Each menu has its own "timeline", which means it can't span to another menu.
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.

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.)
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.

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.
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

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

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

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...

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).

Hi all use Encore for day to day DVD creation but now have a client wishing to mix standard DVD with data content (PDF's etc.).

What is the best work flow you all of found and software? I really still want to use Encore still as it's the program I'm used to but what will I have to add to this for the mixed output?

I’m having a similar problem as well, were going from PP2 to Encore 1.5.
We have all our text slates included in one clip. The video plays perfectly however, the text slates only play for one frame. I don’t get it at all! We’ve tried mpeg2, DV AVI and DV AVI to mpeg2 through Encore all with the same results.

Could this be another manifestation of the dreaded "Optimize stills" option? I'm not in front of my Premier Editing station right now, so I can't look for where that option is, but I know setting "Optimize Stills" bites you in the butt in a lot of other ways. Perhaps that is what is happening here. Try unchecking that option and see if that helps.

Have fun!

Rob

i believe it's in "project settings" or "edit/preferences"

On export, you can also uncheck the box for "optimize stills"

I had a similar problem once after exporting out PP1.5... I was using magic bullet as well... which usually has adverse effects on things i've noticed.

You have several options to troubleshoot your problem. First you need to determine who is causing it, Premiere or Encore. Since the exported video plays fine, I would try encoding it to something else, anything - Windows Media for example, use any other encoder you have available, even the (othewise useless) Movie Maker, turn your file into a .wmv. This will show you if there is a problem in the way your text is embedded into the video.

An alternative workflow would be to export an mpeg file directly from Premiere (go to Export > Media Encoder > MPEG), then import that into Encore. You could even author your DVD directly in Premiere Pro if you don't need sophisticated navigation (PPRO 2.0) or no navigation at all (PPRO 1.5).

Ideally you should bypass completely all Adobe software, but if you don't have any other mpeg encoder, this should help.

I had a similar problem with .psd stills in videos that I edited in Premiere Pro if I didn't check "optimize stills". This is probably a problem with the AVI file that you are importing into Encore not an Encore problem. Make sure that you watch your exported AVI not in your Premiere Pro timeline, where it will look fine even if you didn't check optimize stills, but in Windows Media Player. You will likely find that your titles are screwed up in there and you just think that they are fine. Make sure that you optimize all stills if you use any stills. You may also want to add any titles to your main video track 1 as opposed to an overlay track before you expert and add the video to Encore.

encore wont let me go from the movie while playing back to the menu by pressing the menu button on my remote even though in the timeline settings it is told to do this, while previewing it in encore it works but not in the finished DVD, any ideas of what I might have changed as all of my other ones worked alright.

Thanks
Paul

Have you tried "check project" before burning? Most of the time it provides with good info on what is not set correctly.

Thanks I got it sorted, the fault was in the DVD player, it worked fine in my other 2 dvd players.

Anyone know where in the Adobe site I can find about which hardware (specifically dvd burners) are compatible with Encore 2.0?

I'm looking around the site and can't seem to find it! Please help!

--Jeff

Anyone know where in the Adobe site I can find about which hardware (specifically dvd burners) are compatible with Encore 2.0?

I'm looking around the site and can't seem to find it! Please help!

--Jeff

If your main concern is compatibility with DVD Burners, then you could always try the following:

1) use Authoring program of choice to create DVD Folders (or DVD Image File) on your hard drive
2) burn the DVD Folders (or image) using secondary burning software such as IMGBURN or CopyToDVD (I use IMGBURN myself)

Regards,
George

Hi George,

I've actually done the two things you suggested--burned an image file using Encore 2.0, then used Sonic to burn the dvd. Unfortunately, it isn't the most reliable way (I think it's the Sonic program), as the burned dvd doesn't play in all dvd players.

The best way for me was burning an image file using Encore, then using Encore again to burn the dvd. And that seems to work 99 percent of the time.

But my Pioneer burner is on it's last legs, and I want to know what other brands are compatible with Encore 2.0 or CS3.

Best,

--Jeff

Finally found the PDF file from Adobe for burner compatibility for Encore 2.0

http://www.adobe.com/products/encore/pdfs/encore_dvd_burners.pdf

Just wondering which dvd burners are "working" for you guys?

Best,

--Jeff

Hi All,

Just curious about Adobe Encore 1.5:

I want to go from 1 timeline to the next without having it skip and freeze for 5 seconds in between... is there a way to have them move seemlessly... for example....

I want to create a menu with a video background... when I click a certain button, I want it to go to a little AE animation and then to the next menu, however right now, the only way I can do it is to link it via the properties, and does the little freeze and hold with a black space in between... thus, I would like to click a button and it goes straight to it... is this possible?

I've got hundreds of short clips (~1h:20m long) organized in a Ppro timeline/sequence.

I can't stand the DVD-menu templates that premiere offers, and I have Encore but no clue how to get my work in to it. So far I've discovered that the markers that Ppro creates basically don't exist in an exported (avi or transcoded m2v) file. So I'm ticked about having to go back through in Encore & re-locate all of my chapters. Is there a better way? I just want to make a nice custom DVD menu for this collection of clips, and of course burn the output to disc.

You have to click on the markers(sequence) and insert either a chapter name or number for each marker. Then the markers will be recognized as chapter points in Encore....

I am trying to remember since I haven't used 1.5 in a while, but the little freeze, your going to get. The key with creating your animation is to make sure that the animation begins and ends exactly the way and the exact placements on the static or motion menu. Once you do that and specify the transition(your animation), your going to get the pause, but the pause will be from your menu to animation with the same menu and it will appear that the menus are simply sitting still. I believe 1.5 has the option for the transition within it and I haven't done it in about a year or so, but that is how I used to do it. You have to play with it a few times to get the feel of how it looks and goes, but once you do, you will see what I mean and it works well..

D

You have to click on the markers(sequence) and insert either a chapter name or number for each marker. Then the markers will be recognized as chapter points in Encore....

That's what I've read...thanks for the reply.

What I tried last night was using numbered-markers (which the help 'implied' should work), I just page-down-ed through my Ppro timeline and inserted a numbered marker at each cut...I still get no chapter marks in Encore. Are Ppro's numbered-markers different from unnumbered-sequence-markers with added text/digits (per Damon's Suggestion)?

Is it that I'm exporting via MPEG-2? Is there a more sophisicated way to make Ppro & Encore interact?

I gather that Encore can't detect scene changes automatically, or any other such helpful tricks, so I'm stuck manually re-locating my cuts once I get into Encore. I will be writing a nastygram to the Adobe company before too long.
;-)

Yesterday I received premiere pro cs3 with encore cs3 as a bundle, I was mostly interested in encore to see how it would perform. I have been using version 1.5 untill now and encore CS3 really doesn't look that different (Not counting the added flowchart which allready had been included in version 2.0)

I was a bit surprised about the encoding quality. I first took the high quality dvd 2 x vbr preset with an average of 7mbs and a max of 9mbs, strangest thing was when I tried to change the max bitrate to 8 encore changed it into 8,8 and there was no way for me to get it to 8mbs. I have had some playback problems in the past on some older dvd players which might be the result of a too high bitrate, that's why I allways lower it.
It took more then 2 hours to encode a 50min movie on a singlecore 3,2gig pc and I wasn't pleased about the result, the average image looked OK, only were there artifacts in the dissolves as they looked quite "rough".
I used "bitrate viewer" to read out the bitrates from the mpegfiles and I had peaks up to 9,4mbs and an average of 6,8mbs. The 9,4bitrate worries me the most, my dvdplayer could handle it but I'm not sure how older players will handle that.

Then I tried a constant 8mbs one pass bitrate which took about an hour to render and that allready looked better, the cross dissolves or also fades from black to an image were much smoother. In bitrate viewer I again had a peak of 9,4mbs and an average of 7,8mbs.

In the past when working with encore 1,5 I allways choose the highest quality 2 pass vbr were I lowered the max bitrate a bit and those encodes allways looked fine. Anybody any ideas what could be wrong with cs3's high quality preset and should I consider 1 pass CBR encodings instead but with a max bitrate of 7mbs? (In case of dvd's less then an hour long)

Anybody any idea's?

Noa ...

I've also upgraded from 1.5.1 to CS3. I have used Encore, but not to encode video - I always encode in Premiere Pro.

So far I've done a CBR encode at 7mbs and a 2 pass VBR encode at 7mbs peaking at 8mbs, both from the same 75 minute HDV timeline. The quality of the CBR was good but the VBR was excellent - easily the best I have seen from HDV.

I'd be surpised if Adobe were using different render engines in Premiere Pro and Encore, but you could try encoding from Pro to see if you get different results. The Media Encoder in CS3 seems to have fewer ready-made presets and more parameters to set than in 1.5.1, so I guess we are back on the learning curve for a while.

Tony

Why not just leave the encoding at automatic? Encore will give you the highest quality possible that will fit on your DVD, and it has options to set the max bitrate. We use vegas, render to AVI then let Encore do the etranscoding. Works out perfectly for the highest possible quality. We get nothing but compliments on our videos.

Why not just leave the encoding at automatic?
I read about this after doing some "googling" on the subject yesterdayevening and tried the automatic settings and it was way past midnight when I finally saw that the output quality looked very good without any artifacts. It appeares that encore also choose for a single pass encode because it just took about an hour to get it done.
So, that's allready a big relief since I was on several deadlines and experimenting with output settings in the middle of the weddingseason isn't good for your health, :D

When i open encore it just closes, any thoughts?

Maybe check the log facility to which it logs. I think there is something called an "application log" in Windows.
I'll bet if you ask adobe, they might have a better answer.

This was an issue with stolen/warez pre-release versions. Are you sure you have a retail copy?

I have a real copy, could it be that I have older trail stuff on their still.

Ahha that sorted everything out. Sometimes I stun myself at my stupidity ;)

Hi everybody,

After testing a DVD I made with Adobe Encore 1.5, the text on all my menus flickered terribly on a regular tube TV but looked fine on a a high-def LCD TV. My question is, how I do I get rid of the text flicker? It looks terrible and it seems like this problem shouldn't be too hard to fix. Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Tristan

cant help you directly Tristan as i don't use that package.

But what might help is if your menus are cusomised try to stay away from white lines and avoid any lines that are only a pixel or 2 in width. this could cut down on it.

Ger,

Thanks for the reply. I couldn't figure out how to change the pixels but instead I just ended up using certain fonts that only had minimal flicker compared to the wide variety I had before.

yea thats one way of doing it anyway Tristian.
Its down to the refresh rate of a standard tv (50hz).
Its a bit slow so you get that on the edges of some lines.
I purposely bought a 100hz tv a few years ago for my own benefit.
Next stop HD

Hey guys, Is there is a way to compress the audio in encore without buying the expensive dolby digital encoder. I am trying to compress the audio but encore give me two options. PCM and Dolby digital. PCM takes to much space. I Have cheaper dvd burning software and they offer dolby digital and other compression rate. Is there is cheap or free dolby digital software? Thanks (*___*)

It compresses it to dolby on its own during the transcode within encore if you allow it to do so. You don't have to like with Premiere purchase the Minnetonka plug in. If you have Encore, and you drop say an avi to a timeline or bring it in as an asset, you should be able to transcode your audio for your "dvd" to dolby, even with version 1.0 of Encore DVD...

Using Encore transcoding dolby digital is the best way to get AC3 dolby sound. Premiere purchase the Minnetonka plug in may not good as EncoreDVD :)

I tried it while exporting from premier cs3 but it didn't work. It only gave two options pcm and you have to buy dolby. but if you export as avi it did work.!!!

I know this sounds like a strange question, but are you the owner of that copy, or is it a trial version? That sounds weird and I have never experienced that to be honest.

D

Yeap, I am the original owner. It let me use dolby three times and after that it says i have to buy it. But if i export for premier as dvi and import it encore there is no problem.

It may depend upon the version of Encore. I'm still useing 1.5 and it only gives three uses of dolby, but 2.0 or 3.0 may have it built in.

I don't remember that guys. From what I remember from even the original, it always let me encode to dolby. That was one of the main assets of Encore, in that it did encode to dolby and allowed a much larger alocation of your assets to video encoding. Maybe I am wrong...

Nope, I am right. I just pulled out my 1.5 Encore box and looked at it and also the disc. It does state it encodes to Dolby. Something is up with your copies if it is only allowing 3 dolby encodes.. Maybe it's to 3:2:1 surround? I am not sure. But I remember now that this was one of the things that really made me want to switch to Encore when it first came out. I know "premiere" does or used to do the 3 times dolby thing as I mentioned with the Minnetonka software plugin, but that is different than the one built into Encore since Encore's is 2.0. Something sounds up with your copies guys...

D

Im wondering if it is possible to have a page curl transition effect when changing the menu from the main menu to the chapter selection menu on a DVD im making.

I notice that when I click the link in the flowchart for the chapter link there is a Transition tab, but I need to pickwhip an asset??

Any info on this would be great, thanks.