Dave Friend
Forum Replies Created
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Bruce,
One other thing to try is to burn the disc at 1x instead of 4X (or faster). This sometimes helps with questionable quality media.
Dave
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Bob,
The only thing that occurs to me is that as the menu loops back to the start there is a very short period where the buttons do not work. If a client is really picky, and if the client just happens to push a button at the wrong moment…
you’re stuck trying to convice them that it is perfectly normal behavior.Otherwise, assuming enough disc space and your willingness to take the extra authoring steps there is no penalty for having motion menus.
Dave
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Would not be my choice, but a lot of people love it. Go figure. But a lot of people like Vegas for their NLE too. Go figure.
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[WTS(JManz)] “Can you explain a bit further what you mean by a ‘director’s file’?”
He is talking about a Macromedia Director executable.
Paolo,
I’m not certain it will do what you want, but take a lood at Sonic’s eDVD software. It will work with several different authoring programs to provide links from a DVD to external sources like images and websites. Perhaps it can be made to run your director file.
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Doug,
Two very good programs are ReelDVD ($249) and DVDit ($299), both from Sonic. Carefully studio the feature sets of these to see which might best suit your needs.
Adobe Encore is pretty good too but at $349 probably is not as good a value. It is nicely integrated with Photoshop however which is great for making menus.
At $395 Ulead’s DVD Workshop is the most expensive recommendation I have. But it should be considered too. It is ridiculously easy to use. Plus it has a host of professional features that you will want if you ever have the need to do commercial work. Worth the extra cost in my opinion.
Most, if not all, of these have trial versions you can download. A test drive will tell you what you need to know.
Hope this is helpful.
Dave
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Derrick,
While there is frequently an AUDIO_TS folder on a DVD I do not think there is a requirement for the folder. The AUDIO_TS folder usually only has files in it when there are alternate audio tracks (ie. other languages) on the disc.
If your replicator can not work with what you have sent then find a different replicator.
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[David] “Do you know any DVD Maker software, that can make “Angles” or “End Chapter marks”?”
The only authoring package that I am certain can create multiple angle DVDs is Sonic Scenarist. Be prepared for sticker shock.
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Peter,
What you are seeing is a result of the way DVD players are designed and has nothing to do with Encore. You would see the same thing no matter what authoring system is used to create the disc.
Here is what is happening. The overlay highlight is superimposed on the background by a very simple keyer built into the DVD player. By “very simple” I mean really most extraordinarily unsophisticated. It is a one-bit keyer. That is to say, it is either on or off. It has no ability to interpret a gradient in the ‘alpha’ channel. In fact, there is no alpha channel in the overlay graphic. Because the key is either on off there is no way to create pixel values typically used to antialias a graphic’s edges. Therefore, you end up with pixilated highlights.
The DVD spec does allow you to adjust the opacity of the overlay to some extent. Making the overlay more transparent can sometimes mask the aliased edging of the overlay. Unfortunately, this seldom provides the right ‘look’.
One work around is to not highlight the text (which has lots of curves) but instead provide some kind of graphic primitive to serve as the highlight indicator. Underlining or bullet points such as arrows or triangles are possible alternatives. In general, avoid curved edges.
To make menus where glows, bevels or embossed looks indicate the selection requires multiple pages of menus in conjunction with auto-activated buttons. This can become a lot of work if you have many buttons because a separate menu graphic is required for every selectable button. When using this technique the overlay capability is not used at all.
Hope this is useful.
Dave
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Ruby,
I have used both extensively. My Encore experience is more recent. Because it was part of the Adobe Video Collection package I had purchased I felt the need to try Encore. I created several projects – enough to feel comfortable and perhaps even competent using it. It is reasonably stable and easy to use. However, I like DVDWS better.
Encore can create a nice DVD all by itself, but you will quickly find you need Photoshop and After Effects to create really ‘trick’ product. For instance, creating a motion menu (with a moving background and video in the buttons) can be done without external applications, but it is not as quick and easy as DVDWS. I was never very successful making such a menu with Encore without going out to After Effects and/or Photoshop.
At first I thought Encore offered more flexibility with regard to navigation between various assets due to its linking system. However, I have yet to find anything Encore does that DVDWS can’t do. It is a lot more work to define links in Encore vs. DVDWS.
I expected Encore’s “override” capability to be very useful for defining a disc’s playback behavior. But that has proven not to be as useful as I had imagined.
Encore does provide complete flexibility when it comes to defining how you navigate between buttons on menus. This is an area where DVDWS will sometimes create strange behavior as you cursor between buttons. I have had it make menus where a button can not be accessed using the cursor keys on a DVD remote. (a nasty bug.)
DVDWS does a better job at previewing both during the edit step (setting chapter points) and during the Finish step for testing navigation. In general, DVDWS is more responsive and more accurate when doing these tasks.
DVDWS allows you to output an iso file. Encore does too, but it calls it an img file. I’m not 100% convinced, as some have claimed, that this is just a different file extension on a iso formatted file. If it truly is an iso formatted file why not just use the iso file extension like the rest of the world expects?
In general, Encore probably makes better-looking menus easier to create – particularly so because it is well integrated with Photoshop.
In terms of the quality I find the encoders to be about equal. I usually encode by other means and then bring the mpeg asset into the project instead of importing an AVI or MOV file and using the built-in encoders. In the testing I have done, both programs seem to produce nearly identical mpeg files in about the same amount of time.
One last thing, it seems to me that DVDWS writes to DLT faster.
Hope this is useful.
Dave
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BZ,
I had the same problem. The solution was to reinstall Encore with the DLT drive connected and turned on. It seems that Encore assumes that if the DLT isn’t there at the install it never will be. Dumb.
Dave