[Nate]

Joe,

[Quote] “Before you do anything else, try putting it into a timeline, then right-click the asset in the project window and choose Transcode Now. Does that fix it?”

Hmmm, most interesting. It fixes it for the timeline, yes; plays back beautifully. But the menu continues its pausing and skipping. Odd…

[Quote] “If not, try a few variations: set audio to 48 kHz and re-export with No Compression. Does that play back better in Encore?”

Nope, doesn’t fix it.

[Quote] “If not, then try exporting from AE using Microsoft DV codec. Does that play back better in Encore?”

I thought I’d already tried that, but apparently not. The quality suffers, but Encore does indeed play it okay.

I think I’ll go ahead and use the MS DV codec for previewing everything; then when I’m ready to actually burn the DVD, I’ll use the uncompressed AVI so as to lose as little quality as possible.

Thanks for all your help Joe! Appreciate it.

Nate

[Nate]

Hey Manny,

Yes, this is possible in Encore. Basically what you need to do is set the buttons up to auto-activate–that is, you simply roll over them to activate their link instead of clicking. This is done by selecting a button and checking the “Auto Activate” checkbox in the Properties palate. Once that is done for all of your buttons, link each one to a separate copy of the menu you’re on. Each of those copies of the menu should be exactly the same as the original menu, but with the proper thumbnail video inserted as the motion menu background.

Make sense?

Nate

[Nate]

Joe,

[Quote] “If you put the same file in a timeline in Encore, does it play back in the same way?”

Yup. As I stated in my original post, “there seems to be something wrong with the AVI file I’m using, as putting it in a timeline and previewing it results in the same problem.”

[Quote] “What were the settings from AE?”

All the default of 6.5, basically: video for Windows, just RGB (no alpha channel), millions of colors, premultiplied (matted) color; audio is 44.1 kHz, 16 bit, stereo; quality is set to best with full resolution (720 x 480), no proxies, frame blending and motion blur on only for checked layers, field render off, but setting to lower doesn’t fix the problem; framerate is the standard 29.97 of DV.

Any clues why Encore wouldn’t like that?

Nate

[Nate]

Joe,

Well I figure an AVI file is an AVI file; what’s there to change but in compression, framerate, and the number of colors–all if which seem to have no effect on whether or not Encore chooses to preview it properly or not? Besides, what should it matter? If WMP plays it just fine, shouldn’t Encore do so as well? I am thoroughly perplexed about this whole situation.

And obviously, yes, I have tried transcoding the menu. Unfortunately the result is exactly the same.

*Sigh*

Nate

[Nate]

Hey Gribble,

JavaScript Kit has quite a few that are copyright-free:

https://www.javascriptkit.com/script/cutindex22.shtml

Hope that helps!

Nate

[Nate]

Hey Bconover,

You might try playing some other DVDs with first plays and see how they do on each of the machines you mentioned. If they all run smoothly on the machines giving you trouble, try burning another copy of the DVD and see if it starts working. Could be there was some error in the burn process that some players and/or software can’t read through.

Nate