[Bob Cole]

Thank you very much. I had totally missed the whole Adobe Media Encoder section. I think my 3 Surcode trials are going to be used up before I get the hang of this.

I have the feeling that the PP Help file system for PP was written before they got the deal with Minnetonka. I’m just glad this forum exists.

— Bob

[Bob Cole]

Thanks Dave. I used a shareware utility, but for kicks tried renaming to .RAW and that looks as if it would work too. I have now gotten to the point where I realize I need to learn a whole lot more about 5.1 audio in PP — another post.

Thanks again.

— BC

[Bob Cole]

[Bob Cole] “My workaround is to create a “dummy button” and name it #1. Does that sound right?”

Found out that the dummy button is a bad idea, as hitting “play” when it is invisibly selected may cause user trauma.

Much simpler: reduce the transparency (menu/edit menu color set) of the Selected state to 0%, so the single button on the menu doesn’t appear to be highlighted.

[Bob Cole]

Is it true that Encore shows the highlight state for Button One, regardless whether you select “Default Button” to “none” or any of the buttons?

My workaround is to create a “dummy button” and name it #1. Does that sound right?

— BC

[Bob Cole]

I was able to position my buttons in Photoshop using a shorter version of just the tail end of the motion video. In Encore I substituted in the full length motion video (which starts off without button).

When I try to render the motion menu, it is grayed out, both on the File dropdown menu and in the Preview window.

So I tried burning the DVD. The motion menu plays, but the first button is already in its highlighted state.

I’d appreciate any ideas about this, and also any suggestions as to a good tutorial for motion menu creation (again, I don’t have the latest version of After Effects).

— BC

[Bob Cole]

[Dave Friend] “Does TMPGEnc 2.5 support the ac3 plug-in?”

Guess not — I didn’t see that mentioned in TMPGenc Plus 2.5 files. I think TMPGEnc has some other .ac3 software though.

But my original question(s) have all been beautifully answered so I’m happy. And I have a workflow that does fine, with the .ac3 transcoding happening inside Encore. Thanks all!

— BC

[Bob Cole]

[Dave Friend] “Do you have TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress?”

I have TMPGEnc Plus 2.5. Why?

[Bob Cole]

I just renamed the file, sliced off the head to get to the buttons, and imported it to use as a temporary bg to situate the buttons.

— BC

[Bob Cole]

[Roadkill] “convert the audio first to uncompressed PCM (WAV / AIFF) audio at 48KHz, 16 bit, stereo”

Luckily, when it did the demultiplexing TMPGenc created a PCM file at 48 kHz, 16 bit, bit rate 1536 kbps.

And the .ac3 file works fine. Thanks!

— BC

[Bob Cole]

also:

I realize that one way to do it is simply to leave a place for buttons in the video, and add them in Encore/PS. The reason I wanted to use the graphic “buttons” from the video is that in the video, there are things flying across the screen, including over the buttons.

Thanks.

— BC