[Christopher Smith]

Howard,

The rule-of-thumb calculation for bit rate is 560/minutes of video asset, so for a video of 1h40m, or 100 minutes, your calculated bit rate would be 5.6 Mbps. That assumes you are using AC3 audio, and you must divide that 5.6 Mbps between the video and audio. (E.g. if the audio is 192 Kbps, then you have to subtract that nearly-0.2 Mbps from the 5.6. To be safe, you should encode your video at 5 Mbps. That’s not a bad bit rate, depending on the encoder you use.

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

Thanks very much, John. That appears to be a good solution, although we don’t have ProTools. I found out we can still get access to Nuendo, and this gives me the idea to use a 2-to-5.1 plugin for Nuendo, which should work also.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

Thanks very much, JC. I had thought about the consumer decoder idea, but I don’t have access to 6-channel inputs anymore. We no longer have our surround mixing suite, and I’m trying to do this with just my MacPro and my Marantz PMD700 (our rack-mount decks no longer work). I might have to spring for a Firewire or USB interface.

Lots of tools out there to read AC3 files and play them out the optical interface; nothing to keep it all in the realm of the hard drive. Ah, well.

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

I had the same problem today, with exports limited to 14.91 seconds, and subsequent exports (I was exporting scenes from a timeline, one after the other) exporting one section earlier than the In and Out markings…spooky!

Solution: My sequence was set to 24 fps, and I was exporting to Sorenson 3 [yes, from a dual G5] with the frame rate set to “Current.” When I changed the export frame rate to “24 fps,” the exports proceeded normally, and the results extended from In to Out point.

Actually, the exports extended from In point to 2 frames short of the Out point, so I had to mark my Out point each time 2 frames later than desired to get the intended result.

Chris Smith
CBN Animation

[Christopher Smith]

“at the most I can get six to have a different color”

The standard provides three color schemes per set, and two sets of color schemes. That makes six color possibilities. I believe, however, that you can only select one of the two sets for a menu (all buttons on that menu would have color options from the 3 color schemes in that set).

Christopher Smith

CBN Animation

[Christopher Smith]

Personally, I wouldn’t bother reconverting the AC3 back to WAV to edit it. If you have the source material (the audio from which you made the AC3), just add the reverb there, and re-encode to AC3.

The key, of course, is to avoid changing the length of the audio track, or the position of any portion of it, relative to your video.

If audio timing does change (or the total length of the soundtrack changes), you’ll have to change your video track accordingly.

Christopher Smith

CBN Animation

[Christopher Smith]

Yes, this is possible in Encore.

Each of the audio versions is placed in a different audio track. Place all the audio versions in the same timeline.

Search for “multiple audio tracks” in your Encore documentation.

Christopher Smith
CBN Animation

Christopher Smith

CBN Animation

[Christopher Smith]

Heath,

Thank you very much for providing two solutions to this dilemma. I am building a Blu-ray disc using existing menus, so I figured there must be a solution in the authoring which would follow the existing menu artwork.

Your ideas both make a lot more sense, as well as providing a flow through the menus rather than expecting the viewer to visit both Language and Audio Format menus on his/her own. I’ll rebuild the menus accordingly (I think I like the simpler 4-choice idea).

Christopher Smith
CBN Animation

[Christopher Smith]

Double-click the menu in your assets list so it appears in the previewer. Then in the Properties panel it should say Menu at the very top. (Sorry if this is too basic.)
In the Properties for the Menu, you can select a Default button. That will be the one lit up when the viewer comes to that menu. You can also select a default button of None.

You’re correct on your second point: once one button is selected, it doesn’t go off until another button is selected. You’re used to looking at DVDs on your computer, lol (like me), but on a DVD set-top player, there is no cursor to rollover the buttons, just a virtual highlight that has to be on one button at a time. Hence the behavior that you noted.

Christopher Smith
CBN Animation

[Christopher Smith]

Also, don’t forget to include 2 seconds of silence at the beginning of your tracks, as pointed out elsewhere on CreativeCOW. This is a limitation of AC3 files, but is necessary for set-top players to be able to play the audio from the beginning.

Christopher Smith
CBN Animation