Jon Geddes
Forum Replies Created
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The background must be cut up into segments, and placed in each button group. You can analyze some of the templates in your library to see how they do it. The background segments can be touching and not cause a problem, they just can’t overlap.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
Try HC Encoder. It’s free, and the quality is just as good, and sometimes better than CCE.
You will need AVISynth to load your video though… not too big of a deal. Just install it, create a new .AVS file in the same directory as your video, edit it in notepad, and just add a quick script:
AviSource(“uncompressed_master.avi”)
Thats it. Then just load the .avs file into HC Encoder. There are a few more settings in the program, but it should be pretty straight forward.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
We have created a complete walkthrough video tutorial for creating a Blu-ray and DVD disc in Encore for our Pro Motion Menu Kit products.
It is freely available to everyone, and can be accessed from the Tutorial section of our website. Simply select any menu, then go to the Encore tutorial.
Even though it was created for use with our products, it is very useful for anyone using Encore, as it walks you through using custom motion menus, the chapter index feature, Blu-ray Pop-up menus, Menu transitions, and explains how to avoid all the major bugs with the program.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
Do not go above 25 mbps (or your video may have issues during playback).
Level 4.0 and 4.1 just permit higher bitrates. You probably don’t need to use 4.1, but it won’t be an issue if you do.
2-pass VBR is the best. I usually set a target of 20 with a max of 22, and the quality is excellent. I would not go below 15 or 16, as you will start to see blocky compression artifacts if you do.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
You might be interested in reading this article:
https://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/07/hd-to-sd-dvd-best-methods/
It explains the problem with the common way people downscale and provides different methods for making excellent quality conversions, using only Premiere, or for best results, using completely free third party utilities.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
I see two problems with your workflow:
1) You are using XP 64, which is not a widely supported OS. It has many bugs and is a failure of an OS much like Windows ME was. I recommend getting Windows 7 x64 if you want a 64-bit OS.
2) You are exceeding the limit of 18 buttons for a widescreen DVD menu. You can have up to 36 on a 4:3 menu however. These are limitations of the DVD spec and not Encore.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
I’m running AE CS3 and AE CS4 on Windows 7 64-bit without issues. I’m not even running in compatibility mode or having to run as administrator. What action are you doing in particular to cause these error messages? Just opening the program?
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
It’s possible that the bottleneck is not the amount of ram you have or your processor speed, but your hard drive speed. Your processor could be waiting on your hard drive to write the data, therefore won’t need to be cranking away at full speed. Have you considered one of those PCI-E SSD Raid cards that can read/write data up to 800 – 900 MB/s (thats megabytes, not megabits).
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
This is a bug with the program. One way to get around this bug is to place the menu’s video and audio into an After Effects composition, then import that composition into Encore using the Dynamic Link feature. Set the background’s audio and video to the dynamic link composition, and Encore will not complete the rendering of the menu prematurely, thus playing the full 30 seconds of your menu.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
What are your problems with Encore? Maybe if you could resolve your problems, you wouldn’t be looking for an alternative… because there aren’t many that offer the ease of customization and control that you have with Encore. Of course Encore doesn’t allow you to do scripting like DVD Studio Pro does, but it has many other features to make up for it.
Scenarist is very complicated and expensive. DVD Architect is not as intuitive and lacks many of the features that Encore has that I’m sure you will miss after having gotten use to them. Pretty much all the others, such as Ulead Movie Factory, are designed for average consumers, not professionals, and will drive you crazy with their lack of control, completely unnecessary features, and bubbly interfaces.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com