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Encore+Mac (Leopard) +Blu Ray=Wrong
I am reposting something I wrote in a thread below as I don’t want it to get lost on the forum. Apologies if this is bad etiquette, but I think it’s important to share this, as others clearly have the same problems:
Walter
Here’s a quick rundown of my first Blu-Ray build. Like others here, I would guess, I am a FCP user who bought Premiere Pro just for Encore. I read it was the only professional authoring solution for Mac available.
I run an 8-Core 2008 Mac Pro running Leopard 10.5.4 – 8 Gb Ram
I have built a simple disc with 3 menus. Start, Chapters, Special Features. Start has 3 buttons, Chapters 8, Special features 5.
I built the whole disc as blu-ray, simulated it and checked it. I was impressed by the ease of building and testing in Encore. Although it lacks the pizzaz of DVD-SP, it does the basics well IMHO.
Having build an HD project, I let Encore build me a SD DVD of it. I expected some problems, as the disc was built as 23.98p from a 24p master and then sent to DVD as 29.97.
Apart from the encodes taking ages (overnight and then some for 1.5 hrs footage) I was impressed that the disc worked in SD first time. The picture quality was excellent. The Dolby surround track was in place. All was well in the world.
Then I tried to burn the Blu Ray. That was 2 days ago. I’m still here.
The problem for me can be summarised as follows: My buttons do not appear. They are the sort of buttons that have ‘no’ unselected state. In other words, you only see them when they are selected. I needed to do this, as I built motion backgrounds for the menus in motion, and the text for the buttons animates on – so the buttons cannot be visible until selection is possible at the loop point.
I think most of the navigation is working, although with invisible buttons (which – BY THE WAY – aren’t invisible in the simulator) it’s pretty hard to tell. The video is all there and looks fine. I think I have the same issues others have reported with the disk not starting menus on the right button – but I can’t be sure.
I should say at this point that after one failure attempting to burn straight to disc, I now output an ISO and burn in toast. This has not failed once in all my attempts to burn an ISO to my internal Pioneer BD-202 drive, which appeared plug-and-play in OSX when I connected it to the internal SATA ports.
I have built a test menu from my main project and inserted various stock buttons from Encore. About half of them work properly when burnt. When I tried to modify one so I could use it in place of my own buttons it again failed to appear where required.
Even more frustratingly, everytime I try to fix the buttons and re-build the ISO, Encore starts re-encoding ALL the video in the project, even though it shows up as rendered in the project window. This means each test takes hours to complete. I am running out of hours.
As of now, I am frazzled, fed up and out of time to deliver. I can accept that I may have made some error in my build (although I have tried unaltered stock buttons, and many do not work in Blu-Ray) I cannot accept that it works IN THE SIMULATOR AND NOT ON THE DISK.
I had my client around yesterday and I had to show him the problems. He pointed out that as a games developer, they had FREE software at their office for making Blu-Rays on PC that did all this – making menus etc. with no problems. I may have to give him the videos as QTs and let them build it. Frankly, that makes me feel sick.
As soon as I have found ANY solution to this build, I will be attempting to return Encore for a full refund. I’m sure it will not be an easy process. But here’s the truth of it: For a simple Blu-Ray disk, Encore DOES NOT WORK as it should – because what it shows me in the simulator and what it burns to disk are two different things. End of story.
Adobe have lost my custom long term over this – it’s inexcusable.
More to follow.
Ben
Edit Out Ltd
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22 Replies
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Thanks for the re-post Ben. I may have to seek out others who have purchased Encore for the BluRay only to find that it does not work at all as promised. Class Action lawsuit may be the only way to get Adobe’s attention on this as I’ve been trying for 12 months to get our projects to work in Encore.
On the PC side, you can look at NetBlender’s DoStudio. The pricing on Scenarist is around $50,000 and up the last time I looked.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Walter
Thanks for the info – but I’m Mac only….
Two things: Making Blu-Ray disks ain’t rocket science. Other company’s products work.
Also, a search under Leopard on adobe support to see if it’s related to recent OS releases (which may explain why a product that has been out for so long DOESN’T WORK) only links to a Leopard FAQ stating an update for Encore would be released in DEC 2007 to ensure compatibility.If they haven’t got it working by now, it should be withdrawn from sale for OSX. If not that, it should be made VERY clear on Adobe’s site it is broken.
If there are class-action suits to be entered, I’m in. I’ll be lucky if this hasn’t cost me a client.
You know – what really bums me out is that I did the right thing. Faced with a new technology I went for the expensive industry standard. Not a free version, or cheap standalone. I paid Adobe’s high prices for something they advertise for Blu-Ray ease of use.
Well – stuff you Adobe. Your software is broken, and it appears you don’t care enough about it to tell anyone.
I’m a little angry.
Ben
Edit Out Ltd
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[Ben Holmes] “Thanks for the info – but I’m Mac only…”
Us too.
[Ben Holmes] “Two things: Making Blu-Ray disks ain’t rocket science. Other company’s products work. “
Actually, it is. Through my posts on this forum, my blog and the FCP Forum, I have been by some incredible people who work in the commercial bluray industry for very VERY large studios. What I have learned is that BluRay specs are an incredibly complicated set of specs that were basically designed so nobody but Sony could ever create the proper software to burn a disc. In the words of one person who contacted me, “A kid can program DVD authoring software, BluRay software is incredibly hard.”
Note that the “other company’s” software cost in the neighborhood of $50,000 and up and that’s for a reason. Toast doesn’t count because it’s a very VERY limited software. I think the complexity of BluRay authoring is one reason we have not seen Apple’s DVDSP cross in to BluRay.
[Ben Holmes] “If they haven’t got it working by now, it should be withdrawn from sale for OSX. If not that, it should be made VERY clear on Adobe’s site it is broken. “
Funny you should mention that because Encore is not featured on the Home Page, nor is it featured on the Products Page. You have to go into the menus to find it. Almost like Adobe is trying to hide it from any unwarranted attention right now.
[Ben Holmes] “If there are class-action suits to be entered, I’m in. I’ll be lucky if this hasn’t cost me a client.
“It nearly cost us our largest client. A large six figures per year client. And he’s still not a happy camper because we had to scrap the BluRays we were working on for over 6 months and simply release something with a “Play” button.
In fact Encore was responsible for my company missing our first deadline ever, and we’ve been open since 2001. We delivered the BluRays 4 months after they were promised.
[Ben Holmes] “You know – what really bums me out is that I did the right thing. Faced with a new technology I went for the expensive industry standard. Not a free version, or cheap standalone. I paid Adobe’s high prices for something they advertise for Blu-Ray ease of use. “
That’s what we did too, in fact we purchased two versions of Production Premium CS3 only to return one because Adobe conveniently was very quiet about the fact that Premiere and Encore do not work on G5 machines, only Intel. It’s not that they didn’t say it didn’t work, they just didn’t say anything at all. Took us 6 months to get our money back and that was only through the hard work of our VAR.
[Ben Holmes] “I’m a little angry. “
After 12 months of this, I’m with you Ben.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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[walter biscardi] “Actually, it is. Through my posts on this forum, my blog and the FCP Forum, I have been by some incredible people who work in the commercial bluray industry for very VERY large studios. What I have learned is that BluRay specs are an incredibly complicated set of specs that were basically designed so nobody but Sony could ever create the proper software to burn a disc. In the words of one person who contacted me, “A kid can program DVD authoring software, BluRay software is incredibly hard.”
“Do I have to conclude that the software you posted above “NetBlender’s DoStudio” is also very basic? I also have it from the client (a senior guy at a large games house) that they have PC software that was essentially free that they use to make more complicated disks that mine. Don’t know how true that is, but he’s a friend of mine, not trying to hassle me.
I think this is the simplest disk I have ever made – I didn’t want to trip up on my first outing…
Ben
Edit Out Ltd
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RED camera transfer/post
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[Ben Holmes] “Do I have to conclude that the software you posted above “NetBlender’s DoStudio” is also very basic?”
No, it’s a full quality BluRay authoring tool and I think the price tag is around $25,000 to purchase. They are now offering this month to month licensing model for small shops like mine to open up BluRay authoring “to the masses.” Like I said, I don’t have a PC but I guess I’ll have to add one along with the burner and we’ll see if it works.
[Ben Holmes] “I also have it from the client (a senior guy at a large games house) that they have PC software that was essentially free that they use to make more complicated disks that mine. Don’t know how true that is, but he’s a friend of mine, not trying to hassle me. “
I don’t believe anything unless I see it. I have not seen or heard of free PC software that allows quality BluRay discs. Ask him what the software is and to provide you with a BluRay disc and allow you to see the actual project.
I have asked Adobe repeatedly to send me one of my BluRay projects burned to disc to show me that it works exactly as they say it does but I have never received a disc. Don’t believe anything until you see a burned disc that performs as promised.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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As an update to my first post, here’s a little progress:
Starting from scratch, I identified a few buttons that worked in Blu-Ray as they did on the simulator. I discovered that if I changed the colour set at all, they ceased to funtion. So sqaure red buttons it is. I have now added the media back in with the menus so we’ll see if I can manage a sucessful build over the weekend without an error.
My navigation is fouled up in pretty much the same way everyone else’s is: My link to the chapter menu highlights button 2, not button 1 (so it defaults to chapter 2) and my link to my third menu (special features) links to button 3. They work fine in the simulator, and on an SD burn.
That sounds like a simple scripting error, doesn’t it? Except that of course if it WAS a simple error, Adobe would have fixed it, right? I accept that Blu-Ray is harder to program for – so maybe the greatest minds at Adobe cant fix this. Or maybe they haven’t bothered. Who knows. Right about now, I don’t really care. If this was beta software, I could wear it, but it SO isn’t. If your sofware can’t do basic things like this disk right, don’t offer it for sale.
I think I can cope with a half-baked low volume disk that actually plays things – so that’s what I’m hoping for tomorrow. Then I’m never using it again. Hopefully Apple will update DVD SP before I have to make a choice….
Ben
Edit Out Ltd
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FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
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good luck there ben. I had a great chat with the NetBlender guys and will be ordering a PC next week to run it.
So as not to annoy certain folks on here I’ll report our progress on my blogs and FCP forum.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
-
Walter
I’ve managed to make the blu-ray image! Still got those navigation problems, but hey….
However, I’ve now turned my attention to the pictures on my DVD and Blu-Ray and well… the motion is awful. I let Encore do the DVD ones, and it’s made a hash of it – I don’t actually know if it can deal with the 24p video I have given it properly.
Can I ask you a couple of quick questions before I embark on a weekend long render? I really appreciate (as ever) your time on this:
My video is 24p and I’m making a 23.98p Blu-Ray and a 29.97i NTSC DVD.
1) I’ve used compressor now to retime the DVD files from 24>23.98 as everything I’ve read says this is an acceptable MPEG format for DVD playback, so even though my video files will all be 23.98, the Encore project is stuck on 29.97 (the only option). I plan to drop the encoded files straight into Encore and build in there. I believe this will be ok – is it?
2) I’m wondering if I should use compressor to re-encode the HD files as well – if so you mentioned in another thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/145/863018
“On the Mac side, we use Compressor to prepare our files and one of the settings under HD is “BluRay.”
I must be going daft (and to be honest I’m so tired now I re-made the whole Blu-Ray project as 29.97 rather than 23.98 without thinking – and saved the project to my system drive by accident) but I can’t find a blu-ray setting in compressor. Can you tell me what settings you use so I can avoid build errors?
I’m sorry to bother again – let me know if you have time. I would rather be spending some time with my kids this weekend, but it’s not to be.
Many thanks
Ben
Edit Out Ltd
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Walter
Don’t worry – found this:
https://blogs.adobe.com/davtechtable/2008/04/apples_compressor_encore_blura.html
Apologies! Didn’t look hard enough at the compressor settings. I sometimes forget about google when I’m on the cow….
Have a great weekend – and thanks for all your help and support as ever…
Ben
Edit Out Ltd
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FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer -
I’m just curious why you guys promised a BD title for a client without testing the tool first? And now you plan to bring up a lawsuit? 🙂
Encore has not worked since day 1.
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