[Tim Kurkoski]

Jack-

The core of the problem with Premiere’s MPEG handling is caused by the fact that Premiere asks Windows to connect it to the MPEG decoder. (This is as opposed to how it handles DV, for which it uses the MainConcept codec exclusively.) Any given computer probably has at least 2 or 3 decoders on it, and whatever is the most recently installed will be what Windows feeds back to Premiere. The decoder in use may or may not play nicely with Premiere. In particular, I seem to recall that the Intervideo WinDVD decoder seems to be especially unfriendly.

The solution is to change which DVD decoder has highest priority. Preferably the MainConcept decoder, which Premiere installs, will be the one. Try searching the Premiere Pro forum on the Adobe site, there have been some tools mentioned there that will change MPEG decoder priority (or you can just hack the registry if you know where to go).

Another solution that has been reccomended on the Premiere Elements forum is to install the free K-Lite codec package. It includes the MainConcept decoder (I am therefore skeptical of the legality of this package), and if you select MC to be the default during the K-Lite install, all seems to be fine with at least Premiere Elements and MPEG handling. I wouldn’t expect PrPro to behave differently. Basically, with this solution, you’re just pasting another version of the MC codec on top of whatever’s already there.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Several things need to be examined here…

– When you view the DVD, are you playing it on the computer or a set-top player? If on the computer, are you maximizing the window (bad) or viewing at the native resolution (good)?

– You said “the image is heavily aliased. particularly noticable on menus where theres text.” Are you referring to the text highlights? That’s typical for DVD, the highlights can’t be anti-aliased. Please clarify what exactly is the problem.

– Regarding whether or not transcoding is the issue, after you transcode the video, go into the project folder and find the transcoded m2v files, and try playing those in Windows Media Player. If it is truly not a transcoding issue, then those should look okay.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Couple of starter questions:

– Where are your media files located? On an internal drive, or external or network drive of some sort?

– What codec are the AVI files that you are using?

[Tim Kurkoski]

Yes, you have to render the motion menus.

When you are dragging your video file over the Play button, does the bounding box of the Play button appear? It still sounds like you aren’t dragging exactly on top of the button.

Regardless, you can always link the button the manual way. Select the button in the menu, then in the Properties window click the pickwhip for the Link property and drag it to the timeline for your video.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Encore doesn’t allow you to put multiple assets in the same timeline, unless they are all stills.

Remember that Encore is still a 1.x version, so it’s got a long ways to catch up with other programs. But I still think it’s pretty good for what it does. You can submit a feature request to Adobe if there’s something you’d like to see in future versions:
https://www.adobe.com/support/feature.html

You can get around the problem of having to deal with multiple timelines by putting a chapter point at about 1 sec. before the end of each timeline. When the user presses the “next chapter” button, it will jump to that, and after a short delay the next timeline will start. Not the most elegant solution, but it works.

[Tim Kurkoski]

It’s pretty simple to do if you edit the menu in Photoshop. Create the a new layer set with the proper name, like “(+)InvisiButton”. In the layer set create one layer and draw something on it, like a circle or a rectangle. Doesn’t need to be big or fancy. Lower the opacity of this layer to 0%. Boom. you’re done.

What happens is that Encore respects the fact that the layer is there, and understands the boundaries of what you drew as the boundaries of the button. However, it also respects the fact that the content of the layer is transparent. And since there are no highlight layers in the button, nothing will appear when you click it.

There are ways to do this from within Encore, too, if you’re new to Photoshop, too. Let me know if that would work better for you. I just can’t remember how to do it that way off the top of my head. 🙂

[Tim Kurkoski]

Tim , did you mean to tell him to double click in the project window? (I assume you intended that it loaded the clip to the source window)

My assumption is that he didn’t necessarily have the clip loaded in the clip window. Plus I’ve been working with Premiere Elements a lot lately, which doesn’t have a separate source window (it just flips the monitor back and forth between source and program), so you have to target the clip in the bin.

Larry’s solution is pretty elegant, though.

[Tim Kurkoski]

The solution to this is instead of double-clicking on the clip in the timeline, double-click on it in the Project window. Set the I/O points there and drag it down.

What happens when you double-click on it from the timeline is that Premiere references the specific instance of the clip you put in the timeline. If you want to create a second instance of the clip, you need to go back to the original source clip in the Project window.

Or just copy and paste the clip on the timeline and make your edits to the copy. Either way.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Whoop! Looks like the Cow truncated the file path. It probably mistook some of the characters as HTML tags. Here’s the full path

C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\Premiere Pro\1.5\MediaIO\Presets

[Tim Kurkoski]

Sure. The presets are located here:
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Adobe\Premiere Pro\1.5\MediaIO\Presets

To use them on another computer, you can put them in the same location, or when you have the Adobe Media Encoder open, hit the Import Presets icon (looks like a folder), then locate and choose the file.