Encore: It plays fine in Project Preview, but not on the disc

[David Knaggs]

I'm hoping that someone might be able to point me in the right direction on this. I'm authoring my first Blu-ray disc with Encore for a corporate client. The movie is 3 hours and 20 minutes long and has 56 chapters.

The client has very specific requirements and does not want a Play All option. The requirement is to have a separate menu button for each chapter and clicking any chapter button will take you directly to that chapter and at the end of the chapter takes you back to the menu (rather than playing the movie all the way through from there).

So I made 56 precise Chapter Markers in my Encore timeline (unfortunately, Encore wouldn't recognize the Chapter Markers in my ProRes movie exported from FCP), made 56 Chapter Playlists with each playlist only containing the one specific chapter, then made 56 Chapter Buttons (on 4 menu pages) and linked each to its relevant Chapter Playlist. Each playlist had an end action of returning to the menu and highlighting the button of the following chapter.

After doing this, I opened the Project Preview pane and exhaustively tested each button and end action. Everything worked and played perfectly. I was extremely pleased.

Then I did the "Build" and set the Output to "Blu-ray Image" and Encore eventually produced a file with (from memory) the suffix ".iso". I then used Disk Utility (I'm on a Mac) to burn a 25 GB BD-R Blu-ray disc.

I then put it in a PS3 player (with the latest software/firmware) connected to an HD plasma screen and the menu page came up on the screen. Pressing a chapter button did not take me into the movie and play the chapter, but left me on the menu screen. The highlighter had moved onto the following button though. I then tried the other buttons and got the same result - stuck in the menus with only the highlighter moving on to the next button. My guess is that clicking the menu button makes it try to go to the Chapter Playlist, finds it can't execute it (I wish I knew the reason!) and then it follows the next command, which is its End Action to return to the menu and highlight the next chapter button. I also got someone with a Blu-ray drive on his Windows laptop to try and play it but he had no more luck than I did.

I spent the next day or two trying to figure out the bug, watched and re-watched the relevant sections from the Lynda.com Encore tutorials, but still couldn't figure it out.

I then, as an experiment, added a "Play All" button to one of the menus, linked it to the Timeline containing the full movie and gave it the End Action of returning to the menu. Then I did the build, made the image and used Disk Utility to burn a rewritable Blu-ray disc.

When I pressed the Play All button (on the PS3) it went to the full movie and played it. And I must say that Encore did a great job of the compression. It really looked terrific. However, all of the menu buttons for each chapter still did not work at all and left it stuck in the menu system. So I still can't present a Blu-ray to this client using Encore. I have presented it already in DVD (SD) form on 2 discs using DVD Studio Pro. It had no problem going from a button to the Story (Chapter Playlist) and then back to the menu.

I'm still hoping that I've made some sort of obvious goof with my workflow, rather than having uncovered some sort of bug or vagary in the Encore software (even though it all played fine in the Project Preview), because I need to submit a proper Blu-ray product to the client.

So if anyone can spot a goof or oversight, or have any sort of suggestion to try, I would really appreciate it. At this point I'll try anything! Thanks.

[Vito DeFilippo]

Hi David,

I can't help you with specifics, but I had a similar problem with Encore on a regular DVD. It played great in software preview, but the menu wouldn't work on a stand alone DVD player. I couldn't figure it out and it drove me nuts. Finally, I rebuilt the menu from scratch, and then it worked.

I suspect it's got something to do with the placement of buttons. That they are overlapping or something that interferes with function. Could you try building a test menu with fewer buttons (from scratch) and see if that does it?

Sorry I can't be more specific, but it was a while ago. Sure sounds like the same problem, though.

[Ann Bens]

Alas Encore does not support chapterplaylists for BD.

[Peter D. Parker]

David, it may have something to do with the button routing on your main menu.

I made a DVD with several separate movies, put them all on the timeline, put buttons on to a menu and linked each movie to a button, with an end action of each movie to return to the main menu. Something similar to what you are trying to achieve ?

The DVD played OK in the preview window but when I burnt it, the buttons selection was all over the place on the tv. The remote controller would select a button, but when I tried to select the next button down, it would select the next but one and then when I tried to get back to the top button, it wouldn't let me unless I used the right or left arrows on the remote !!!

I went back to the main menu and found that the button routing was all to cock. I didn't have time to sort it out, just made one long movie of the whole timeline in Premiere, and re-imported it and but chapter points and it was OK.

So, although I don't have a solution to your problem, I might have identified what it could be. Perhaps the help menu might help if you look under button routing.

Best of luck

Peter