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Here are the problems I encountered during my Encore Blu-ray project
Just going to round out the issues I had burning a Blu-ray, and the solutions, if applicable. The main point of this post is to help folks who find themselves Googling for answers. Unlike my experiences of getting my feet wet with Premiere Pro, After Effects, or indeed several other disc authoring applications, most of my critical knowledge about Encore was garnered through forum visitations, tutorials, and costly trial and error. Some of the listed issues are bound to be effectively unique to my own experiences. So be it; I can only speak for myself. My thanks to the folks in this forum who helped with particular issues.
1: Encore has occasional, semi-repeatable issues drawing the timeline, entering text, etc. Usually results in a non-fatal “General error”.
A: Learn where these bugs pop up and baby Encore so they don’t happen.2: Encore has difficulty importing menus saved from Photoshop, generally resulting in a crash, or, when import is successful, abnormalities tend to abound, such as buttons which are there but aren’t.
A: Avoid importing menus modified in external software.3a: Encore’s disc preview is jerky, unreliable, and occasionally self-destructive (crash, with and without error report), particularly with regard to menus.
3b: Encore’s disc preview (and the monitor) show thin black bars on both sides of the actual video, giving the impression (to the uninitiated) that the output will include those black bars. They serve no advantageous purpose.
A: Be wary of the preview; try to make test burns by preference, if financially feasible.3c: When previewing, Encore will occasionally begin to make excessive use of ram, sometimes resulting in a pause long enough (10 minutes +) to qualify as having locked up irretrievably.
A: Save and restart frequently.4: Encore does not automatically turn off the text graphics layer upon conversion of text to button.
A: This must be done manually, once the Layers tab is located.5: Encore will frequently misjudge the duration of audio, or in any event be incapable of generating a stream if it believes the audio and video mismatch, resulting in an error and the cessation of a build.
A: Seems to be as simple as deleting both audio and video from the timeline or the menu’s motion tab, and re-importing them, preferably audio first. In the case of the timeline, this WILL require the documentation and subsequent re-entry of chapter information, as..6: Encore lacks the ability to export chapter information.
7: When loading a previously saved project, Encore will have occasionally forgotten that it has already transcoded a given asset.
8: Because Encore saves transcoded data in folders named after projects, it becomes infeasible to save differing iterations of the same project for backup purposes, unless one is fond of the time and storage cost of perpetually re-transcoding assets whose transcodes Encore has “lost”.
9: Upon completing a build without having previously transcoded some assets, Encore will fail to recognize that it has transcoded some assets, as it must needs have done in order to complete the build.
10: When replacing one asset with another, if the previous asset was flagged as “untranscoded”, then the new asset will also be so flagged, regardless of its actual transcode status.
A: Do not replace; destroy the original asset, import the new asset, and, if need be, recreate the chapter information.11: If items in the flowchart tab are clicked, sometimes they will re-sort their position vertically, and this will eventually cause the flowchart to be stretched to the point that it cannot be reviewed with any ease.
A: Don’t click items in the flowchart tab.12: Encore will apparently occasionally generate a bad H.264 stream. This stream will play fully, but in fits and starts, both on a PC and on the Blu-ray disc itself.
A: It is imperative that all streams generated by Encore be tested prior to burning. This can be accomplished by generating a build as folders, and then individually playing each of the .M2TS files located in the STREAM directory.13: If a menu with a loop point is set to loop zero times, the result is that the menu ends once it reaches the loop point.
A: Set it to loop 1 time. It will not actually loop one time, so much as play the menu fully.14: Encore does not have the ability to have buttons temporarily turned off in a motion menu. It therefore generates two different menus, and, during playback, interrupts the button-free version with the button-embedded version when the buttons are supposed to turn on, destroying what would otherwise have been a seamless menu.
A: There is no solution. Generate a menu without a loop point.15: Encore seems to have difficulty accepting chapter points, even when the asset was transcoded by Encore with chapter points specified at the time. About half of the chapter points end up 15 frames too early. There also doesn’t seem to be any means within Encore of identifying whether a given frame in a “transcoded” or “don’t transcode” asset (say, for a chapter point) is an i-frame.
A: Too late and too tired to care anymore.Other curiosities:
16: Encore’s menu buttons frequently get lost; one is unable to click them for details.
A: Clicking the button routing ..button will bring them to the foreground, returning them to clickable status.17: Encore is very fond of undergoing a particular process called menu rendering. This process takes a long time, as it generates an MPEG2 version of one’s motion menu, regardless of one’s encode settings (AVC, for example). Encore unavoidably performs this process prior to any disc build. It is unknown whether this MPEG2 render is then utilized in some fashion in the disc build.
18: Encore does not burn streams to disc in the order in which they appear in one’s flowchart. Instead, it burns in the order in which the timelines / menus were created.
A: Care must be taken when importing assets. (Example: One may have an intro, prior to their menu, but if this intro was imported or created last, it will be burned last.) Or else, if the position of data on a disc is important, one may need to completely restart their project.And with all that having been said, I bid my friend’s laptop farewell, and pray that the next time I need to make a Blu-ray disc, Encore CS5 will have progressed more than CS4, for, in its current state, Encore is giving the competition a golden opportunity to overtake.
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17 Replies
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Wow. There’s so much misinformation in that post, I feel I must specifically address some of the “observations”:
[Marc Brown] “2: Encore has difficulty importing menus saved from Photoshop, generally resulting in a crash, or, when import is successful, abnormalities tend to abound, such as buttons which are there but aren’t.
A: Avoid importing menus modified in external software.”Encore has no difficulty in importing menus from Photoshop, and never has. That’s Encore’s main strength – full support for Photoshop file structure for menu creation. I’ve made literally thousands of menus in Photoshop (no exaggeration), and have never had a problem with them in Encore. There is no DVD authoring tool that has better support for Photoshop than Encore – because there’s a Photoshop “engine” in Encore. Any crashing you saw in this error was likely a system problem of some kind, and not a common problem.
[Marc Brown] “4: Encore does not automatically turn off the text graphics layer upon conversion of text to button.
A: This must be done manually, once the Layers tab is located.”Why should Encore automatically turn off visibility when you convert a text layer to a button? I wouldn’t want that. Your use case is one of dozens, and it shouldn’t govern button creation behavior.
Your points 7, 8, 9, and 10 are all really the same thing – transcoding status. And I’ve never seen any of them.
[Marc Brown] “15: Encore seems to have difficulty accepting chapter points, even when the asset was transcoded by Encore with chapter points specified at the time. About half of the chapter points end up 15 frames too early. There also doesn’t seem to be any means within Encore of identifying whether a given frame in a “transcoded” or “don’t transcode” asset (say, for a chapter point) is an i-frame.
A: Too late and too tired to care anymore.”Wrong. As long as the asset is not MPEG-2 or H.264, you can set the chapter point anywhere and Encore will retain it as long as any previous and next chapter points are more than 1/2 second away. When Encore transcodes the file, the GOP will be created on the chapter point set.
If the asset is MPEG-2 or H.264, then the chapter has to be on a GOP. That could be up to 1/2 second away from where you set it, which is what you’re describing.
[Marc Brown] “16: Encore’s menu buttons frequently get lost; one is unable to click them for details.
A: Clicking the button routing ..button will bring them to the foreground, returning them to clickable status.”Wrong again. Buttons never “get lost”. There are two different selection tools: one selects only buttons, and the other selects all other layers. You obviously were using the wrong selection tool. Your “answer” happens to be one of Encore’s behaviors – it switches to the Button Select tool when you click the Button Routing button.
[Marc Brown] “17: Encore is very fond of undergoing a particular process called menu rendering. This process takes a long time, as it generates an MPEG2 version of one’s motion menu, regardless of one’s encode settings (AVC, for example). Encore unavoidably performs this process prior to any disc build. It is unknown whether this MPEG2 render is then utilized in some fashion in the disc build. “
Encore renders a motion menu only if there are visible layers and something changes in the menu (e.g., repositioned a layer, scaled, edited text, etc.). You obviously did one of these things to change the menu before building. All Encore motion menus are MPEG-2 – I think that’s in Encore’s documentation.
[Marc Brown] “18: Encore does not burn streams to disc in the order in which they appear in one’s flowchart. Instead, it burns in the order in which the timelines / menus were created.
A: Care must be taken when importing assets. (Example: One may have an intro, prior to their menu, but if this intro was imported or created last, it will be burned last.) Or else, if the position of data on a disc is important, one may need to completely restart their project.”Encore burns streams in the order in which timelines were created, with the exception of the Main Timeline disc property, which will always be the first stream written to the disc. There’s no need to restart your project if the streams aren’t in the order you want. Instead, duplicate the timelines in the order you want them, and then delete the old timelines. You will of course have to relink your buttons and perhaps other objects, but that’s a lot quicker than recreating your entire project.
There are certainly times when an author would like the stream order to match what’s in the Flowchart, but again, that’s not the only use case, and the Flowchart isn’t the ideal method for this anyway, since DVD navigation hierarchy is not timeline-only.
Now, I didn’t address all of your observations because I don’t have time to check all of them at this time. Some of the unaddressed may be valid, and if so, specific to Blu-ray authoring. All of the obervations (excepting Flowchart issue 11, which is easy enough to work around and certainly does keep one from using the Flowchart as a feature) do not occur in DVD authoring from Encore.
So in the end, if the goal was accuracy for future users, then it’s important that facts are presented – not newbie errors and misunderstandings that could have been avoided by reading the fine manual.
I hope this reply helps future users who stumble across your post.
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> Wow. There’s so much misinformation in that post, I feel I must specifically address some of the “observations”:
With all due respect, I did preface by saying these were my experiences alone.
> Encore has no difficulty in importing menus from Photoshop, and never has.
For a specific example, load up a menu in Photoshop, make a few layers invisible, save it, and import that into Encore.
> Any crashing you saw in this error was likely a system problem of some kind, and not a common problem.
Possibly, but immaterial, since the main point of my post was to help out folks Googling for answers, should their experiences match my own. Submissions of differing experiences will have no bearing on that. I will admit that a secondary point was to express an opinion about the state of Encore as a usable commercial product. I didn’t invent all the issues I’ve had with the product, and I can’t help but regard with some mirth the idea that Encore’s stability is less questionable than that of my or anyone’s hardware or OS.
> Why should Encore automatically turn off visibility when you convert a text layer to a button?
Simple. Encore’s own default color scheme for buttons has the non-highlighted opacity at 0%. This strongly implies that the developers of Encore knew that a user’s typical desire for buttons would be to have them invisible when they are not highlighted or activated. But this foresight is defeated if the very pixels utilized by the buttons are, by default, drawn over by text.
> Your points 7, 8, 9, and 10 are all really the same thing – transcoding status. And I’ve never seen any of them.
Point 8 can be tested. “Transcode now” an asset. “Save as” the project to a new name. Exit. Restart. Load newly-named project. Investigate transcode status of previously transcoded asset.
Point 9 can be tested. Load any raw audio and video (into a Blu-ray project, to minimize variables). Use them in a motion menu. Set transcode settings to two-pass H.264. Set a loop point. Do not transcode either. Build the disc. When completed, the audio will reflect its new transcoded status. The video will not. Confirmed a half dozen times. However, this ties in with point 17, so I’m willing to drop it, with the caveat that I regard Encore’s menu transcoding shenanigans as dubious, bordering on flawed. Once Adobe allows one to properly make use of AVC for menus, all this will be moot.
> If the asset is MPEG-2 or H.264, then the chapter has to be on a GOP. That could be up to 1/2 second away from where you set it, which is what you’re describing.
I can only speak from experience. I had Encore create my .M4V from raw video, using chapters at specific frames, with which it should theoretically have generated i-frames. I then created a new project and used the Encore-generated .M4V as an asset, and assigned the chapters to the same specific frames as before. Encore did not indicate any lack of validity for the chapter points; indeed, it showed the frames properly in the timeline and monitor. But half of the final disc’s chapters were half a second early. I feel confident in concluding that Encore is at fault here, either for failing to generate i-frames where it was told, or failing to accept some i-frames as valid for chapter points. In either case, a built-in i-frame indicator would be a welcome – I would say foregone – feature. I haven’t used any other DVD authoring application which so thoroughly lacked the means.
> You obviously were using the wrong selection tool.
I suppose I can’t blame you for assuming I was unable to grasp this facet of the various Adobe products. Nonetheless, I was. None of the various selection tools were able to find the buttons, I assure you. If I still had Encore and my various project files available to me, I would have been more than happy to forward an example project.
> There are certainly times when an author would like the stream order to match what’s in the Flowchart, but again, that’s not the only use case, and the Flowchart isn’t the ideal method for this anyway, since DVD navigation hierarchy is not timeline-only.
If we want to carry it that far, then obviously the true solution would be for Encore to give the user control over what gets muxed / burned in what order. But since Encore does not enable this, the next best thing – perhaps only in my mind – would be to follow the flowchart, since the point of the flowchart is the organization and play order of the assets. I would argue that ignoring the flowchart in favor of the order of construction of timelines is a lesser choice.
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Hi Marc,
I applaud you for outlining your trials and tribulations in such detail, as well as for posting the solutions that worked for you. It will definitely serve your intended purpose of helping future users who may stumble into the same traps that you did.
That said, I have to echo Joe’s sentiments. Taking more time to understand how Encore is designed to work would likely have prevented many headaches during your project. I hope that’s advice that future Googling users will also find useful. 😉
-Jeff
The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0
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[Marc Brown] “With all due respect, I did preface by saying these were my experiences alone. “
Yes, you did preface it that way. And then in the remainder of your post made it quite clear editorially that you considered these Encore issues. And some are, and others may be. But many are not.
[Marc Brown] “For a specific example, load up a menu in Photoshop, make a few layers invisible, save it, and import that into Encore.”
I just tried it, and several different ways. But no crash for me. I’ve done this sort of things hundreds of times, and never had a problem. Am I unique?
[Marc Brown] “Simple. Encore’s own default color scheme for buttons has the non-highlighted opacity at 0%. This strongly implies that the developers of Encore knew that a user’s typical desire for buttons would be to have them invisible when they are not highlighted or activated. But this foresight is defeated if the very pixels utilized by the buttons are, by default, drawn over by text. “
You’re talking about the Normal state for buttons? The highlight layer is 0% by default in the Normal state, so you can see all the pixels…that’s the point. Invisible buttons when not selected might be one method of authoring a menu (it’s one that I would never use – how does the user know what to do if there’s not a clear indication of where the buttons are?), but it’s not the sole or even a common method. Check any Hollywood DVD for a clear indication of how to indicate button status. The conclusion you draw (“the developers of Encore knew that a user’s typical desire for buttons would be to have them invisible when they are not highlighted or activated”) from your expectation for this feature is deeply flawed.
[Marc Brown] “Point 8 can be tested. “Transcode now” an asset. “Save as” the project to a new name. Exit. Restart. Load newly-named project. Investigate transcode status of previously transcoded asset.”
I just tried that. It’s transcoded.
[Marc Brown] “None of the various selection tools were able to find the buttons, I assure you.”
I can assure you with complete confidence that you are mistaken. Buttons on menus do not get lost.
[Marc Brown] “If we want to carry it that far, then obviously the true solution would be for Encore to give the user control over what gets muxed / burned in what order.”
I agree with you here. This would be a good feature. But my first reply to this point was to demonstrate that you don’t have to restart your project to customize stream order. I disagree that following the Flowchart is the way to order streams, since navigation hierarchy does not necessarily produce the desired stream order. It would be better to allow users (those that care, that is) to easily set stream order at any time.
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Thanks. Indeed, as long as somebody knows what they’re searching for – the same kinds of information I was seeking at the time – my post ought to save a lot of time.
The disappointing truth is that it boils down to issues of stability and capability. Crashes have to be actively circumvented. Much minutiae has to be absorbed through the process of trial and error, because the intuitive assumption is frequently the wrong one (which I again contrast with my experiences with other Adobe products). Certain capabilities one might justifiably take for granted are inexplicably beyond Encore’s scope, even after a full year since Blu-ray implementation with CS3. On it goes.
As for the recommendation about memorizing Encore’s mechanisms in detail in order to circumvent headaches, the only specific case in which that suggestion is applicable is that of menu transcoding, in whose case I am to accept that foreknowledge is chiefly a defense against the combination of Encore’s inability to transcode in anything better than MPEG2, and its failure to notify the user of the potential transgression of intent while giving the user a choice of codec for menu-designated video.
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> Yes, you did preface it that way. And then in the remainder of your post made it quite clear editorially that you considered these Encore issues.
A preface is like turning on italics at the start of a paragraph. It’s a good method of subsequently making points without having to repeatedly stress a certain fact. Editorial legitimacy is a topic perhaps better suited for movie review talkbacks.
> […]never had a problem[…]It’s transcoded.[…]Buttons on menus do not get lost.[…]
You and I were using different versions of Encore CS4. Should I have made videos of these phenomena? Possibly so.
> Invisible buttons when not selected might be one method of authoring a menu (it’s one that I would never use – how does the user know what to do if there’s not a clear indication of where the buttons are?)
The button graphics are part of the motion menu, of course. Adobe’s own info page on this topic has this to say:
For example, you can create a video in After Effects in which the button images fly in from different points and settle into position after 15 seconds. In this case, the background video, not the menu, includes the button images.
Clearly, the concept of preexisting button graphics is not something I more or less uniquely invented. In fact, every DVD I’ve ever authored has utilized this kind of idea.
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A preface followed by overwhelmingly contradictory opinion and conclusion is simply a fig leaf – nothing more.
And yes, I think we must use different versions of Encore CS4. Somehow, my version works. That couldn’t be because I understand the application, could it?
And your last point is rather disingenuous. I said nothing about flying buttons into a motion menu – which is an illusion, by the way (the buttons are always present) – I disagreed with your assertion that Encore should be hiding text layers by default when you convert them to buttons.
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I agree that Encore has many bugs, and some of your observations are valid bugs with the program. However I also have to agree with much of what Joe and Jeff have said. Some of the problems you encountered are not really problems at all, but rather the logical way most people would want the program to work.
I design custom motion menu templates for use with Encore, which includes a pre-designed menu template created in Photoshop which then gets imported into Encore. I have never encountered a problem importing them, nor have any of our customers. I’m not sure where your problem is coming from, maybe you are not creating your menu properly, using the correct Layer Group prefix, and dimensions of the document.
In my blog, I posted a long list of bugs I encountered while authoring a Blu-ray/DVD disc and I also include the solutions for each and every one. Some of which you discovered, such as the rendering of the motion menus regardless if they had been rendered already or not.
You can read it here:
https://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/05/encore-tutorial/
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
I have been using Adobe Encore CS5 on a mac for some years now and have never had this issue, I was hoping someone might have found a solution for this. I encountered the following error message during a Blu Ray authoring project:
Blu-ray Error: “fatal error”, Code: “6”, note: “video buffer underflows. Total bitrate is too high near time = 7.048700 seconds –
the project was exported from within adobe premiere using the H.264 preset for Blu-ray.
The menu’s were custom made in photoshop using the proper codes for buttons/chapters/video etc.
when the project was complete and I “checked” the project, no issues come up. when I start the “Build” the program begins by processing the menus and this takes quite a while and it reaches up to my last submenu and the error message pops up. the discs I’ve used go to waste and the project is still not delivered. Help? -
Did you encode as CBR, VBR 1-pass, or VBR 2-pass? There are some issues with the MainConcept encoder that Adobe uses for h.264 that causes it to exceed the maximum bitrate. I believe these issues happen in a VBR 1-pass encode. Try CBR or VBR 2-pass. Also, make sure your maximum bitrate is set to less than 28 mbps. 23 mbps target and 25 mbps max should work well and look good.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com
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