-encode.

Yes, that is correct.

Hello. I recently joined this forum and only just read this thread.

I've been a user of DVDLab since its pre-Pro version days and it is a fantastic piece of software which is stable, intuitive and feature packed. I've had three computers, all with different specs, in the years I've been using DVDLab and am yet to experience a compiling error.

Unlike Encore DVD, support for DVDLab Pro is superb. Bugs will always be the bane of software but in the case of DVDLab, bugfixes appear quickly - even for bugs that might only manifest themselves on a Tuesday in June of a leap year and only then if the planets are in alignment.

DVDLab Pro can author DVD's from the most basic of disc's to disc's which feature complex navigation and branching features seen on so-called Hollywood DVD's.

Encore, like the majority of DVD authoring packages, has always paled in comparison to DVDLab Pro. The feature set is rich and flexible and you can't beat the price (the cost might be cheap but the quality of the software isn't).

I've heard good things about Sony's Vegas DVD that comes with Sony's NLE Vegas Video + DVD but haven't studied up on it; you might like to consider that as it has built-in Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding (whereas DVDLab Pro doesn't have native DD support - but will happily accept AC3 tracks created via third-party programmes).

cheers.

Encore DVD Questions
 

Hi

Can anyone help with the following?

1) I have a project, which is set across several motion menus ( 15 chapters wont fit on 1 screen ). I want the background audio track to play continually across them all, without restarting each time I change a menu. Is there a way to do this? All I have at present is the facility for a separate audio track per menu, hence changing menu, in effect restarts the audio track.......

2) I want a carousel effect for the chapters. ie all the chapters appear on the 1 screen, and the user navigates left/right and the relevant chapter comes to the foreground, with the other chapters like in a 3D circle. Any ideas?

Many thanks

Steve

I wanted to do that but found it really can't be done. Each menu has its own "timeline", which means it can't span to another menu. I tried to make a video clip that jogs the menus across the screen but the problem is that you can't:
1: tell when the user will want to jog to the next menu
2: hide or unhide menu links at any given point in time (menu A has to hide its links and show menu B, etc.)

If anyone else out there found a way, please explain every detail of how you did it because I days trying to do this.

-Michael

EDIT: I should point out the this post applies to one continuous menu with a song that won't restart each time you navigate. It IS possible to make menus "move" from one to the next. You have to make transition clips. Email me for more details.

A single timeline can be split into relevant chapters, and these can link to multiple menus. Each menu does not necessarily have its own timeline. It is my normal practice to have a single timeline, one main menu, and several sub-menus for the dvd navigation.

It is possible to have 1 sub-menu per chapter, and just have the other chapters in the background as picture objects. The user then navigates left/right changing the sub menu and hence the selection. I find this not practical - especially when the audio track keeps restarting. What I was wondering is if we could get an animated 3D circle bringing the relevant chapter selection to the foreground. I assume what you did with the video clip was to animate this type of sequence, but as it was a background video, you would not have control of left/right motion or selections. Even if you auto advanced the sub-menu after a predetermined time, to coincide with the chapter showing in the video clip, this would not be practical as if the user 'missed' a selection, he would have to wait say 5secsx 20chapters = 100secs - 1min 40secs, and only then would have a timeslot of 5secs to make his selection, otherwise he has to wait again! Not a practical solution really for professional productions.

The very nature of Encore allows you to have a track play, and it will allow you to navigate INSIDE the current sub-menu, but it's once you navigate to sub-menus for chapters 7-12, 13-18 etc, the track changes. Movement between sub-menus is straightforward with left / right arrow links. I am not sure what you mean by 'You have to make transition clips'. Can you enlighten us?

Regards

Steve

Steve,

Just thought I'd chime in to say that this is not an Encore issue. The specifications for the DVD format do not allow continuous audio to be played when changing PCGs (tracks). What you want to do with the video side of things can be done. I assume what you are looking for is something like the menu for "The Wedding Singer". Each element is its own piece of video, then you link to those pieces of video from the buttons on the menu. It will not be seemless - there is usually a 1/4 to 1/2 second pause as the DVD changes PGCs - and the audio will start over. I personally find that having to wait for the video to transition "around the carousel" before I can access the next group of buttons is frustrating. YMMV.

Have fun!

Rob

Hi Rob

Not seen the Wedding Singer, so not sure if it has the same menu system as I want, but from what you say it very well sounds like it. I take you point about having to wait and the frustration this causes. Just wanted to offer something different to my clients.... guess I will stick with the trusted seperate sub-menus. Thank you for your valued feedback on this point.

With reference to the Program Chain...... Will authoring not allow both the main menu and the sub-menus to be contained within the same Prog Chain, and hence have the same audio track?

Thanks for your feedback.

Steve

What I meant by transition clips is that to have a visual representation of changing menus you need to make videos to "connect" (so to speak) the menus together. The transition clips are what I use when changing menus because abrupt screen changes (hard cuts, if you will) isn't my thing. True, like Rob said, there's a slight delay between menu changes, but it's just a matter of preference for me. I recently did a 2-menu project in After Effects (they port nicely into Encore) and I did 2 transition clips to connect them. One was a slide from Menu 1 to 2, and the other was from Menu 2 to 1. Those clips were used as the "transition" setting for each of the Next/Previous Page links in Encore. I might not be on par with what your original question was, but I'm just pointing out a possible alternative.

-Michael

Hi Michael

I understand you now. Thanks for the clarification.

All my menus are the same with the exception of the motion menu clip inside 1 of 6 boxes on the screen, so I do not notice much of a 'hard' transition, but I appreciate what you mean if the menus are somewhat different.

From what you say, I could create several transition clips to animate the circle motion of a carousel and have these as the 'transitions' as I change menu, bringing the active chapter selection to the foreground and having this box as a motion menu. I'll give this some consideration in my next project - thank you!

Thanks for the advice - much appreciated.

Steve

Encore message
 

A few days ago my Encore started coming back with the following message when burning a DVD: "This image has sector headers. Hit OK if you would like to continue with the record with the sector headers removed". I get this message on both +RW (erased or not) and +R disks, I have not tried -R discs as I am not using them.

Anyone has an idea what this is all about? I can click OK and the discs gets burned just fine... I am still curious to know what it might be.

Did you enable copy protection?

Also make sure that "CGMS: Unlimited copies are allowed." is selected in Disk tab > Project Settings.

Hey Yossi,
I get this error message too - although I just click OK to get past it. However, I do select "No Copies Allowed" sometimes - is that when I get the error message? If that's so, how can I burn a DVD that can't be copied? I'm guessing when I clicked OK to that error message it was removing the copy protection...

That's it!
 

Yes Yossi,

that was it! I turned the copy protection on working on a project about a month ago... come to think, that's when I started seeing that message. But on subsequent projects I didn't manually turn the copy protection on, looks like it got stuck on that setting.

Jeff, I suspect clicking "yes" does not turn off the copy protection (although I am not sure). But to answer your question, yes, you can copy protect your DVDs... from honest hackers... For averyone else, there is plenty of software out there (even for free) on the internet to rip your DVDs. It's really not worth the effort. Maybe one of those scary "FBI Warnings" can help you more.

Thanks Yossi,

Glad to hear that it worked.

The copy protection feature is only for use with DLT masters that are going to a replication house. It does not work with writable disks. The copy protection uses sectors that are 2054 bytes and writable disks always have sectors that are 2048 bytes (or something like that).