[Tim Kurkoski]

I’ve seen this happen from time to time. Just a glitch in the window mechanism.

To fix it, I think you have to undock the Effects window (drag it out so it becomes its own window), resize it, save the project (which saves the new window location/size), then quit Premiere Pro. Open the project again and it should be fine.

[Tim Kurkoski]

The unasked questions:

1. What kind (format) of footage is in the timeline? AVI, MPEG, JPEG, etc.
2. What effects, transitions, etc. are applied to the footage?

[Tim Kurkoski]

Have you rendered previews for the timeline yet? Premiere automatically reduces the resolution in the Monitor when it thinks it can’t handle playing back the content in real time. The blurriness you’re seeing sounds normal, and shouldn’t be visible when the video is rendered out, and should go away when you render previews.

You may be able to improve things by changing the playback settings. Project menu > Project Settings > General > Playback Settings button. Set playback to your desktop only, and set it to use Direct3D.

A faster computer with a better video card could also help.

[Tim Kurkoski]

What are your project settings? Project menu > Project Settings > General. Did you choose a 24P project preset before starting?

[Tim Kurkoski]

It depends on your workflow. Some folks like to watch the tape and write down what they want to capture, then set up the batch and let it work by itself. Other folks, myself included, don’t worry about disk space and just capture the whole tape with the scene detect option on.

Also, in the olden days, you needed to set up a batch list if you thought you would need to recapture your clips, you couldn’t just do it straight from the project window like you can with Premiere Pro.

In short, do what works for you. I’m sure other folks will chime in with their opinions.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Are you striping your tapes before you shoot?

[Tim Kurkoski]

If I understand correctly, what you’re asking is: When the button is pressed, how to make it enlarge until it fits the screen.

To make the motion button itself, check out Encore’s help files, there are instructions there, or you should be able to find a tutorial at one of these sites:
https://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotutorial/tut_encore.htm
https://doogs.sitesled.com/downloads.htm

To do the other part, where the movie thumbnail zooms up to full size, you need to create a movie of the button enlarging. This is typically referred to as a transition menu.

Take the menu file (the PSD) into Premiere or After Effects, and just animate the scale and position of the video thumbnail to zoom in as you want. Export that as an AVI, bring it into Encore, and put it in a timeline. In the menu in Encore, set the link for the button to this new timeline. Then set the end action of that timeline to the timeline that you’re actually trying to link to.

There are a couple of limitations and gotchas with this setup.

* There is no way for you to control frame sync between the motion menu and the menu transition. It’s just not possible.

* In order to control frame sync between the menu transition and the actual timeline that you’re linking to, make sure to trim the frames so that the last frame of the transition and the first frame of the timeline are contiguous.

* Depending on the player you use, there will be a slight pause, and possibly a black screen, when the DVD loads the menu transition and when it loads the timeline. Nothing you can do about that, either.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Unless you changed the settings, it sounds like you just used DV-AVI settings from Premiere Pro, which is fine.

Is it just this one project that you’re having trouble with? It very likely could be one of the source files or menus you’re using.

Best way to figure it out is process of elimination. Start a new project, and import one file. Save project, close Encore, reopen, and open the project. If it opens, good, move on to the next file and repeat until you get the problem. The last file you add will be the source of the problem, and you should recreate it (re-export it from Premiere or re-save from Photoshop). If no files appear to cause the problem, start rebuilding the project (timelines, menus, etc.) in small steps, and close and reopen Encore in between.

[Tim Kurkoski]

So how does the disc look if you play it on a computer?

If the transcodes look fine, then it’s definitely something in how the player application is handling it. You might want to try a different app.

As far as fields go, the MPEG files are definitely field separated, and there’s no way to avoid that. See:
https://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.4

That doesn’t mean your source content can’t be progressive, and the player (set top or software) should still play it correctly. Howevewr, if your player app is doing something funny with the fields, like only displaying one set at a time, that could be the problem.

Basically, I think what it’s coming down to is that you need to test your disk in a variety of players.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Hi Jack,

Why don’t you post it, edit it as you feel appropriate, but credit me (via CreativeCow.net). I’m really busy right now, and while I’m sure it’s as easy as you say, I just don’t feel like messing around with it. (And for some reason, Wiki sites are always really slow for me.)

-=Tim