Blu ray authoring with custom menus

[Noah Kadner]

Cheap, effect and custom Blu-Ray menus don’t really belong in the same sentence. 🙂 I’d suggest demoing Adobe Encore which is the only thing even close on Mac.

Noah

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[Michael Slowe]

Noah, doesn’t Toast 11 Pro boast BD authoring facility? I do all my BD’s with it but don’t want chapters so haven’t tested this aspect. The quality looks fantastic on a big HD screen, are you saying that Encore would look even better?

Michael Slowe

[David Eaks]

[Sivan Geyr] “I have burned a few projects without any menus but that is a major downgrade for myself and my clients. “

Compressor can make Blu-ray’s with chapter menu’s from Chapter Markers in FCP, but it is VERY limited in customization. Toast can as well but It’s been buggy for me.

[Noah Kadner] “I’d suggest demoing Adobe Encore which is the only thing even close on Mac.”

Let me know If I am missing something here. When I downloaded (20 days
remaining) the CS5.5 Production Premium Trial (with the single
intention of trying out Encore) Encore was unavailable. I got the
message “Adobe Encore CS5.1 cannot run in trial mode. Please relaunch
the application and provide a valid serial number.”

I was really looking forward to some BD-RE test-burns…

[Michael Slowe] “doesn’t Toast 11 Pro boast BD authoring facility? I do all my BD’s with it but don’t want chapters so haven’t tested this aspect.”

I’ve had limited success with manually adding chapters in Toast 11. The problem for me is opening the “Edit” window. If it opens at all, it takes ~15 minutes. Otherwise I Force Quit the App.

I think Compressor is the best bet for Blu-ray Chapter Menu’s short of Encore. I’m just disappointed that it isn’t available in the trial. I would buy CS5.5 Production Premium at the half price discount in a heart beat, if I could just tryout Encore to see that I can in fact make custom chapter menu’s on Blu-ray that are worth the cost (also I want to take advantage of the discount, so when CS6 comes out I can just pay the upgrade price).

[Michael Sacci]

Encore is not available as a trial. probably has to do with licensing of some of the codecs but I’m just guessing as to why. You have to pay at least Premiere Pro to get to use Encode.

[Jon Geddes]

Encore is definitely capable of making great looking Blu-ray discs with custom motion menus. In fact, our company specializes in making DVD & Blu-ray motion menu templates for use with Adobe Encore, and we provide complete walkthrough video tutorials for the entire process. These tutorials are available for free from the tutorial section of our website (no purchase of our templates are necessary).

We also provide a full array of professional DVD & Blu-ray authoring services using our industry leading motion menu templates with Adobe Encore. I’m not saying this to promote my company, but rather showing you how capable of an authoring program it is, and that we are able to base our business around it. Encore certainly has some limitations with Blu-ray authoring, and should never be used for commercial releases of Hollywood movies, but it is still a very capable program that can produce great results as long as you are aware of the limitations.

Some of those limitations are issues it has with subtitles (the program supports them, but has faulty programming of how it implements it on the disc), as well as non-seamless flow between menus and menu transitions (again, faulty programming by Adobe, and not a limitation of the format). Adobe could fix all of these problems if they consulted with people like Larry Applegate who know a great deal about the Blu-ray spec and know exactly what the problems are with Encore and how to fix them, but it appears they are trying to get by with their 3 programmers in India who haven’t figured out how to do it correctly yet (I really hope they figure it out sooner rather than later). Adobe is saving themselves some money by outsourcing to India, but in the end they are losing money because the quality of the product is not what people expect from Adobe. The only thing they have going for them is that the products from the competition aren’t any better. But like I said, if you are aware of the limitations and don’t try and do something the program is not capable of doing, then you can make some great looking menus that function as they should.

Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com

[Daniel Ludwig]

… and could be extended using larrys blustreak tracer or tracer CMF if replication is the way you need to go.

[Edward Westerhuis]

Hey Jon,

I went to check out the videos on your site. Looking pretty good, but I wondering if you have other Encore videos other than the subtitle fixer.

Thanks,
Edward

[Jon Geddes]

Yes we do. We have an hour long Encore tutorial which explains how to author a disc with custom motion menus and transitions that have been rendered in After Effects (using our Pro Motion Menu Kits).

It is a very thorough tutorial and takes you through using the Chapter Index feature, manually configuring multiple pages of scene selections, Blu-ray pop-up menus, and much more. Even if you don’t use our products, it is a very informative tutorial.

This tutorial can be accessed for free from the Tutorial section of our website, under the product tutorials for our Pro Motion Menu Kits. Simply select any one of our kits, and it will take you to the Tutorial Series.

In fact, you might be interested in watching the entire tutorial series, as it walks you through the entire workflow of authoring with custom motion menus and transitions, complete with music and sound effects.

Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com