Adobe Encore -- various topics

[Damon Gaskin]

Ok, and I understand the size of the project, but your issue is much deeper than you realize. The "jump" your speaking of, always happens. It may not be noticeable since your menu's don't have the type of transitions your trying to do this time, but it is always there. Basically your aspect ratios are off. Your going to have to either stretch one or shrink the other. Something is off. Off the top of my head, I would say if the one menu is causing the letterboxing(black bands on each side), that is your culprit. You need to take it into Photoshop and if you can, stretch it until it fits the frame you are attempting to transition from. What your trying to do is not hard, but it is a little involved and requires a little forethought.

Also, have you done transitions for menu's before in either After Effects or Premiere for Encore? I am thinking not because this is something covered in the discs that are included on the earlier versions tutorials. It is a simple fix, but involves using probably the easiest would be After Effects since it allows you unlimited flexibility with making your transition.

You first have to correct your menu(and for widescreen it is 720*576 and if you doubt me, simply import your menu into photoshop, then open a blank menu in NTSC widescreen, create a new layer with the old menu and you will see the difference in size left to right), then once you have the menu correct, you will need to create a transition. The key to this is making the last few seconds of your motion menu exactly replicate what your transitioning to. You do this by basically doing something like a dissolve between two identical photoshop files. You would then animate your assets to the beginning frame of your transition. This way, it will be pretty much seamless. Hopefully I explained this corretly. But the last frame of the "transition from" has to be exactly the same as the first frame of the "transition to" in order for the transition to be smooth.

But this first all hinges on you correcting your menu. If you don't do that, your transition will always show the jump and the bars on the left and right. This is only happening on the one menu and not the main movie of your project correct?

And no, the majority of people probably here wouldn't see that because after you run into this the first time like you are, you learn how to correct it and it's not an issue. But this to be honest is a more common thing you first notice when beginning working with Encore.

[Dawn Kelly]

Thanks everyone -
Kisses Dawn

[Dawn Kelly]

Okay this is alot but I REALLY NEED HELP! TOLD MY CLINET THIS WOULD BE DONE A WEEK AGO. I have worked with adobe products since premiere 4.2 and am proficient and learning software quickly. If encore didnt have so many errors I would have had this done already.

I am getting pretty familiar with encore (and its many bugs) and think I have figured out how to assemble a project that will actually burn. This has taken many days and alot of reading about various errors. I am however not fully understanding the Playlist & Chapter Playlist functions. Here is my delima:

I have a pretty beefy project. It needs to have the following:

1) a play all function that plays 18 3 min clips.
2) a scene selection menu that allows the viewer to watch thier choice of the individual clips and then return to the scene selection menu. (This will actually be 2 submenus each with 9 animated buttons.)
3) a bonus features menu that goes to 2 sub menues each with 4 3 min. clips on each.

My issue is with 1 & 2.
The "play all" will be a single 58 min. file exported from premiere with chapter points.
My questions are:

1) How can I structure the layout of the project so that the scene selection menu plays the sam video files as in the timeline for play all?

2) Is there a way to "Link" Together Individual timelines for the bonus clips to behave as a "Play All"?

3) Do I need a chapter point at the end of the 58 minute "play all" Video?

And lastly I seem to have random results with encoding in encore (it transcodes some files successfully while others (coded with the same codec, pcm audio settings, bit rate etc) produce the "PGC "<my media filename>" has an error <at near the end of the timeline>" I have done alot of reading on this and it seems to be audio related but I can not distinguish any distinct differences in the clips it will transcode and those it wont other than the overall length of the clip!

That said it will not take any dolby encoded clips! has anyone had success with exporting out of premiere with dolby and can you recomend the settings that work for you.

Please answer as much as you can and thank you in advance for the help.

[Josh Chesarek]

Which version of Encore are you using? Encore 2+ has a play list feature. You right click in the asset space and create a new play list. from there you can drop in all the time lines in any order and then assign that playlist to a button which will result in it playing everything in order from the list.

If you have all your material broken into clips then it should be fairly easy to do what you want. The main play all would be a play list with all the shorter timelines dropped in it so it plays them all in order. The sub menu that plays clips and then goes back after being done is just the buttons linked to the single time lines instead of the playlist. In the older version of Encore you used the button override to change what happens at the end of the clip but I havent used it in a long time so I am a little unsure of it use these days. As for the encoder errors, I only had similar errors when I was using Premiere Pro and did not get the Encoder update. After getting the update things were much smoother. Make sure everything from adobe is up to date.

[K.C. Luke]

Hope this can help along your encore projects

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pres...ncore_nfhs.pdf

[Richard Grebby]

Im trying to have some buttons on my menu that sprout leaves. Ive made the text and leaf animation in After effects and saves it as an avi but I cant find out how to add this avi as an actual button on my background.

Can anyone help?

[Richard Grebby]

also for some reason, the video I have playing as the background menu doesnt seem to want to play if there is any text over it.

[Josh Chesarek]

In Encore 2 (not 100% on 3) I think the buttons can only have states: Not Selected - Selected - and activated. As well as only be one color. To trick the one color thing you actually make multiple menus with Auto select buttons so when you jump to the next button you actually goto a new menu. With the extra colors drawn in by photoshop or something.

So I do not think you can make a button out of your AVI if that is what you are trying to do. You would have to make a background for the menu that contains the sprouting and the buttons would lay on top of it. As for the background not playing if text is over it, have you rendered the background? Once you place elements over it make sure to goto File, Render -> Motion Menus which you have to do after changing things in order to see things move in the preview.

[David Kovalev]

Hello, I started doing videography not too long ago and still a beginner so please bear with me. I've constructed a short video and slideshow in Premire Pro and now i need to turn it into DVD format to be played on any dvd player.
-So from premire I exported it as a video DV AVI file and then I opened the AVI file in Encore. After I was satisfied I stared to build the DVD and did the check for any problems and came back clean. So when I press burn DVD it starts the process but doesnt progress. I left it on for a few hours and it got nowhere...

What could that mean? I also have no menus so I dont know if there might be something I'm missing?

If anyone ever had the same situation or has a clue... please help. I'll be needing it really soon for my wedding videos that I'm finishing up.

Thanks

[K.C. Luke]

Which encore you are using CS or CS3? It need to build after than burn. Not sure if you are saying "So when I press burn DVD" Have you check using the preview button to view all your menu and video clips before build?

[Denis Danatzko]

it mentions how Encore can "act up" if you left any empty space between clips or stills in the Premier Pro timeline.

I ran into that problem myself recently. Mine happened with video, not stills, but to solve it, I used either fades or dissolves between each clip and butted each clip right next to the subsequent clips. I used 2 video tracks in some sequences and I did not "snap" clips as I moved them during editing. At a couple of points between clips in the same sequence, I had a few blank spots that were only about 1 or 2 frames in length, but that was enough to cause the problem.

Unfortunately, at the moment, I don't recall exactly what I saw in Encore that led me to realize the empty space was the cause of the problem, but once I returned to PPro 2 and closed all the gaps, the DVD burned fine.

That may or may not be your specific problem, but it's worth checking.

Good luck.

[David Kovalev]

Thank you guys I will give that a shot.

[Jack Kelly]

Hi there,

For several years now, my workflow for making DVDs has been:

1) Edit in Premiere Pro. Then render as MPEG2 from the timeline(s)
2) Import MPEG2 files into Encore, make menus etc and then create a DVD image file
3) Burn the image file to disk using Nero

I have never had any problems with this workflow. I've been using Verbatim DVD+R disks for years with no problems (except a few reports of non-readable disks).

I recently did some research on DVD compatibility and concluded that instead of using Verbatim DVD+R I should be using Taiyo Yuden DVD-R disks to maximise compatibility with older DVD players.

This is where it starts to get wierd.

If I author a DVD of around 3GB in size or less then my workflow works fine. However, if I author a DVD of around 3.5GB then Nero reports a verification failure when burning to DVD-R disks (but it burns the same image fine to DVD+R disks). The result of this failure to burn to DVD-R seems to be that the last video burnt to the disk isn't readable (i.e. the file on the outer-most track fails). HOWEVER, if I burn the 3.5GB project to DVD-R directly from Encore then it burns fine.

Why does Nero fail to write to DVD-R when using large images produced by Encore?

My current work-around is to burn a DVD-R from Encore and then use "DVD copy" in Nero to create an image from the disk. I can then use Nero to duplicate that image (I like using Nero for long DVD production runs because it can use multiple burners and because it does automated data verification).

Any hints?!? Is this a bug in Nero? I'm using version 7.7.5.1

Many thanks,
Jack

[Jack Kelly]

It looks like my problems were caused by Nero. ImgBurn burns Encore's images without problem.

[Jack Kelly]

OK, problem fixed. I've updated Nero to version 7.10.1.0 and it's burning the image produced by Encore to TY DVD-R just fine.