Export with Chapter Markers

[Kevin Monahan]

Hi Nathan,
Are you designating them as chapter markers in the Marker dialog box? Also, do the chapter markers appear in Encore?

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Follow Me on Twitter!

[Nathan Mcalpine]

Thanks for the reply Kevin. I am designating the markers as chapter markers in premiere, but I am not using encore. I simply am exporting from Premiere with my DVD settings.

Nathan McAlpine
FCP and now Premiere Editor

[Kevin Monahan]

As a test, can you try it, please?

Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Follow Me on Twitter!

[Nathan Mcalpine]

Yeah, if Encore is supposed to preserve the chapter markers, I’ll give that a shot. I’m at a FCP suite today, but I’ll try Encore tonight and will let you know if that worked.

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Nathan,

To my understanding, the MPEG-2 DVD chapter markers are not IN the .mv2 file at all, but rather are in (one of) the two sidecar files that get exported besides the audio and video files. I forget what the extensions are on those two at the moment, but maybe not something that DVD Studio Pro can read?

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Nathan Mcalpine]

Thanks Jeff. Yeah, there was a third file that I believe was the chapter markers and I was not able to bring that into DVD SP. Maybe Encore will combine the M2V file with the chapter markers? I hope so. That would be a real drag if I’m unable to create chapter markers with Premiere..

Nathan McAlpine
FCP and now Premiere Editor

[Jeff Pulera]

Nathan,

If you want to use Encore, simply use “Import As > Timeline” and multi-select the video and audio clips together. The chapter marks from Premiere WILL automatically appear on the new Encore timeline, and no need to import the markers file at all, that happens behind the scenes.

Can’t help with workflows for other authoring solutions

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Nathan Mcalpine]

Okay. Well I can’t author the DVD through Encore, because I don’t have the control I need for my menus. I guess I’ll see if I can export the embedded chapter markers from Encore.

Nathan McAlpine
FCP and now Premiere Editor

[Jeff Pulera]

I have used third-party MPEG-2 encoding methods which resulted in not having chapter markers for Encore. In that case, I grab a notepad and jot done the timecode of each marker in Premiere, and then just manually type those into Encore. That should be an option in any authoring program. Of course, we’d all love to reduce manual labor, but sometimes old-school methods get the job done.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Justin Craw]

Hey Nathan,

I just found a work around as far as chapter markers translating between the two suites. It’s not the quickest of work arounds, but if you have placed 40 chapter markers, the last thing you want to do is have to use DVDSP’s archaic marker system. I was determined that it was possible to take some headache out of having to go through and copy and paste every timecode while also trying to manage the names of each marker.

So here it is,

After you have created your sequence with markers in Premiere. Go ahead and export your .mp2 with the audio set up for Dolby Digital. The Dolby Digital setting will allow you to go to DVDSP because it will create an .ac3 audio file.

After that is finished go back into premiere and choose File>Export>Final Cut Pro XML. Choose your destination and let it do it’s thing.

At this point you should open Final Cut Pro and select File>Import>XML. Locate the XML file you exported from Premiere. At this point you will be confronted by a menu. I just went ahead and kept everything checked. The most important of course being “include markers” Press Ok. If you receive an error message just click through it. Remember, we are really just in Final Cut to get the marker info.

Once in FCP, you should see the timeline from premiere in the browser window. Open that timeline and hopefully at this point you should have your markers from premiere.

If you take a look at the markers in FCP you will notice that they did not carry over from premiere the metadata suggesting that it is a “Chapter Marker”. So pretty much what you have to do is go through on those markers and specify that they are in fact “Chapter Markers”. You can easily do this by using the keystroke Shift+Down Arrow to move quickly to the next markers.

Now that all markers are set to “Chapter Markers” in FCP. Erase all footage underneath the markers and put a simple slug in. This will speed up your render times and you really don’t need the footage because that has already been exported from Premiere. Next choose File>Export>Quicktime movie. Make sure that the chapter markers option is selected, since this will be carrying your markers to DVDSP.

Open up DVDSP. Import first the file that was created in Final Cut. Since it is just black with no audio there is no need to try to crunch it down in compressor. Drop that file on your track or timeline in DVDSP. At this point all the markers should show up on that track. Erase the video and audio track and the markers should stay on the timeline.

Now bring in the video file from Premiere that you originally exported and drop it on the timeline.

That should do it for you. I know that this probably looks like more work than necessary but I promise that once you have the workflow down it speeds up the process considerably.

Cheers