[Phil Lochner]

My workflow for a similar task (which Stan also helped me sort out the past week):

Each Sequence, push Make Movie, and choose your MPG2-DVD preset. Give it a file name. As per Stan and other’s advice, I now export demuxed as .m2v (and .wav) files. Anyway, instead of hitting Export, hit Queue. This will queue them all up in Media Encoder. Load the next Sequence up and Queue it up, and build up a 12 sequence Media Encoder queue.

Let Media Encoder crank away all night on your 12 sequences. You’re left with 12 .m2v files and 12 .wav files.

Load up Encore, create one DVD at a time as per normal Encore workflow. Drag each .m2v file onto a timeline and drag the corresponding .wav file under it. Add chapters, make a menu, whatever else you need to do. You’re probably exporting to ISO files so you can physically burn them later. Since you already have proper MPG2 .m2v files, Encore won’t need to re-encode the video, which is what takes all the time.

When you hit that Build button in Encore, if you don’t have any menus to render, it’ll only take a couple of minutes per DVD, as it still has to re-encode the audio file and then to physically write out the ISO. Instead of 90 minutes per Encode Build, you’ll wait probably 2 or 3 minutes. Of course if you have motion menus and whatnot to render, Encore will have to create and encode them.

However, to specifically answer your question, as far as I know, you can’t Queue up Encore files in Media Encoder. So if you have a ton of complicated motion menus you will have to wait for Encore to Build them one at a time, and this can be time consuming. Personally as I wrote above, I just export the MPG2 files from Premiere and that saves me a ton of time as I can queue them up in Media Encoder and then Encore doesn’t have to do any of the heavy lifting.

[Phil Lochner]

Thanks again for your help. Over the weekend I was able to export 8 hours worth of MPG-2s, all as m2v and wav files, and not one of them gave me any errors when I Built the DVDs.

[Phil Lochner]

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look it’s tied into the Media Encoder after all. I have 3 sequences for testing.

Seq1.mpg with xmpses file in the folder won’t Build. Audio track is visibly shorter. The ref build error is at 2:35 into the 12 minute clip, and the error ID is “Ref=bpcg”

Seq2.mpg with xmpses file Builds fine. Although, the audio track in Encore is visibly shorter, yet it still builds.

Seq3.mpg with xmpses file errors out as Seq1.mpg did, except the Ref=bpcg is in a different location (3.5 minutes into the 12 minute clip).

All of the above results can be duplicated regardless if the file came from a single Export or a Queue. There isn’t anything majorly different between 1, 2, and 3. They’re all different files and content, sure, but they’re just 12 minute segments of a longer capture.

Anyway, following the above suggestion, I rendered out #1 as a m2v and .wav file. Dropped it into Encore, added the .wav file under the video file, audio lined up properly underneath it, and other than the Audio needing to be Transcoded, the ISO Built fine.

So my take away is that I have no idea why all of my 20+ other MPG files I generated as part of this VHS to DVD project worked fine in Encore, but suddenly stopped working. I can seem to work around it by generating m2v and .wav but I’ll need to do further testing.

According to above, Encore “likes” m2v and .wav better than MPGs. Is that generally the case and have I just been insanely lucky never to have a .mpg fail to Build like I’ve been experiencing?

[Phil Lochner]

The MPG multiplexing was more for convenience and habit. I had problems in older versions of Encore with the separate .m2v and .wav files, problems which once apon a time I solved by just multiplexing to DVD. I used to use Ulead for these “quick and dirty” DVDs, which only liked MPG’s anyway, so I kept using MPGs to give me the most flexibility.

I was not aware of the audio compression issues from multiplexing to DVD. Thanks for the info – I may try to add that piece to the puzzle and maybe it’ll resolve the issue as well. Fortunately my VHS footage isn’t that great audio/video anyway so I’m not missing much for this exact project.

[Phil Lochner]

I am using CS6 on a Windows 7 x64 machine with all the latest updates installed for both CS6 and Windows in general.

I have had the described “old” PGC error in CS6, which is why I deleted the xmpses files before importing to Encore.

When I first installed CS6, I was aggravated that my same mpgs weren’t importing “like they did with 5.5”. That led me to a search where I found that “delete the xmpses files” solution, and I have been using it ever since.

Note that I uninstalled 5.5 after installing CS6, but yes, at one point both were installed on the system as the CS6 installer did not in-place upgrade 5.5.

My workflow is as follows:

. Capture VHS video from a VCR plugged into a mini DV cam, produces 2.5gb files every 12 minutes.
. Import these .avi files into Premiere, arrange in an order, add a title, and make simple cut edits. Usually end up with 60 minutes worth of footage in one sequence.
. Export the sequence as the settings I posted earlier. MPG2-DVD, CBR, De-Interlaced, multiplexed to DVD, etc.
. Go to the sequence’s folder, delete the MPG’s resulting .xmpses file.
. Load up Encore, create new project, import the mpg, wait for it to (forgot the process, but the clip “shows offline” until it’s done, takes about 5 minutes to do each hour long clip)
. Drag clip into a new Timeline, Auto Add Chapters every 5 minutes, set Title Action button (to play this clip) and End Action button (to Stop).
. Build to ISO file, and then I burn this file to a physical DVD with IMGBurn.

It’s very basic as you can see. Just adding chapters and burning – this particular home VHS conversion project doesn’t require anything more complicated.

I could probably do this DVD authoring just as easily with my old method of creating the MPG in PP and then using the old Ulead Movie DVDFactory to author the DVD and create the ISO. However it’s like I paid for Encore and I want to integrate it into my workflow so dammit, I’m going to use it.

[Phil Lochner]

Still working on this. I did re-render all of the clips last night, and I can report that both the individual Export and the Queued files are the exact same size after being rendered.

I did notice in the Media Encoder preferences all of the XMP data was being created with the clips. I disabled all of that during this Queue render, so yes I did change a variable and I’m curious if that change means the clips will properly Build in Encore. I’ll finish the process tonight.

Premiere generates these .xmps clips with every Export. I have noticed that unless I delete these .xmps files before importing the files into Encore, I can’t Build properly in Encore. It’s become a habit of mine to delete the .xmps files, import the clips, and let Encore think about each clip for a bit (shows up as “media offline” in Encore before it finishes thinking about it). Not sure if this has anything to do with my issue, it could be a totally separate and unrelated problem (which to be honest I think I used Creative Cow’s forums to troubleshoot once apon a time, and the suggested solution was to delete the .xmps files).

[Phil Lochner]

Note that in my previous post, the error got cut out due to this forum’s formatting. The “time=” part showed timecode that was the very last frame of the Encore video clip. If I move the clip around or make it shorter in Encore, next time I build, this “time=” part is the new final frame. Basically the “time=” part references whatever the last frame is in the video.

My MPG2-DVD settings in PP are:

NTSC, 720×480, Quality 5, De-interlaced, CBR 6, PCM 48k 16bit Stereo, Render at Max Depth, GOP M 3 N 15, Use MRQ, multiplex to DVD.

These settings are saved as a Custom pre-set and I bring them up every time I make a DVD (this particular project, I am converting many VHS tapes to DVD).

Using this preset and hitting Export and waiting for Premiere to render it creates a usuable MPG for Encore. Using this preset on the exact same Export, but and hitting Queue and waiting for Media Encoder to render it creates an unusable MPG that errors out during DVD Build as per my original message.

Note that in VLC the “bad” MPGs play fine, synch is fine, etc. I can re-import these “bad” MPGs back into PP without error as well.

Other things to consider: I have only used the Queue feature as described the past weekend, when I queued up 3 different PPro sequences, all from the same file. Queued them all up in Media Encoder, and I want to think that the FIRST sequence created a MPG that Encore had no problems with. The 2nd and 3rd sequences in the Queue definitely created unusable MPGs. I will have to re-test this to be sure however. Previous to this weekend I was rendering them out one at a time using Export.

I will have to re-render all 3 clips using both Queue and Export individually to run those apps and dig into the files themselves. However if you see any red flags with the stuff I just described as doing, definitely let me know as it will take many hours to twice re-render all 3 sequences.

[Phil Lochner]

Mine does this as well. Every time I go to Export a movie, it defaults back to AVI. When I select say MPG2 DVD, it select the first option instead of the Custom one I setup and primarily use.

Finally, the Export window itself always resizes itself to a default size, a window approximately 800 x 600 pixels big. You can’t even see all the codec options in the lower right without either scrolling or resizing the window. And I have to do it every. damn. time.

This is new and annoying behavior in CS6.

[Phil Lochner]

The VHS tapes I need to digitize were for the most part, not professionally shot – they’re tapes from schools, old instructional videos, some home movies, things of that nature.

I don’t want to spend too much money on equipment to digitize what in the end is crappy footage. However I do want to digitize crappy footage in the highest possible quality, if that makes sense.

Thank you both for your advice. I think I’m going to start small and spend $200ish on a digitizing box and see what kind of quality I can get with it using a consumer VCR. Not sure how I’ll handle the SVHS tapes yet though.