Encore Sucks?

Rick Meyer

Rick Meyer

Veteran
Either Encore sucks. I'm stupid. Or, its a healthy combination of the two.

I have been trying to get this FREAKING SIMPLE, SIMPLE, SIMPLE menu to work for HOURS. Please, if you know a thing or two about Encore, please read this post and try, TRY, I'M ON MY HANDS AND KNEES BEGGING for you to try to offer me some advice. btw, REFLEX was monumental in getting me to where I am now...so thank you. I just don't want to bog him down any further. Afterall, I may be frustrated, but I do have a heart.

Okay, 3 assets. Animating menu. Static menu (which is last shot of animating menu), 1 AVI file with chapters.

I have gotten the animation to go to the menu with active buttons after 20 seconds or so. However, the background image of the menu is NOT the last shot of the animating menu. It is the first. Its NOT what I wanted. I don't know why its doing that.

Secondly, there is a very distinctive POPPING noise in my audio. Now, I realize that might be a sample rate. So, I changed everything to 48khz like the project. But, it STILL doesn't fix the problem. There is STILL popping and its NOT on the original file. I've tried it both ways: using the audio that was rendered WITH the animated menu. OR importing the song separately as an asset and linking it to the animated menu and eventually the static menu.

PLEASE..somebody take a second to put me out of my misery. Either help me or kill me. You choose. I'm very tired and very agreeable.

I'll be checkin' on this thread regularly.
RICK
PS The encore HELP menu is confusing as hell, I've spent HOURS since last night (took a nap at 3am) reading it and could not for the life of my figure this out. Maybe I am a complete idiot...
 
I wish I could help man. But I think the program is stupid not you. I had my own little Encore nightmare for a menu system even simpler than yours! No animated anything. The software is just super unintuitive. When I get home if you still haven't figured it out I'll see if I can give it a whack.
 
rlm7189 said:
Well, thank you for proving that misery loves company. Good to know its not just me. You have any idea why my audio is clicking or popping? Right now that is my biggest problem.

The fact that my menu goes from ANIMATION to STILL IMAGE is fine. Its what I wanted. But, the still image I wanted was the LAST frame of the Animated menu. Not the FIRST. But im tired so rather than fight with it i decide to go with it. i moved my buttons to a more logistical composition to match that still shot. so, i can live with that. its the popping i cannot.

ENCORE! What the F were they thinking? Id didnt need to be this tricky!
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I also had problems with the audio. Different problem though. When I would scrub through the audio would crash for my whole computer. I would have to reboot.

What I would suggest is to burn a copy and test it to see if the pop is there. It might not be there when it is encoded. It might just be the sound card trying to work with this crappy program.
 
Excellent advice. You read my mind. I am about to take 3 different versions of the animating menu/with audio each with its own sample rate. 48, 44.1, and 38 I believe. If they ALL pop, I am going to pop in the 48 (because thats what it SHOULD be) and try to build the DVD. I'll get back to ya in an hour or so.

Thanks for chimin' in. And yes...this program SUCKS. There has GOT to be a better one out there. Because this one aint for me...
 
Hey Raytracer-

You use this? It looks pretty good. Whats your take on it?

Rick
PS Whats the shareware version like? If you know, if I download it, will I be able to create an entire DVD withOUT watermarks?
 
As for your different data rates, the DVD-V specification supports PCM sample rates of 48 and 96 kS/s with samples of either 16, 20 or 24 bit. Encore, however only supports a small subset of these, specifically 48 kS/s and 16 bit.

The "popping" that you notice is likely caused by a discontinuity at either the head or tail of the audio asset. The simplest way to ensure that these types of events don't occur is to use a fade up at the head and a fade down at the tail.

As for the comment that Encore "SUCKS" I can't say that I agree. It is not the simplest program for authoring, but much easier than high end applications like Scenarist.
 
Hey Khmuse-

Thanks for the reply. Actually, I used the question mark as in "Encore Sucks?" because at this point, I'm not sure if it does or not... but I am having a horrible time with it. I will be the first to admit that just because I don't find it user friendly doesnt mean it isnt a good program. So, I was asking the question and venting at the same time....

I understand what you are saying about the discontinuity thing. But that isnt my problem. The popping noise sounds just like the popping noise you hear in PREMIERE when the frequency isnt correct. But, I have changed it. But, I still hear the popping noise throughout the audio. I will double check to make sure its 16bit. But I know that its 48.

Thanks again for the reply! ANY advice is always appreciated!

Rick
 
To set an image from the video file for your animated button - try setting a "poster frame" on the timeline of the video. Go to the timeline of the video (in Encore), drag your marker to the point of the image you would like to display for the menu, above the time line place your mouse - right click - select "Set Poster Frame".

You should be good to go. Sorry can't help you with the audio...haven't experience the problem...if you have the production suite...just open up audition and edited the popping out.

good luck.
 
rlm7189,
I LIKE Encore. As khmuse says, it's not a simple step-you-thru, hold-your-hand authoring program but I find it pretty flexible and powerful. Of course, with great power comes a learning curve. But it sounds like you're almost there. Hang in there. BTW, you didn't say what version of Encore you're using. I think 2.0 is a good (maybe not great) improvement over 1.x

I think dewman's suggestion about the poster frame might be the trick for your menu. I'm not exactly clear on what you're referring to as your animated menu. Are you talking about the background or animation in a menu button? I remember the problem I had the first time I wanted to set a poster frame. I knew what I wanted to do but it took me a while to find how to do it. And the online help did not help. Very frustrating. Follow dewman's steps.

As for the audio, I agree that the popping is either a discontinuity like khmuse says or simply a bandwidth issue. When you first load a PCM audio file into Encore, it delays transcoding it to AC3 until you either tell it to transcode or you build the DVD. AC3 format requires a lot less bandwidth than PCM. If the audio file has not been transcoded yet, you can go up in the project window and (I think) right-click on the audio asset file and select 'transcode now' or something like that. To be honest, it's second nature for me now so it's hard for me to exactly describe the steps without having it in front of me. Anyway, that might help unless it is a discontinuity problem.

One trick I've found that works for me is once I have all your assets loaded and my timelines and menus created, I use the 'check' feature (gad, I can't remember the button name right now but it's right next to 'Build DVD') and let it list all the missing links and settings. Then I just go down the list and click on each error message which will automatically bring up the associated property page. Version 2 of Encore gives you an nice flowchart to see the linkages.

-Dan
 
Thanks again guys (and gals if youre out there)-

I am running back and forth from my work computer to MY computer (I work from home) to try to fix this problem.

I tried to BUILD a DVD but I disregarded the message that said, "there might be errors and you might have a problem viewing this in the dvd player. continue?" i continued. sure enough, my dvd player didnt like it.

So, back to the drawing board.

In the immortal words of Arnold...Ill be back...

Rick

Okay, I was able to get the FINAL STATIC menue image that I wanted. However, I was not able to do this by setting a poster frame. When I right clicked on the Timeline, that selection was gray'ed out. So, I bring in an AVI of that single frame and set no seconds for it to play...and HOLD forever...so, that seemed to work.

But now, receiving two error messages when I CHECK PROJECT before I build. TO the right of my MENU icon it says "OVERLAPPING BUTTONS". And next to my video icon it says Trims and/or Chapters adjusted. Well, blarney, If its not one thing, its another....
 
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I left out one important part of setting the poster frame....when your viewing the timeline you will see a marker at the begining of the timeline....click that marker - it will turn red...then move to the timeline indicator (what ever it's called) to the image you want...right click - set poster frame...sorry about that.

i recently used encore on two dvd projects and went through the pain of not being familiar with the layout and functionality of the program...after scratching my bald head...i finally figured it out..just like the majority of programs...PS, PP, AA, AE...they've incorporated so much functions its hard to get up to speed quickly.
 
Overlapping buttons might be associated with the "buttons/menus" being to close together on your dvd menu...it seems that there is a disignated area to click to activate that button...they might be overlapping...just move them a bit and see if that corrects the issue.

trim/chapter adjusting...not sure about that...will think about it.
 
When I get the 'trims and chapters adjusted' message, it's always been after I've replaced or overwritten an asset file with another file. I basically ignore it. Once I've saved the project one or maybe two times, that message will go away.

The overlapping buttons warning is just that: the boundaries of two or more buttons overlap on another on the menu screen. When you are displaying the menu, there's a row of buttons at the bottom of the frame. They are hard to describe in words but one of them will turn on all the button boundaries at once and you should be able to see where the overlap is.

-Dan
 
don't be scared Bsmith...the program is nice and it integrates very well with other adobe apps...it's just like any program...it takes time to learn...all of adobe programs that i have...which is the production suite professional package...allows me to do 99% of what i want to do...but doing it is another story...lack of understanding the program is the issue not the program...
 
Okay...I am going to get this DVD finalized ONE freaking DVXuser post at a time....

I tried moving the buttons around so they are not touching. Checked the project and lo and behold the error message is gone. If the error message was there, would ENCORE still let me BUILD the DVD? Or better yet, is there a way to reduce the button size by pulling on the blue bounding box without scaling the button inside of the bounding box? My buttons are text. I dont want them to get too small. But the bounding box is HUGE and way bigger than the button causing all of this overlapping mayhem.

Thanks again.

When this gets done, Im buying you all a beer. Dewman...might be some time before I can get to Kentucky though...
 
Bsmith said:
shi* I was thinking about getting Encore, but now I'm scared
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I can understand from the comments in the thread. It really depends on what type of DVD authoring program you want. I've used DVD Movie Factory in the past and it's a very nice, guide-you-thru-the-steps sort of program and it does a good job of turning out a working DVD with little learning curve. Encore is more flexible, IMHO, and offers more features. But a good chunk of that power comes from the way it couples with Photoshop. If you don't have Photoshop or don't feel comfortable using Photoshop, then you lose of a lot of the power it gives to Encore. There is a learning curve but it's not a steep one, IMO.

One thing I will say for Encore, it can make a solid DVD. At this point I have designed dozens of DVDs with Encore and burned hundreds of copies that have been played on all kinds of DVD players. I have yet to have one come back because the DVD was incompatible with a person's player.

I suggest you download the free trial and see for yourself. It's not perfect but I like it

-Dan
 
rick...now that's the attitude i had when i was finishing by dvd projects...i was not going to let it whip my a** :)! i'll take you up on that beer the next time your in ky or the next time i'm in ny...

you can adjust the button size by clicking that button and on my program the button is highlights with a "green" boundary box...just resize like any other boundary box..adjust the text size with the text tool "T"...
 
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