[Daniel Ludwig]

Alan,
what kind of DVD you are trying to create PAL or NTSC? 4:3 or 16:9? these are the major qestion at first, and which CS-suite you are using?

depending on the tv-standart the sceens have different resolutions:

PAL: 720×576
NTSC: 720×480

but adobe changed some informations on the pixel-aspec-ratios from CS4 to CS5.

if you are working with square pixels, you have 1024×576 for PAL (16:9) or 864×486 for NTSC (16:9), but adobe has changed these values from CS4 to CS5.

now they are different, for example PAL has now 1050×576 – this is confusing, your right, and a lot problems came with that idea as well.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi Alan,
the simple question is NO, encore is no editing-software like FCP or Premiere pro.

if you´ve allready encoded your video to MPEG2 elementary-files (m2v) and AC3-audio-files they will be fine to use with encore according to DVD-specs.

if you would like to/need to replace one of your assets of your project with a new one, you can easiely do this.

and finally: it´s no good idea to import untranscoded MOV-or AVI-files into encore, it could handle them, but it´s no good idea.

DVD/BD-assets should be transcoded prior authoring, you can easily do this using compressor or adobe media encoder.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

hi per,
MPEG2 SD for DVD and MPEG2 SD for Blu-ray are slidely different. I´ve heard you can tweek the DVD-files using the freeware-tool ReStream (PC) to set the SD-DVD-file to be complient with blu-ray. will ask my collegue again about it.

in general: encore does only accept PCM audio OR AC3, depending on your transcoding-settings you choose in your project-settings.

if you are happy with DVD SP for DVD you should go on using it for DVD as Encore has sadly limitations and a lot bugs. one of the biggest limitations is the missing scripting-capability.

if you need to create easy BDs it´s fine as well, if you need to create a bit more advanced features for it, you should think about getting Blustreak Tracer from Rivergate Software as well, as you can extent the capabilities as you can edit the movieobject-commands post-muxed.

if you would like to create advanced/full featured blu-rays you should think about a different (PC-) software.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

hey john,
you can set individual transcoding-settings for each film of the disc, you need to go to your project-tab and look for the column “transcoding-settings” for DVD or BD and set it like you would like it to be.

I would advice to encode/transcode assets prior authoring using adobe media encoder.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

hi,
you are burning a DVD using your MAC OS finder!? that´s totally wrong! so the burning-result on your DVD will be HFS-Format, DVD needs to habe UDF-file-structure!

It´s also curious that you are creating an ISO-image, then open it, copy stuff anywhere and burning from a 2nd app, instead of using the ISO-image, which allready contain everything that you need.

you can simply use your disk-utility to burn images on DVD, just select your image and use the burn-button.

but the really best burning-app for mac is toast, it can also burn iso-images onto DVDs.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

… or DVD Logic EasyBD.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

Jon,
my collegue told me, that they used the latest driver with it – working with windows.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

We´ve also figured out that matrox-encoded H264-files do not match H264-blu-ray-specification.

one of my europeen collegues had a really bad sony stream-verifier-report on files that has been encoded that way. these streams all failed the verification.

so please do not use matrox-encoded H264-files on BDs that will go to replication.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

1. the best way of authoring a DVD or BD is to encode your assets !!prior!! you start authoring. forget about automatically set bitrates and automated transcodings – do it your own!

2. if you have a duration of 105min. that will result to 5,5Mbit/s target-rate (if you are using AC-3 audio@192kbit/s) to not overfill your disc.

encore do not use CBR, it will use a VBR-transcoding, so if you set your transcoding to 9.4Mbit/s I guess it will be using 5.0Mbit/s, so it will not fill the disc completely. 9.4MBit/s is the peak-rate for your transcoding-setting.

3. again – 9.4 Mbit/s is much to high for DVD-R/+R (even if it is peak-rate-value) , if you had luck or not, this could only be used with replicated DVDs.

in your specific case 9.4Mbit/s would result in too much date for your DVD-5.

you´ve asked for reasons – here they are.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

u need to disable the the specific UOP of your first-play track.

I would strongly recogment to start with a track instead of going straight to your menu – will keep the players resume-buffer happy!

cheers

danny