[Joe Bowden]

Walter, it’s now obvious to me and anyone reading this thread that you no understanding of the meaning of common courtesy.

There’s nothing further to discuss.

[Joe Bowden]

Walter, I’m sorry to hear about your troubles, but I must repeat that if you want to get anywhere with the problems you seem to be having with Encore CS3, then you must work through it with Adobe Support and the Encore team.

If you’d rather pick apart marketing verbiage line-by-line or make overly-broad claims, then that’s your prerogative. However, I would appreciate it if you try to restrain the rhetoric when I or others attempt to assist others on this forum, or at least stay on topic. That’s common courtesy.

Thanks,
Joe

[Joe Bowden]

Walter, I can appreciate that you probably just wanted to vent here, but I think your comments would be best directed toward Adobe Support and the Encore Product Manager – these are the avenues that may be able to provide a solution for the problems you’re seeing authoring to Blu-ray.

The original poster asked if it was possible to add subtitles to a Blu-ray disc. As I mentioned, Encore CS3 doesn’t support subtitles for Blu-ray output. However, it’s possible to have subtitles on Blu-ray, which is why I suggested the original poster to file a feature request.

Regards,
Joe

[Joe Bowden]

Walter – That sounds more like a bug report than a feature request.

[Joe Bowden]

Encore CS3 doesn’t offer subtitles for Blu-ray disc.

You may want to file a feature request at Adobe’s web site – who knows, it may be available in a future version of Encore.

[Joe Bowden]

Although some DVD players support zooming and panning of video, this is not a feature that can added to a DVD in any DVD authoring program.

Zoom and pan, when you can find it, is a feature that is specific to the player itself, and is not something that is part of the DVD-Video specification. Most DVD players don’t offer these functions.

[Joe Bowden]

Make your animation in After Effects or Premiere, then note the timecode when the animation ends. Export a video file.

Import this video file and add it to a menu background (alt/opt-drag and drop it into an open menu). Then go to the Menu properties and set the Loop Point to the timecode you noted above.

[Joe Bowden]

I see what the problem is.

Your subpicture layer has both the button graphic and the text in it. You only need the text – remove the button graphic (it’ll be easier to just delete the layer, and recreate it as a text-only layer with the (=1) layer name prefix).

[Joe Bowden]

You wrote:

Buttons : All of my button layers and sub picture layers were created in photoshop. I created a PSD for each layer. I used AE to create the buttons. I placed the button I want to be the “selected” button on the composition and then set this is the sub picture. Then I put the “not selected” graphic over the top of the sub picture. In AE I then select the two opjects a create a button. This merges them together and gave a + prefix

I sense your workflow here is crucial to the problem.

I created a PSD for each layer. What does this mean? The menu PSD file should have all the layers. There shouldn’t be more than one PSD file.

I used AE to create the buttons. I placed the button I want to be the “selected” button on the composition and then set this is the sub picture. Then I put the “not selected” graphic over the top of the sub picture. In AE I then select the two opjects a create a button. This merges them together and gave a + prefix

You shouldn’t be creating any buttons at all in AE. Your PSD file should have the button layers already created.

Workflow in AE should be something like this:

1. Import a PSD file that has all the layers with Encore prefixes and layer structure
2. Animate your layers (except the individual subpicture layers). If your buttons are animated, end the animation and hold a still menu for several seconds. Add the comp to the render queue and export a video file for use in Encore

That should be the extent of your AE workflow.

Then in Encore:

1. Import the PSD you created for step 1 in AE
2. Hide all visible layers in Encore’s Layers panel
3. Import the video file created in step 2 in AE as an asset, then alt-drag it into the menu
4. If your buttons were animated, set the loop point in Menu properties to the timecode where the animation ended

[Joe Bowden]

Sorry, but that doesn’t clear anything up for me, in regards to the problem. Let’s define terms here, so that we’re both on the same page when we discuss this:

Menu: in Encore, a menu is a PSD file that has the dimensions of the frame size of the video, and also contains buttons that may have subpicture layers. This file must be imported as a menu into Encore (not as an asset).

Button: A layer set in a PSD file imported as a menu that has a (+) prefix in its layer set name. Buttons cannot overlap in DVD-Video.

Subpicture layer: A layer with a (=x) prefix in its layer name within a button layer set of a PSD file that was imported as a menu. Subpicture layers must have a single opacity (no gradients, drop shadows, glows, or any other graduated opacity), and if they do not, they are converted to a single opacity. The reason for this is the nature of the subpicture overlay in DVD-Video – it’s a single graphical layer, essentially with “holes” cut out for button subpictures.

Menu Video Background: This is a video file that is added to an Encore menu via alt-drag. Where or how this video was created isn’t relevant to the problem with subpictures.

Menu Color Set: Encore automatically generates one within the confines of the DVD-Video specification for subpicture color/opacity tables. You can override Encore’s automatic menu color set by creating one directly in Encore. A manually-created menu color set is of course limited by what is supported for subpicture overlay in DVD-Video.

So the problem here is that your subpicture layer is not behaving as expected. Let’s stick to the immediate issue, and find out why.

Do you have overlapping buttons? Does each button have a subpicture layer? Are you using automatic or a custom menu color set?