Import only Chapter Markers from Premiere Pro into Encore 5.1

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Adam,

I’m pretty sure that any automatic chapter mark linkage between Premiere and Encore went away several years ago. What I do is write down the time codes from Premiere timeline where I want the chapters to go. Then in Encore, just manually create my chapter marks at those points.

Please note though – encoding for DVD or Blu-ray uses Long-GOP encoding. This means that several frames – I believe 15 for DVD – will be encoded as a “Group of Pictures” that just save changes from one frame to the next. Disc chapter breaks can only be placed between the GOPs and not in the middle of them. Back when Premiere and Encore were linked, you could mark chapters in Premiere and when you exported, it would force breaks at the desired chapter marks. Not so any more.

So what happens in Encore is that when you try to go to the exact second and frame where you want your chapter mark, and you set that chapter mark, it will likely jump over a few frames before or after where you wanted it to be, since it will seek out the nearest GOP break. So you might want the chapter mark exactly on a scene cut, but it won’t let you place it there (unless you just get lucky). The actual chapter mark will be a few frames before or after the scene cut in the video.

Having the chapter mark hit early is undesirable since when the viewer jumps to that chapter, they will see a “glitch” meaning a few quick frames of previous scene flash on before desired scene, which can look quite jarring. When that happens, I will move the chapter mark to the next GOP break as that usually looks better though slightly late.

I don’t have Encore in front of me right now and haven’t used it in like a year, but when previewing the video using the transport controls, I believe there are frame-forward and frame-back buttons. Hover the mouse over them and it may provide info in a pop-up, saying “ALT for next GOP” or something like that. Meaning hold the ALT key when pressing the frame button, and that then jumps GOP to GOP rather than frame to frame. So that’s how you find the best places to put the chapter marks and you can add them at those points then, hope that makes sense.

That said, having this knowledge can sometime affect how you edit! I did dance recitals which would require up to 40 chapters to separate the dances. Each dance would end with a quick fade to black, then title for next act would fade up from black. What I ran into when trying to add chapters in Encore was that I could not always place the chapter mark in total black – I would catch either part of the fade to black, showing previous scene, or I would catch the white title partially faded up. What I wanted when selecting a chapter on the DVD menu was for the selected title to fade right up from black, but it would not work out that way. Would get the glitched look of hitting early or late! So when editing, I learned to leave AT LEAST 15 frames of total black between each dance segment in Premiere – because the GOPs are 15 frames. By leaving that minimum amount of solid black in the edit, I could be assured that when placing chapters in Encore, the mark would definitely be able to fall somewhere within complete black with no prior scene or next title showing through. Looks MUCH cleaner when jumping chapter to chapter on DVD using NEXT on remote.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Ann Bens]

As said on the other forum.
Markers will come over just fine.
Make sure you import all the files (3 or 4) into Encore.
But you cannot export 5.1 from Premiere without a plugin.

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