[Roadkill]

Ben,

No real thoughts as I normally try to avoid anything with QuickTime in its name. 😉 (Not because I dislike Apple, but based on a few unhappy and confusing problems I have had with QT sources.) But it should be an easy and quick test to feed the DV AVI (as captured from the DVD player’s composite output) into ProCoder, set in and out points around one of the troublesome cuts from black, and see if the output is better than from the QT ref file.

[Roadkill]

[Xeeb] “Ua Tsaug”

Tsis ua li cas.

If you are still considering using a Mac for authoring, maybe this thread on the dvdquestions.com.au forum is of interest.

[Roadkill]

David,

Maybe the grief is caused by a “helpful” set top player that automatically switches to “pan&scan” for 16:9 if it finds 16:9 and 4:3 content on a DVD. Could you check your player’s setup?

[Roadkill]

The problem sounds as if ProCoder didn’t start a new GOP on the cut from black. If you are using ProCoder 1.x, did you update to 1.5?

If I understand the workflow correctly, ProCoder transcoded DV AVI files to MPEG-2 and these DV AVI files were created from MPEG-2 video on a DVD. If that is correct, the problem could have its roots in the MPEG-2 on the DVD which was used as source. I would suggest to carefully inspect the frames directly after the cut for any artifacts.

[Roadkill]

The “override” setting in a timeline’s Properties does the same that as that of a button: It temporiraly changes the end action of the timeline it links to.

E.g.:

• Timeline B has an end action that is set to link to timeline C.
• Timeline C has an end action that is set to link to timeline D. And timeline D’s end action returns to the menu.
• Timeline A has its override set to “return to menu” and an end action linked to timeline B.
• Button X is linked to timeline B, button Y is linked to timeline A.
• If button X is used, timeline B will play, followed by timeline C, timeline D and then the menu re-appears.
• If button Y is used, timeline A will play, followed by timeline B and finally the DVD will go back to the menu.

The main use of the “override” option is to create a “play all/play separate” menu. For this the “override” is set in the Properties of the buttons, not the timelines themselves. In Encore 1.5 the same thing is easier achieved by using its Playlist feature.

The “override” in the Properties of a timeline is only used for special navigational tricks.

[Roadkill]

Nyob zoo Xeeb,

In case you are thinking that everything that runs on a Mac runs without a hitch, I would suggest to take a peek at e.g. the Cow DVDSP and FCP forums.

[Roadkill]

Martin,

With Encore you can add material that doesn’t belong to the DVD-Video part of the disc as “DVD-ROM” content, but you can’t link to it from DVD menus. (You could add the material plus a title/menu screen that instructs the viewer which extras there are and how to access them.)

To create weblinks or links to images or pdf files, you can use Sonic eDVD3 which is used as an add-on to Encore. Fortunately Sonic has recently dropped to price from $899 to $599 to… $199. 🙂

[Roadkill]

Eric,

Angles are part of DVD-lab’s “Future Plans”, not of the current product. 😉

[Roadkill]

[milton ortiz] “…so it should fit in a 4.7 dual layer dvd”

If it says “4.7” it isn’t dual layer… A dual layer disc is 8.54GB (or 7.95GB in “computer size” Gigabytes).

[Roadkill]

Devon,

All the parameters you posted are DVD compliant. I half expected the DC2000 MPEG-2 to be 704×480 instead of 720×480 which would force Encore to re-encode. But I don’t see anything Encore could object to.

Are the DC2000 files multiplexed (audio and video) or are they elementary (video only) streams? If they are multiplexed, the audio is probably MPEG-1 Layer II and Encore’s transcoding may be only for the audio part, not the video.