[Tim Kurkoski]

So what pixel aspect ratio did you use in Photoshop and AE? It sounds like you produced a square pixel file out of Photoshop, but went to non-square out of AE. The shift is happening as Encore is transitioning between the non-square version and the square version, which it is having to resample to non-square itself. Use non-square all the way (requires Photoshop CS or CS2) and you should be in much better shape.

RE: the background audio, you can’t have audio that bridges timelines or menus. It’s a limitation of the DVD spec. What you could do instead is tack the static menu onto the end of your animation (say 30 sec. worth, or however long your music is going to loop), then make the whole thing a motion menu with a loop point. Probably a bit of a waste of space on the final disc, but it keeps the audio and video all within the same menu, so you can get around the limitation.

[Tim Kurkoski]

There’s nothing special you need to do from a technical standpoint. Encore handles both types of clips in single project, and will set everything up for you automatically. The only question of how to handle them is aesthetics (how, or even if, to present the options to the user), and that’s going to depend on your content and purpose.

[Tim Kurkoski]

There aren’t any tutorials I’ve seen (but then again I’m not all-knowing). What about playlists is causing you problems?

Playlists are pretty simple, really. All they do is play a group of timelines in the order you specify. The big deal about them is that they free you from the tedious work of setting up a bunch of overrides to accomplish the same thing (see my Encore 1.0 tutorial on setting up this kind of structure manually).

You may want to watch Daniel Brown’s videos over at the Adobe Evangelists site to get a better grasp on overrides and other Encore topics. (Sheesh, this link gets used so much we should probably get it posted at the top of the forum.)

[Tim Kurkoski]

Hey Mark-

My colors are blue and gold, those of Oregon Tech. Since the Owls sit pretty far down on the intercollegiate sports ladder, though, you’ll find me rooting for rodents more often than water fowl. I have to, my mother is an OSU grad. 😉 (But truth be told, and please don’t start throwing potato salad at me, I’ll root in the War for whoever has a better chance of going to a big bowl. State over school, I say.)

-=Tim

[Tim Kurkoski]

All you need to do is set the Override value of the button to return to the menu. No need for multiple copies of the same timeline.

More info on the wonder of overrides at:
https://www.adobeevangelists.com/encore/index.html

Scroll down to the movies.

[Tim Kurkoski]

16:9 is the same size as 4:3- PAL 720×576 or NTSC 720×480. The difference is 16:9 uses wider pixels. For example, NTSC uses 0.9 pixel aspect ratio for 4:3, and 1.2 PAR for 16:9. I’m not sure of the ratios for PAL, but it’s similar.

And no, Encore probably won’t take your DivX files. It’s not a standard format. Convert them to MPEG-2 first.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Hi Mark,

Encore 1.5’s “playlists” are just a easy-to-use implementation of the “play one or play all” type of structure (somewhere on the Cow there’s a tutorial I wrote for 1.0 about manually setting that up).

What it comes down to is that playlists only set up a series of end actions and overrides. They don’t combine your timelines into a single bigger one, if that was the impression you had.

The behavior you describe about the Next and Prev. Chapter buttons has been much discussed before. There is no rule in the DVD specification that says what a player should do when the Next button is pressed, but there’s no chapters left in the given timeline. Many DVD players will skip to the end of the timeline (which will then cause the end action to occur), but some just do nothing. As for the Prev Chapter button, that simply won’t work to go back to a previous timeline. DVD players don’t keep track of what timeline they came from.

For more info on end actions and overrides, see Daniel Brown’s video tutorial:
https://www.adobeevangelists.com/movies/overridetogo.wmv

[Tim Kurkoski]

You can set up surround mixing either in the Audio Mixer window or in the timeline by looking at the audio panning keyframes.

[Tim Kurkoski]

It’s possible, and there’s a couple of ways you can do it:

1. Instead of letting Encore set up the motion menu for the thumbnails, create the motion menu background yourself in After Effects or Premiere. That way you can make it show anything you want for the buttons.

2. Use a little timeline trickery. Instead of using the slate as a still, go back to your editing program and attach the slate to the end of the commercial. Export this as a movie, import into Encore and put on a timeline. Set a chapter point where the slate starts, and link the button to that chapter. Set the poster frame for the chapter point to be at the beginning of the timeline, where the commercial starts. Make sure to limit the duration of the menu so that the motion thumbnail doesn’t roll into the slate. In fact, if you’re using only a 5- or 10-second duration for the motion menu, when you set up this movie in your editing program, clip the commercial down to only what you’re going to use. This method is going to use a lot more disc space, since what you’re doing is essentially duplicating the commercial for just the thumbnail.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Is the problem only with the highlights for the buttons, or with the buttons when they’re not highlighted as well? Button highlights on DVD are severely restricted in the number of colors they can display, so jagged edges are typical. For more info, see Daniel Brown’s tutorial:
Highlight Colors: The Lowdown on Subpictures