Heath Firestone
Forum Replies Created
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If you are using an older burner, you might want to download a firmware update for it as well.
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I have authored a few Blu-Ray discs, some short format, and one with a runtime of 75 minutes. I was using prerelease versions of Encore CS3 for some of this, and wrote an article for Post which came out in last years July Issue. It should be a stable enough platform to author to. I think we just need to figure out where things are breaking. I had some problems with the prerelease version of the H.264 encoder on long format projects, but I think those got worked out before release. I have never had problems with the MPEG2 encoder. BTW, the problems I encountered only had to do with completing successful transcodes. If you made it past that, it should be smooth sailing. That being said, you mention that you finish your Blu-Ray burn, but it won’t play. On the Blu-Ray disc player side, early versions sometimes didn’t support BD-R and BD-RE media, but this should be corected with a firmware upgrade. Modern Blu-Ray players shouldn’t have this problem. My first tests with PS3’s over a year ago, wouldn’t read until; we did a firmware upgrade. So, the first thing I would do on your end, is update firmware. I’m a little confused by the inability to play on the computer, though. I would try the newest version of Cyberlink’s Power DVD Ultra, which is designed for playing Blu-Ray discs on the computer. If this won’t play it, we have bigger problems. If you get their Suite 6 Ultra, you can try using their Power2Go application to burn your Encore image to the Blu-Ray disc. They are pretty committed to supporting Blu-Ray, and I’ve been impressed by their utilities. I think you can get demos of their stuff to test too.
Try this and let me know. I suspect your problem is either in the burn to the Blu-Ray disk, or compatibility with the Bd-R or BD-RE media.
Hope this helps. Give me feedback and I should be able to help you resolve this.
Heath
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The simple answer is… kind of. You can create a blu-ray image, and burn in onto a DVD using another program like Nero, which creates something called a BD-9, which is a blu-ray disc image on a standard DVD (dual layer explains the 9 designation). Built into Blu-ray’s spec, is the ability to play back BD-9 disks, but implimentation hasn’t been universal. Last time I tested, (several months ago), PS3s didn’t yet support playback of my BD-9 discs, but there is a real future for the medium, as it provides a format for shorter format, or lower datarate HD discs to be created using traditional DVD replication, as apposed to blu-ray replication, which will be out of most people’s price range, not only because of the cost of the media, but primarily because of the blu-ray spec, which has copywrite and license requirements, which make it so that programs like Encore don’t create commercially reproducable blu-ray discs. This means that commercial replication of blu-ray is only viable for well funded projects, meaning that something has to take its place in the semi-pro realm. Since we all want HD distribution, I believe BD-9 will become that solution, but it remains to be seen, and requires hardware support from the manufacturers.
Hope this helps.
Heath
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I suspect the error is codec related. The reason I was asking you what codec you were using, was so that I could determine this. Instead, let’s define your process.
Are your projects in Premiere Pro DV projects?
Are you exporting to Media Encoder using the DVD settings, and bringing those files in to Encore?
If so, can you instead, export your Premiere timeline to a DV file, the import that into Encore, and choose the render options there. The purpose of testing this, is to bypass the potential of issues brought into the mix by encoding with Premiere (this isn’t usually a problem, but it is a debugging test).
I’ll have more suggestions once you try this. You dan’t ahve to do it with all files, just try it with the first file it usually errors out on, and see if you get any further.
Thanks,
Heath
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Actually, that was what I was going to suggest, depending on your response. That should work perfectly.
Heath
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Unfortunately, I don’t know a way of doing this. However, when I have worked in a program that didn’t support the chapter marks I needed, I just made a quick list of the chapter timecodes, and enter them into Encore. If you select the timeline, and click in the timeline timecode readout, you can type the timecode numerically without any punctuation, and it jumps you right to the spot. If you then right click on the curser and choose add chapter point, you can do a couple dozen chapter points in a couple of minutes. Not as nice as direct conversion, but it’s also not very time consuming, and I’d much rather suffer the minor inconvenience than have to work in DVDit.
Heath
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I don’t think there is any problem with having both 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios in the same project, but it’s been a while since I mixed the two.
What codec are you using on the video files you are importing into Encore?
Heath
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What happens when the disk is first inserted, is determined by what you have set as the first play. If you want it to go to a menu directly, set that menu as the first play. I’m not aware of any option which will allow you to set a chapter point as the first play, but there may be another way of achieving what you want. Can you explain why you want it to start by playing the second chapter. You may be able to make the first chapter a separate video from the rest of the video, but linked via end action settings. This would allow you to set the second chapter as the first play, because it would be the first chapter in a new timeline.
Hope this helps,
Heath
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What resolution are you rendering to? When you say that your movie is 16:9 but an interview is 4:3, do you mean that the interview, which is in your movie is a different aspect ratio? If this is the case, it should just stretch the video to the other aspect ratio. NTSC DVD’s support 720X480 resolution, whether it is 16:9 or 4:3. What makes one 16:9 vs. 4:3, is the pixel aspect ratio, which is set to 1.2 for 16:9, and .9 for 4:3. If you are importing a different resolution than this, that may be your problem (unless your project is PAL).
Heath
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I understand the problem with this approach, but I would probably approach this differently. You can accomplish tge same thing by using one menu (possibly labeled: Language and Surround Options), which has four options, English Stereo, English Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Stereo, and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1.
Another way of doing this, is to have a menu which routes the person to either Spanish or English, and from here, routes them to the audio option, for Stereo or Dolby Digital 5.1. From there, route them to your main menu, now that the appropriate Audio track has been selected.
In other words, rather than having the English/Spanish menu route them to a specific audio track, it routes them to a place where they will choose their surround sound option in the language they already chose.
I hope this helps.
Heath