[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi Janson,
this is germany calling 😉

1.) yes, 720×576 is the SD-PAL-equivalent to NTSC and it will be anamorphic.

2.) you´ve told that the original material is 1080p29.98 so there are a few ways.

a) using apple Cinema Tools:
if you would go that way, you will change the meta-data of your film from “played at 29.98fps” to “played at 25fps”. that will cause a slowdown of the film and the audio, too. so it will be longer! this could only be done with progressive material.

NOTE: it will change the frame-rate from your source-material, so you better dublicate it first!

b) using apple Compressor:
with compressor you can create SD-PAL direct from your 1080p29.98. for that you need to create a new export-setting.

you need to select the 3rd. option (frame control) and turn it on. then you can set resizing and retiming.

if you need to have the same lenth/duration this would be your best choice.

now to your codec: if your customer expect good picture-quality DON`T use the DV-codec, that´s to bad. I would use PRO RES HQ instead or 8bit uncompressed if you have enough disk-space.

PAL SD-material normally has upper field first

NOTE: using frame-control will result in long processing/rendering-time.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi,
I guess you need to have the MXF4MAC-plugin to do so.

but you maybe better have a look at their website first.

https://mxf4mac.com/mxf-import

you can also get a trial.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi,
if you have used a real-time-effect on any of your clips on the timeline this could happen. please have a look if you have a green line on top of your timeline – that is showing a realtime-effect is used.

cu

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

oh damed,
your right – because of the codecs.

sorry

[Daniel Ludwig]

hi rowland,
there are planty possiblities why encore could fail to built your DVD or BD.

if you would like to create such project I would recommend to export an self-contained quicktime-film out of Avid and to use the adobe media encoder CS4 or CS5, to encode your assets.

it must be elementary assets, video and audio seperated.

adobe media encoder using mainconcept-source-code, a good encoder, but less options in the settings (as the original) – easy to use.

if you will have a BD you should H264-video and AC-3-audio.

NOTE: if you need to replicate that BD you need to buy blustreak premaster to create the recommended BDCMF-Image:

https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com/

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi again,
I agree with larry – encore CS5 is a lot better than CS4, but there are still some bugs in it.

but it´s a LOT better than CS4, and you can have nice multi-layer-menus.

the best idea would be to download CS5-trial from the adobe-website and give it a try (30days).

you´ll see that it´s better and less crashes.

be careful with older projects created with CS4, I´ve figured out, sometimes it doesn´t open them correctly, it crashes (spinning wheel of death).

Annotation Edit is a great subtitle-creation-software, I´m using it for a long time now.

A lot good features and a very good support.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi Caston,
if you want to replicate a BD it´s highly recomended to send a BDCMF-Image to the replication-facillity, because of the AACS.

I have authored more than a few BDs with encore CS4, created the BD-premaster with blustreak premaster and all of them has been replicated fine at several replicaters here in europe.

some of these premasters have been sent as BDCMF-image on BD-R (as there have been enough space on the media), some has been sent on an external harddisk.

I would highly recommend blustreak premaster for ALL bluray-authors. blustreak preaster is a mac-application from Rivergate Software, well known for their DVD-AfterEdit-Application.

https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com/

ones more I would like to say: don´t trust DVD-/BD-broakers, (mostly) they´ve got no idea of the technical requirements of DVD/BD-replication.

my 2cent (EURO)

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi again,
I have been thinking about this ALWAYS ON-films a bit, and it´s possible with encore CS4/CS5 itself. it´s a kind of work-arround, because popup-menus and allways on-menus will be muxed in a different way.

so the workaround would be to create every film, where you would like to have a menu on top as a real menu. at the end of it you´ll link to anywhere instead of looping the film (?menu?) again.

the negative aspect of this: your film will be transcoded to MPEG2HD, even if you use pre-encoded assets or your project-settings are H264.

cu

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi Eric,
you´re absolutely right, Encore could only have a popup-menu not a ALLWAYS on.

cu

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi Christoph,
as far as I understood, you need to have an ALLWAYS ON popup on all of your titles, right?

that´s not possible with encore itself! but I can fix that for you. I´m living in cologne, germany – please email me.

cu

danny