[Jeff Bellune]

1. Delete all timelines except the Intro timeline and the segment timeline.

2. Link all menu buttons to their chapter counterparts.

3. Disregard the advice about Playlists. If you don’t need a “Play All” function, then they are not necessary.

4. Put an end action to return to the last menu on each chapter except the last chapter. When the last chapter is finished playing, the end action for the timeline will execute. Remember that if you want to return to the menu after chapter 1 is finished, you put the end action on the chapter marker at the beginning of chapter 1, *not* on the marker for chapter 2 (which is the marker at the end of chapter 1). It is very tempting (because it makes sense visually) to put the end action on the chapter marker that is at the end of the current chapter. Don’t do that.

5. Double-check again that no overrides are set anywhere in your project.

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[Jeff Bellune]

I think I understand what you did. Your 5 orphans are 5 of the 6 timelines that you created when you imported them as timelines. The sixth one is the timeline you used to stitch together the other segments. Delete the unused timelines from the project. That may or may not make the end actions warning go away too, depending on the answer to the next question.

[Wendall Woodbury]
 Pick-whipped each of 6 chapters to their counterparts on timeline
 Pick-whipped each segment name in Flowchart to each segment on timeline, starting with bottom name
 Pick-whipped from Properties End Action of each segment to Main Menu in Flowchart

Aren’t each of these 3 steps doing the exact same thing: that is, linking each menu button to the matching segment/chapter on the timeline? It appears you are wasting triple the effort on executing the same task. If not, if you intended to do something else, then please clarify exactly what each step was supposed to accomplish.

Once you get that sorted, then put each chapter/segment into its own Chapter Playlist. Then put all the chapters/segments into a single Chapter Playlist. Link the Play All button to the long Chapter Playlist, and then link each individual chapter button to the appropriate Chapter Playlist.

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[Jeff Bellune]

It seems that you made your chapters as separate timelines, instead of making a single timeline with chapter markers.

Each timeline on a DVD disc gets put in a separate VTS, and you cannot navigate between VTSs like you can navigate between chapters in a single VTS. The PREVIOUS and NEXT buttons on the “wand” are for navigating between chapters.

You can fix this issue by either:

1. Using your editing software to stitch all of the chapters together into one video file.

2. Dragging each separate video file sequentially to a single Encore timeline. En will generate the chapter markers at the joins automatically.

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[Jeff Bellune]

Hi Alex,

You can’t use a video from your show to link to another menu.

You need to use a program like After Effects or Premiere Pro to create a background video for your menu. In this background video, you make a “fake” button and then composite the fake button with your 4 minute video. Scale the video to fit inside the fake button.

Use the composited background video in your main menu.

In Encore, you hide all of the layers of the “real” button by clicking on the eyeball for each layer in the Layers palette. That way, only the subpicture highlight for the real button will be seen by the audience.

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[Jeff Bellune]

You’re welcome. 🙂

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[Jeff Bellune]

It’s a common problem with subtitles. They’re limited to the same color palette and restrictions that subpicture highlights are. 2-bit color and no anti-aliasing or effects like drop-shadows.

Worst quality comes from pure colors and pure white/black combinations.

Use the Timeline Color Set function to add additional subtitle color layers to the subtitles to try and make your text look better. In the color set dialog these additional layers are called Stroke and Anti-Alias. Just be aware that it’s not true Stroke or Anti-Alias like you’d get in Photoshop.

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[Jeff Bellune]

Every time you add a button or change text/graphics, you must re-render the motion menu.

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[Jeff Bellune]

Are you on a Mac?

If so, edit the menu in Photoshop and change the name of all of the (=1) highlight layers to (=2) and test again. Preferably using an RW disc.

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[Jeff Bellune]

[Todd Bangerter] “Does anyone have any suggestions for implementing my playback options? Thanks!”

Not with Encore. Try DoStudio or Scenarist.

EDIT: I should mention that you could probably do it with Encore by duplicating assets, but that’s usually not an option for most authors due to space limitations.

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0

[Jeff Bellune]

I think the system may be rebooting due to a system failure (BSOD). That means you have a hardware issue. Configure Windows to not automatically restart after a system failure so you can find out for sure.

What triggered the decision to reformat the computer?

-Jeff

The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0