[Lichai Cohn]

I’m sorry to hear that. Thanks for all your help anyway!

[Lichai Cohn]

It showed as untranscoded so I cleaned the database and restarted. Added the menu-background, set the loop point en previewed. No motion could be seen, so I rendered and the black frame is there again…

[Lichai Cohn]

Thanks again!

I tried extending the Comp length by 15 frames with stretching the layers and setting the loop point to 5.01. The Comp played one whole time and than it kept showing a black frame and than some of the Comp, black frame, Comp…. etc.

I also removed the black solid layer to see what would happen, but still that black frame.

I also went to the transcode settings of the Dynamic Linked AE Comp in Encore and saw it was set to automatic. I tried some of the other presets, but didn’t notice any difference. When I hot the button edit to see some more settings I saw this for GOP settings: M frames: 3, N Frames: 12. I must admit I have no idea what GOP is.

[Lichai Cohn]

Hmm, I did some more testing. When I start a PSD from scratch everytime I have the black frame problem. When I use an Encore menu it works, however as soon as I edit the menu in Photoshop I get the black frame again… What is going on?

[Lichai Cohn]

I added a menu and pickwhipped (is this really different from alt_dragging?) the video to the AE Comp and I don’t see the black frame!!!

So would this mean the original PSD-file is somehow not suitable?

[Lichai Cohn]

Thanks!

I just created a new Encoreproject to test the same two files with nothing else in the project. Here’s my steps:

I opened Encore (in the original I started by sending a project from Premiere to Encore) and started a new PAL DVD project without being able to change any other settings (all greyed out, but they were fine: 720*576, MPEG-2, 25 fps, Lower field first).

I right clicked in the project panel and hit import as menu and selected the PSD file.

I went to Adobe Dynamic Link -> Import After Effects Composition and selected the aep-file and the correct composition afterwards (menu_bg, there’s also a second version: def_menu, which I used to just paste a lot of copies of the menu_bg composition after another in case I can’t get this to work correctly for this project).

I double clicked the menu and from the Motion-tab I pickwhipped the Dynamic Linked After Effects composition from the video field.

Finally I right clicked on the menu and clicked Preview from here. Next I hit the button render currect motion menu or slideshow. 125 frames were rendered in about 10 seconds and the preview started.

And yet again I get that black frame. This is so frustrating…

I don’t use audio for the menu.

[Lichai Cohn]

I’ve uploaded the files here:
AE-project
PS-file

I’ve removed one layer from both files containing names of other people who worked with me on this (school)project. Those layers where static so I guess it shouldn’t make a difference.

Thanks again!

[Lichai Cohn]

Thanks again.

In After Effects the last frame is grey, so I guess it’s just the CTI moving past the work area.

In Encore the frame is black.

[Lichai Cohn]

Thanks for your help again.

The Comp is 5 seconds long, however, when using the Page Down key to move one frame ahead to exactly 5 seconds (because I can’t seem to drag the CTI to exactly 5 seconds in time), I see a grey frame. I tried shortening the work area and trimming the Comp accordingly, but again the last frame is grey. In one of the tutorials here (on looping particles) I heard that a 5 sec Comp will go untill 4sec 24frames (PAL) because the first frame starts at 0sec. Is this where the problem is?

The footage is actually some Photoshop-layers with an animating mask uncovering parts of the layers.

I also tried creating a timeline from the After Effects file in Encore but when trimming the last frame off, the new last frame will be black aswell.

So it seems everything always ends with one black frame, what am I doing wrong?

[Lichai Cohn]

Thanks, but I already tried that. I have built the DVD and tried playing it back in VLC. I also burnt it and tried on a regular DVD-player, but both show that one frame black.