Jeff Bellune
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Alan,
I know you are working on the plug-in for AE and I have read a few topics here in the forum about that plug-in. I have 2 questions:
1. Will the plug-in for AE, when released, be compatible with AE7?
2. Will there be an update to the pI stand-alone version 3 that will properly import keyframe information from AE7 via the clipboard?Thanks,
-Jeff -
Wes,
When you burn at higher speeds (8x, 16x, etc.), the laser and the media have to be in perfect synch or the data won’t get recorded correctly. If there are any glitches during the burn, most new DVD players (but not all) have really good error-correction circuitry that can get past the burn glitches. Older players can have a tough time with the glitches, as well as having difficulty with the new, high-speed media itself.
Remember, a burned disc is very different from a replicated disc. The commercial DVDs that you get at Best Buy have all been replicated, and will be compatible with every DVD player, new and old. Burned DVDs, on average, only have about an 85% – 90% compatibility rate with the installed base of existing DVD players.
I would burn 8x media no faster than 2x. My personal preference. I recommend 4x when using 16x media. I burn my older 4x media at 1x. Perhaps you detect a pattern here? 🙂
-Jeff
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Sorry, Encore 2.0 is still menu-only preview out via firewire. Also your P3 processor won’t run Encore 2.0 because a P3 doesn’t support the SSE2 instruction set.
-Jeff
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Thanks, Johnny. Innovative? Maybe. 🙂 A heck of a lot of work? You betcha!
-Jeff
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Glad to help. 🙂
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If you want to do a fade effect for each button, you’re going to have to use multiple motion menus (one for each button) and make the fade part of the background video for the next menu. On each of the button menus, the default button will link to content, and the other buttons will be set to Auto Activate and link to the appropriate menu.
You can achieve a similar effect (without the fade and without pure black and white for the starting image) by altering the Menu Color Set for the menu. Make the subpicture layer for the button exactly the same shape and size as the picture for the button. Then make the Normal subpicture highlight a neutral gray color and set its opacity to 70% – 90%. Make the Selected subpicture highlight transparent. When the audience navigates to a button, the gray, opaque Normal subpicture highlight will disappear and the image will look like it popped into full color.
-Jeff
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There is kind of a “back door” way to do this, and it involves multiple motion menus. The blinking cursor will have to be part of the menu’s background video, not part of the subpicture highlight. Once you have decided on a menu to use in Encore:
1. Create a looping video in After Effects, Premiere, or another NLE or compositing app. This video will contain an exact representation of the menu with a blinking cursor that you create flashing next to one of the buttons.
2. Make more copies of this video, changing which button the cursor is next to in each copy. You need one video for each button.
3. Back in Encore, make as many copies of the original, static menu as there are buttons.
4. Import all of the blinking cursor videos to Encore as assets.
5. Make the blinking cursor videos the background video for each of the duplicate menus.
6. In the Layers palette, poke out the eyeball for all of the menu layers in each menu to turn off the visibility of everything except the background video layer.
7. Open the Menu Color Set for one of the menus and create a new color set right away from the current color set. Give it a useful name.
8. The Normal state should already be transparent; make the Selected state transparent (0% opacity) as well. Click OK.
9. Apply this new color set to each of the menus. Now, when the audience navigates to a button, they won’t get any feedback from the subpicture highlights as to what button is selected. That’s OK because you’re going to use the blinking cursor menus to give them feedback.
10. In the first menu, set the default button to be the button next to the cursor. Link that button to proper program content. Set up the button routing as desired. You may only need one other button on that first menu, depending on how you want the audience to navigate.
11. Set each of the buttons that can be routed to from the default button to Auto Activate.
12. Set the link for each of those buttons to go to the next menu (the one that has the blinking cursor next to the appropriate button).
13. On the target menus, make the default button the one that the blinking cursor will be next to and link that button to the proper program content.
14. Link the other buttons on the menu back to their appropriate menus.Continue in this way until all buttons on all menus are linked. If you have chapter sub-menus, there’s going to be a lot menus and a lot of linking. You may bump up against the 1 GB space limit for menus.
-Jeff
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You’re welcome. 🙂
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If you are comfortable using the Windows Registry Editor, you can export the key that contains the device and, after installing Encore, merge that exported registry key back into the registry.
Before installing Encore, however, make sure you have a Ghost image of your system available so that you can restore it perfectly to the point before you installed Encore. You will need an external firewire or USB hard disk to store your ghost image. You might be able to span the image across a few DVDs – do a test with Ghost to see if you can back up to DVDs. Me? I still use DriveImage 7 from PowerQuest, which has since been bought by Norton. DriveImage and Ghost are now the same product.
Just out of curiosity, how “clean” is the install of the OS after wiping the drive clean? Are you using an OEM copy of WinXP 64 or are you using the manufacturer’s System Restore disc? The System Restore disc most likely won’t just install Windows – it’ll install all of the other software that came with the computer as well. There may be a fundamental conflict between the OEM installed software and Encore.
-Jeff
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The -224 error means that Encore doesn’t have exclusive access to your burner. The usual suspects are: having another burning program open, any background processes loaded/started by Nero, InCD running in the background, or any flavor of DLA processes running.
-Jeff