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BluRay failings in Encore CS3. Thoughts?
Per Joe’s suggestion, here is everything that has transpired in our question for authoring BluRay discs via Encore CS3 in a nutshell.
All the features available for authoring a DVD in Encore do not work in BluRay when running Encore CS3 on a Mac. As someone who has been trying to create BluRay discs with basic features in Encore for over a year I thought I would inform the rest of the folks considering Encore for BluRay that there are many, many issues with BluRay and Encore.
We have attempted to work directly with Nathan Gentner and the Adobe Encore Team behind the scenes but so far, no updates have been released that can solve these very simple Menu and Button Routing issues to match the claims of Adobe’s marketing. We have sent our projects to them and even asked them to send us a BD-R sample of everything working correctly, but have not received anything to date.
To recap the complexity of our primary project:
Main Menu: Play Feature button, Chapter Selection button, Sneak Peak button with a motion video loop of 40 seconds for the backdrop. (we also tried this with a static backdrop.
Chapter Selection: Chapters 1 – 9 (or up to 11 on one of the discs)
The DVD’s work perfectly.
The BluRay Simulation mode works perfectly.
On the BluRay discs, the Chapter Selection Menu never defaults to Button 1, it always defaults to Button 2 or the last Button. If you use the Chapter Selection to watch a Chapter and then hit “Menu”, you go back to the Main Menu, instead of “Last Menu” as it’s supposed to. That is when it actually creates the ISO file.
Approx. 98% of the time we try to create the ISO files in Encore, we get the infamous “Fatal Error” messages and the ISO is never created. We started working on these BluRay discs some time in February or March. As of last week we were able to actually create ISO files for three of the five titles. This was after sending projects and samples and everything Adobe requested to solve the issue. They never did provide a solution for us.
We went back and re-created the primary project using a Static Menu and a simple “Play” button, all 5 titles were created in two days. In fact all of our successful BluRay discs have been created using a static menu and a simple “Play” button.
This is all contrary to Adobe’s marketing on their website.
From Adobe’s site:
“Use the same Encore interface and features to author and deliver commercial-quality titles on both standard-definition DVD and high-definition Blu-ray Disc.”This claim is not correct in our experience. You cannot use the same features on a BluRay project as you can on a DVD project.
From Adobe’s website:
Or author a high-definition Blu-ray Disc project and, with one click, create a finished standard-definition DVD project.Actually this creates a sub-par DVD when it actually works. Usually this crashes on our system when we try this. And if you create a DVD project first and then try to change it to a BluRay project, that will crash everything too.
From Adobe’s website:
The unmatched integration between Encore and Adobe Photoshop®, After Effects®, and Adobe Premiere Pro software enables you to create Blu-ray discs more efficiently.As long as you create a static menu with a simple “Play” button, this statement is absolutely true.
From Adobe’s website:
Instead of doing manual scripting, visually drag and drop assets to create your DVD and Blu-ray Disc navigation with the visual flowchart. Design full-featured interfaces by using robust text tools, high-definition royalty-free menu templates and art, and automated menu generation.Absolutely false if you intend to actually burn a BluRay disc from our experience. You cannot create any sort of full featured interface in BluRay and then burn it to disc. You absolutely CAN create a full-featured interface if you stay in Encore and run in Disc Simulation Mode.
We have about a 10% success rate of Encore actually being able to burn directly to BluRay disc, so we create ISO files instead and burn them using Toast.
So my questions to all of you dabbling in BluRay Authoring are:
Are you creating multiple menu projects?
If so, how many menus and how many buttons per menu?
Are they routing correctly when you burn to disc?
Are you able to burn directly to BluRay disc successfully directly from Encore consistently?
Are you able to successfully create BluRay ISO files?
Are they actually burning to disc correctly and playing back in the BluRay player correctly?
If so, are you running Windows or Mac?
I would love to hear BluRay success stories and what types of projects / menus you’re creating.
We have tried working not only with Tech Support but directly with Adobe Encore’s product manager and the engineering team with no solutions to our issues to date. We’re looking at other BluRay authoring options in the meantime, but if you guys have any thoughts
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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27 Replies
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Walter,
I’ve done some multiple menu discs but I’ve always created a disc image from Encore and burned in toast. And they work, but they are not as complex as you describe. (I’m on a Mac by the way).
Encore sometimes will crash on quit or if you launch Encore and select a previous project from the start up menu. Subsequent relaunch and it works fine.
I’ve had problems with motion menus. They plain don’t work as any text overlayed as a button, the highlighting is dreadfully off, by almost the size of the font.
It’s not ready for prime time. I feel your pain and stick to DVDSP fro SD DVDs.
Warren
Warren Eig
O 310-470-0905email: warren@babyboompictures.com
website: https://www.babyboompictures.comhttps://babyboompictures.com/AFX_Movie2.html
https://babyboompictures.com/KnitWits_Movie.htmlEDITING REEL: https://www.babyboompictures.com/Editing_Reel.html
TITLE DESIGN: https://www.babyboompictures.com/Titles_Reel.html -
Warren, for the motion menu issue you might want to try unchecking “Create Text Subpicture” in the Button properties, and instead create the subpicture using Object > Create Subpicture.
It’s a workaround, but it should work.
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[Warren Eig] “I’ve had problems with motion menus. They plain don’t work as any text overlayed as a button, the highlighting is dreadfully off, by almost the size of the font. “
Actually, motion menus we got working no problem, even the highlighting. We create the text overlays in photoshop, the video in Compressor and it all matches up fine. It’s just getting the very basic menu items to work.
I even tried making a single menu with the chapters and Play Feature on the same menu. “Fatal Error” each time.
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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Man, this just blows! These are the very issues I’m having with the buttons. And you’re telling me Adobe has been working on this for a while? I bought this software based on what a big-time vendor recommended to me that “this is the only recommended way to author on Blu-Ray on a Mac”. Now both Adobe and the vendor look like fools.
I suppose I could switch my activation to a PC. So along those lines, theoretically how could I edit in Final Cut and burn using Encore on a PC? Would it be as simple as making a QT reference movie in FCP and dropping that into Encore?
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[steve mitchell] “Man, this just blows! These are the very issues I’m having with the buttons. And you’re telling me Adobe has been working on this for a while?”
Well, in a way this is a nice thing to hear. From what I was told on another thread, there are a lot of people authoring BluRay with Encore, but nobody has come forward with any issues. So I figured I must be the only lucky one.
[steve mitchell] “I suppose I could switch my activation to a PC.”
You mean Encore? I would not do that quite honestly. Nothing shows me that this is a Mac issue, but an application issue. If you’re going to go PC, look at NetBlender DoStudio. $250 per month, not a bad deal and you can create commercially replicateable discs too. I just don’t want to invest in a PC right now and am looking at some new options coming down the pipeline that hopefully will let us stay on the Mac side.
[steve mitchell] “So along those lines, theoretically how could I edit in Final Cut and burn using Encore on a PC? Would it be as simple as making a QT reference movie in FCP and dropping that into Encore? “
Yeah this would work, especially since we use Compressor to make the files before we get to Encore. I never let Encore make the files as Compressor does a much better job.
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, thanks for the quick response. On the Adope forum (where this a thread about this issue) it seems to point to a problem with Leopard. I have a spare PC and just might switch activation just to try and see if it works.
steve
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[steve mitchell] “On the Adope forum (where this a thread about this issue) it seems to point to a problem with Leopard. “
Nobody has said anything to us about this issue so that’s news to me.
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, I’m assuming you mean mean nobody from Adobe has said anything to you about it being an issue with Leopard? Anyway, I’m in the process of downloading Adobe PP and Encore to my PC and activating it, then trying to make the same Blu Ray project on a PC and we will see what happens. Give me a couple of hours.
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Update: Silly me. What was i thinking that it would be as easy as downloading from the web, de-activating the program on my Mac, and using the same serial number to activate on a PC? Of course this is only what I was told by Adobe “customer service” twice today! Anyway, Encore is not downloadable. They have to send new install discs.
God help the technical support person I get on the phone tomorrow.
Dontcha just love the American names they give the ‘customer service” people in India? Today I got Sean! And Martin. Yeah. Right.
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[steve mitchell] “Dontcha just love the American names they give the ‘customer service” people in India? Today I got Sean! And Martin. Yeah. Right. “
Not even going to touch that, all I’ll say is I’m glad Apple move their tech support calls back to Canada.
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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