Adobe Encore joins Apple DVD Studio Pro

[Walter Soyka]

[Craig Seeman] “I hear Adobe Encore is not including in Creative Cloud. So Encore joins DVD Studio Pro in the big A companies dust bin.”

Sort of. CC subscribers can still download and install Encore CS6:

https://www.adobe.com/products/encore/faq.html [link]

Installing Premiere CC & Encore CS6 [link]

Using Encore CS6 with PremierePro CC [link]

Two big caveats: the installation process is ugly and dumb, and dynamic link does not work between Premiere Pro CC and Encore CS6.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Craig Seeman]

The CS6 version is still available. Here’s Adobe’s official word but development is dead.

https://www.adobe.com/products/encore/faq.html

Is the Encore CS6 version the final release of this product?
Yes. The trend in the video and broadcast industry is moving away from physical media distribution. The
future is in cloud and streaming content. Therefore we are focusing more on products that deliver to
streaming services. For example, Adobe Media Encoder and Adobe Premiere Pro CC include a new
feature allowing users to create iPad-ready video with QuickTime chapter markers. The Encore CS6
version will be the final release of this product.

[Oliver Peters]

This isn’t a surprise, since there are now other methods for one-offs. Encore was pretty problematic in trying to create proper Blu-rays with branched menus anyway. Now that Adobe has a way to actually track downloads by application (as opposed to people buying bundles/collections), I suspect more apps will bite the dust in the future. No need to put R&D effort into unproductive software that no one is using.

Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Gary Huff]

[Oliver Peters] “No need to put R&D effort into unproductive software that no one is using.”

I’ve actually used Encore quite a bit this year already…but I’m not terribly bummed…Encore CS6 works fine for most of my needs.

[Daniel Latimer]

Is there a viable and similarly priced alternative to Encore?

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “I’ve actually used Encore quite a bit this year already…but I’m not terribly bummed…Encore CS6 works fine for most of my needs.”

Yup, Adobe is not pulling Encore CS6 from the market. If one’s clients are frozen in time then you’ll have the software equally frozen. It may be a concern that bugs won’t get fixed and given the risk that an OS update may eventually break it, one may need to have a system equally frozen.

None of this changes the broader market condition that there’s no reason for a company to continue to commit resources to a product that has a declining user base. Declining doesn’t mean zero user base. It means it’s no longer a product that will generate new subscriptions nor be a deciding factor in people leaving their subscriptions. They’ve likely determined it generates no new revenue and may not even sustain revenue.

In fact Adobe, apparently like Apple, has a motive to push you into new forms of interactive design and delivery.

Adobe, for example, mentions iPad compatible files with chapter markers. They also make software for HTML5 interactive design (and of course Flash but that’s another issue).

I have a hunch, if you looked at the current marked and compared the exponential growth of Tablet sales compared to the sales of Blu-ray players, the expanding market of SmartTV, Roku, AppleTV sales as well, the numbers will show the market direction. It shows where the consumer is headed. It shows where business to consumer and business to business marketing is headed. The growth numbers in those markets compared to interactive menu driven disc (no one is ending the ability to create optical disc based “screeners” or even putting files on optical disc to deliver a physical medium) are concretely visible to Adobe as it was to Apple preceding them.

Chapter markers are here to stay. The ability to have separate videos whether download or on disc are certainly still here. Physical medium delivery is not gone. Optical discs are still here. It’s interactive menus (Authoring) that’s in such sharp decline that major companies have no economic motive to continue R&D and QA (Quality Assurance testing).

[Craig Seeman]

While price and features might cover a range, see this.
https://dvd-authoring-software-review.toptenreviews.com

Although I don’t think market conditions are conducive to further development in this area for anybody. Certainly not for major software developers beyond the high end and one wonders where that’s going as well. I wouldn’t be surprised that even on that level authoring products are at the mature level of bug fix and maintenance mode.

[Daniel Ludwig]

Craig,
these are only the consumer-burning-software.

if you are looking for a valuable alternative to encore to create professional BDs at a good price/value you might have a look DVD Logic EasyBD:

https://www.dvd-logic.com/easybd/

cheers

danny

[Lance Bachelder]

I agree optical discs are still alive (for a while) and most folks still watch DVD’s and NOT Blu-rays – which is great for me because hit movies are almost always available on Blu-ray at Redbox.

While I’ve used Encore and the old DVD Studio Pro on a few gigs here and there my go to authoring app for years is DVD Architect from Sony. It comes with Vegas Pro and I’ve done tons of projects with it including several retail feature films.

https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/bluraydvd

While it does do Blu-ray, none of the sub $1,000 authoring programs can do proper BD 2.0 etc authoring. You still need a higher end app for those. Sony has a bunch of pro Blu-ray apps to:
https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/dostudio

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Julian Bowman]

I’d say half of the jobs I do my clients want DVDs. This brave new hi-tech cloud based future fails to take into account a lot of people have crap broadband. I’ve recently moved and we don’t have fibre optic yet, so I am back to being packed onto copper wire broadband with way too many other people because the corporate world likes to milk everyone for every penny and I would say a good 10% of the time our broadband drops to a crawl and sometimes just stops. Mostly around prime time, so you know, when we would want to use it.

A lot of charities and not for profit organisations have poor broadband at work, a lot of their clients don’t have broadband. A DVD is easy to take around and show people.

Plus, people still like owning stuff and DVD works fine. CD sales still exist. Vinyl still sells. DVD isn’t going anywhere soon. I get that big companies don’t see how they can milk it for more cash so move on, but the real world is usually a good few years behind the ‘visionaries’ of the corporate world.

Good for you if you have fibre optic. Looking forward to getting it back myself at some point. But you aren’t in the majority.

And breaking DVD Studio at some OS update, is going to royally crimp my work. Not sure why a quick remake can’t be done to simply make it run on the latest OS. Just don’t get the lack of respect for money I/we have spent in the past. Once it is syphoned off to the shareholders, customers be damned I guess.

Still, cloud is so shiny.