Motion Menu pauses at loop point

[Jeff Bellune]

That is the expected behavior as the laser seeks to the loop point.

Check out any commercial DVD – they do the same thing.

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[John Morfesis]

Hi Jeff,
We have made the exact project on standard dvd and have no problem. Again, the problem that we have is not when it pauses at the end of the motion video menu to start looping again.
The motion menu is 40 seconds long and we have set the loop point at 4 seconds which is the time that we want the button highlight to show up, as the motion video starts playing when it reaches the 4 seconds where the loop point is and where we want the buttons to activate and the highlight on the buttons to be shown the video pauses for 1 to 2 seconds and then it continues till the end of the duration of the motion video which is 40 seconds long and then it pauses as it’s supposed to do to go back to the loop point but that is not our issue.
Our client gets the same video on blu-ray and standard dvd. All settings are the same and on the standard dvd we have no pause at the 4 second loop point and the motion video plays fluently for 40 seconds and at the 4 second mark the buttons appear along with the highlight. On the blu-ray is where our problem lies.
On the motion video we bascically have the buttons to fade in between 3 to 4 seconds into the video and that is where our 4 second loop point is so that the highlight of the menu buttons don’t appear at the beginning till the 4 second mark. Obviously to accomplish this we have turned off the eye off from the layers of the psd menu.
Are we to assume that this is only a blu-ray limitation and if so is there a different approach so that get the same results.
Thanks,
John

[Jeff Bellune]

Hi John,

Sorry that I misunderstood your first post.

[John Morfesis] “the motion video starts playing when it reaches the 4 seconds where the loop point is”

Please clarify: are the first 4 seconds a 4-second long fade-up?

[John Morfesis] “Obviously to accomplish this we have turned off the eye off from the layers of the psd menu”

How does a static .psd menu fit into all of this?

How did you construct the video? Did you use Premiere? After Effects? There is an old bug (that shouldn’t be seen in CS3, but you never know) where selecting “Optimize Stills” in the sequence and/or export settings in Premiere could cause problems in Encore.

Could the problem be with the BD player that you are using? My Panasonic BD-30 is very slow when going from menu to menu or menu to timeline, or when any playback operation like Pause or Rewind is performed. You should test on at least one other BD player, and preferably two – one software and one hardware.

If neither of the above apply or solve the problem, then can you delay the loop point by a second or two to see if that makes any difference?

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[John Morfesis]

The project is a MPEG 2 Blu Ray and we import as assets the video and audio. We drag them to the newly created timeline and on the timeline we made 8 chapters.
Then we created a PSD menu with 8 button and we link the buttons to the chapters. So far so good.
Then we wanted to replace the static background of the menu with video and audio. So we brought in one 40 seconds long mpeg2 blu Ray compliant video and wav audio and we use the video and audio pick whip to add the 40 second video and audio to the background of the menu. So now as a menu we have the motion video and audio playing on the background along with the buttons from the PSD menu.
It all looks good but we wanted the buttons from the PSD menu to fade in at 3 seconds into the video and the duration of the fade in to be a second long.
I hope you still with me.
So to do this we had to animate the buttons. So we use the Create After effects Composition in Encore and automatically converted the menu into a layered composition in After Effects.
So in After Effects we animated the buttons to start fade in at 3 second. We simply use the opacity with key frames.
Then we brought in the newly created video from After Effects into encore and we use the pick whip to replace the video background of the menu with the new one.
So now we hide the layers of the PSD menu by going to the layers panel so that they do not appear over my background video.
And here is where the problems starts.
When we play the menu it plays fine except the highlight of the button that it is active it shows on my background video before the animated buttons come up. Remember the first 3 seconds of the video is just the video and the animated button fade in after the 3 seconds into the video.
So we put a 4 second loop. By doing that we can now see the menu video playing without the buttons up to 3 seconds, at 3 seconds the buttons shows up and at 4 seconds the highlight of the button shows up.
That is exactly what we want. And it plays fine on the preview in Encore.
But when we burn a Blu Ray disc and we play the menu the video and audio pauses for a second or two, right where the loop point is at 4 seconds, right where the highlight of the buttons is about to come up.
And that is the problem that small pause of the motion video menu.
Iam not sure whether I can describe this any better.
The same exact steps on a standard DVD the motion video plays fine no pauses, fluently with no problems. And it is the same video and menu just on standard def dvd. This client gets the same project on DVD and Blu ray.
By changing the loop point from 4 seconds to any other number still don’t help. At 8 seconds loop the pause is at 8 seconds.
Play back in on my PP3 and software Power DVD on my computer. All the same.
By using avi video from premiere pro instead of blu ray mpeg2 still don’t help.
Any thoughts?
Thanks again

[Jeff Bellune]

Hi John,

Thanks for all the detailed info. I don’t see anything in your workflow that would cause this problem. It’s possible that the problem is in how Encore is handling the assets and the media cache.

I’d like you to make a copy of your current project by going to File | Save As… and give the new copy a different name.

Close Encore and then re-launch it. Load the new copy of the project. Delete the motion menu that is giving you trouble.

Save the project and close Encore again. Then launch it again.

Go to Edit | Preferences | Media and click on the button to clean the media cache database. Click OK.

Reconstruct the problem menu in the new project. Build the project and burn to BD-RE so you don’t make any coasters. Test in your hardware and software BD players again.

Let us know if things get any better. If this doesn’t work, then I’m out of ideas.

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[John Morfesis]

Hi Jeff
Thanks for staying with me.
Some updates:
I have a CyberLink Hi-Def Suite and on the bottom there is a progress bar.
When I play the menu you can see the loading bar loading the video and it pauses for a second as the bar goes blank and it starts loading again afrer the loop point . It seems that there are two seperate renders or streams for the the same menu just because there is a loop point.
Read this post further down on the same forum
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/145/866397
Why does Encore create (and play) two different menu streams?
I will try to download a smaller version of my project to Adobe’s FTP and see if they can come up with any answer.
I will keep you posted.
Thank you.

[Larry Applegate]

Hi John,

We are working on adding solutions for Encore Blu-ray authoring to our BluStreak Premaster and BluStreak Burner applications:

https://www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=14741

First, it may be that you are seeing a CS3 problem, it was particularly bad with Blu-ray output, and some of the problems were fixed in CS4. If you would like, I would be happy to test this theory, if you could mail me a cut-down version of your project.

Another neat thing about Blu-ray is that it can play the same short clip over and over seamlessly by calling it out a bunch of times in the playlist, without adding any additional video or audio. So you could take your 41-second clip and play it 20 times, and it would play for 13 minutes before noticing any delay. The professional authoring systems use this technique frequently, and it is a feature we are adding to BluStreak 1.1.

Hope this information helps.

Regards,

Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com

[Larry Applegate]

Some additional information after reading your previous posts more carefully:

The reason that it rendered two copies of your menu is the loop point. The most efficient playback is to play the entire menu through once, then link to the second menu which omits the fancy stuff at the beginning, and just loops thereafter.

Perhaps Encore is not placing the 2nd version of the menu to immediately follow the first, and that is the reason for the longer delay. This will also be affected by what you use to burn the image for testing. If Encore assigned a lower clip number to the 2nd menu, Toast would probably put it in front.

In BluStreak Burner, we give you complete control over the physical placement of the clips.

Regards,

Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com

[Mark Stuart]

Same problem with Encore CS5. Googled and found this old thread.

DVD output from encore works perfect, Blu-ray is bugged.

Change same project to Blu-ray, previews perfect but when output to a folder or disc. Motion menu plays for a second to my loop point 1 second in, pauses then carries on after a bit of a jump. The problem is only on first play of the menu. When the menu gets to the end (2 min 33 sec) in my case it loops back to the loop point 1 sec in which is correct.

Looking inside the BDMV/STREAM folder there is 2 menu .m2ts files. A bigger file size one which has the 1 sec extra and another that starts at the looping point. It would appear that Encore is incorrectly telling the menu to switch assets during the first play at the looping point. This bug is only with blu-ray only. DVD is OK.

My blu-ray output has another unrelated problem. One of the menu buttons links to a chapter playlist. When the button is activated, there is a pause and then returns back to the same menu playing the first time round bug above again. The chapter of the movie it should go to is not played. Again, this functionality works fine with DVD. Double checked all links and all OK. Again this previews correct in Encore disc preview. Problem is only on blu-ray folder/disc output.

Are these blu-ray bugs that have been around since CS3?

Regards
Mark

[H. Paul moon]

I’m shocked and annoyed that this elementary error exists in Encore CS5 for Blu-Rays only. I get this every time, and it’s utterly unacceptable. It’s not the kind of thing that Adobe wouldn’t have noticed during testing (and seems to have persisted well before the CS5 version). It’s pretty arrogant to just say “oh well” and pass over this dead end for disc authoring. Lame.