[William Mcqueen]

Thanks for the suggestions. I guess it’s time for me to get my feet wet and get started. I’ll look in the help of CS3 and will try the net again. Was looking for a Guide, something basic for a learning entry point, so I can try to get a feel for it. Once I get the footage I may ask some other questions as I experiment with it.

Again, thanks,
Bill in Toronto

[William Mcqueen]

Thanks for your help, Jon….

Is there a table of standard aspect ratios conversions you’re aware of? For example I need to convert from 320×240 for 16:9. I tried 480×240 – it seemed to work out in part, but the picture looked a little washed out. QT “flattened” the picture and it did look a bit better.

Cheers,
Bill in Toronto

[William Mcqueen]

Thanks. I did try “Standard” which seemed to work well – not a single dropped frame.

Cheers,
Bill in Toronto

[William Mcqueen]

Thanks so much.

Bill in Toronto

[William Mcqueen]

>Finally, “manual” in this case is not truly manual – it is manual ONLY >if Encore cannot find a suitable break in between separate timelines
>to place the layer break.

I think this is an answer which partially informs my choices. Thanks so very much for that.

I will gladly post a screen shot, if you’ll tell me where I should do that. I’m not familiar with where I might do that on the Cow.

Thanks again,
Bill in Toronto

[William Mcqueen]

I created my own (2) menus successfully – at least according to the “Build” tab “Check Project” ifo provided. I found in some cases where the video was quite long, and I had had the video fade to black, I needed to add an additional Chapter at the end. I also notice that the chapter “tabs” in some cases changed colour. I haven’t figured that out yet.

The advice I seek is regard to layer breaks.

1. I have set the Disk Size to 8.54 – and it says there is 3.84GB free

Question: Does this offer an opportunity to res up the video?

2. In the same Disk Info box, the instructions are to select “automatic” or “manual” That seems to be straight forward, after reading the help section “Specify a layer break for dual-layer DVDs.

However, I can’t find any diagramme in regard to the following:

Under the size designation (8.54GB) there is a designated choice between Side One and Side Two.

Since the break is between side one and side two:

Question: Do I choose Side One or choose Side Two?

I can’t find a reference, or don’t know how to interpret:

Encore creates the layer break (also called layer transition) between timelines or menus, making a smooth transition (since it jumps layers at a point where no content is playing)

Question: Does this mean selecting the layer from which the break occurs, or the layer that it jumps to (eg. 2).

Thanks for your collective wisdom and understanding.

Cheers,
Bill in Toronto

[William Mcqueen]

Things have been very complicated lately and so I did miss my deadline.

So I’ve had no chance to pursue converting the final edit to DVD format, and although the edited video has been rendered to AVI DIG, I can see that my edit in the end is about 166 minutes. So, I guess an initial question is can I produce a dual-layer DVD disk with Encore with this amount of video to ensure good video quality.

And then that leads here: I have 5 separate sequence in Premiere Pro, so I need to render to a format. I did render to AVI DV, but do I have to render to MPEG files and wave. If that is so, what MPEG format so I save to? Does that have to be: M2v and wav? As I say, I’ve created a movie in AVI DV. Does that give the clearest images and let Encore “transcode” (that means compress to another format, doesn’t it?)

I’ve been editing for a few years, but some of he “lingo” throws me – I assume by “asset” is meant the video output or stills I intend to use? I don’t understand the difference between Importing an “asset” and a timelines, menu or slideshow. Aren’t they all assets?

I did one menu in PSD which indicates each of the five videos. I just want a single menu from which to select each of the 5 videos. I want to add links to button selectors.

Do I create/select the buttons from Encore presets?

I sort of get the picture, but then…. I do know that I want a
1. First play with a still and music behind for no more than 20 secs
2. Then a single menu with five or six selections – I have that in PSD and want continuous music to 3:28 secs and infinitely repeat.
3. At the end of each video I want to revert to the one single menu.

Don’t see where to add music.

Sorry for so much coming out at once…. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it shortly.

Cheers,
Bill in Toronto

[William Mcqueen]

Those were all good leads from everybody – thanks ….

But, I have looked extensively, and done different kinds of searches, however PPCS3 did not save a back up for the better part of 8 hours, even though it was constantly saving the original working file.

I manually looked in every possible directory, but no luck. The auto-back up function had been set at the default 5 backup copies, and in the past I’ve noticed that after making 5 backups, PPCS3 will start over, and over-write earlier files, “I think.”

So, I’m setting auto-backup to 15 minutes saves and 20 copies. That should cover 5 hours, I hope. Anyway, the programme did not save any backups for 8 hours and that’s that.

I guess I will just give up and go back and watch carefully from time to time to see if the programme is actually doing an autoback and maybe I’ll do some save as files as well. In my opinion, this should not have happened, I’ve already missed my deadlines. But we live in modern times, everybody I talked with knew what “computer crash” meant.

Bill in Toronto

[William Mcqueen]

Alas, importing the failed project file didn’t work and I got the same error message: “The project appears to be damaged, it cannot be opened.”

Somehow the cow picked up on the problem and pointed me to another thread on the same subject. There were no other real solutions offered.

I guess I’d better get back to see if I can remember what I did.

The one thing I don’t understand is that the auto-save backup didn’t seem to be working correctly, that although it was set for 20 minute intervals, the last saved backup version was stamped at 8 AM (second save for this date) and then no file was saved from then till I saved the file towards 5pm, at which time the crash came. It seems absurd, somehow, that other programmes save a current backup copy of the project file if a programme abruptly closes. It seems strange to me that PPCS3 doesn’t seem to have that feature.

Well, enough rambling…

I’ve forgotten: are you in Van or Vic?

Cheers,
Bill

[William Mcqueen]

How’d you guess? 7.4.1. I’ll give it a try. Thanks as always.

Bill