Update (final?):
Although by far the most tempting option is to create a bonfire and throw Premiere and Encore into the center of it, my next experiment was to go back to Premiere to the same preset I used last time, making just the one alteration of turning on the multiplexing. The result was that the predicted file of 6-7 GB again turned out over 33 GB, which is too big for the disc. So at least it's clear that the multiplexer is the culprit as far as monstrously increasing the file size.
I next tried going back to the original preset (with the multiplexer back off), with the only alteration being that I set the bit rate at CBR 25. The resulting (video) file was 10-11 GB, so an acceptable size. Once again, though, the audio file was about two seconds shorter, so I had to slow the speed to 99.94%.
With Encore I tried to make an ISO file first. It went through successfully, finally.
I then used ImgBurn and the ISO file to burn a Blu-Ray disc. The process went smoothly.
The last step was to check the disc. As I played it, I saw that gradually the video and audio went out of sync. So I had to throw that one away too.
Evidently what was happening was that even though the original audio file was shorter than the video file, and when played in Encore the video and audio are not in sync, perhaps when Encore makes the ISO file it somehow adjusts for that to put them in sync after all. Thus my changing the length of the audio file constituted adjusting twice, putting them that much out of sync in the other direction.
So, retracing my steps, I changed the audio file length back to what it had been (even though that made it no longer match the video file). I used Encore to make a new ISO file, which it did successfully. I then went back to ImgBurn to use that ISO file to burn yet another disc. That too seemed to go fine.
I played the disc through and saw no indication of being out of sync.
Success!
So if anyone somehow runs into the particular set of issues I did (unlikely, since for me at least Premiere always comes up with new inscrutable ways to fail), in summary what worked is:
1. Use the H.264 720p 59.94 preset. Alter this only by changing the default bitrate to CBR 25.
2. If this results in video and audio files of unequal length, even if in Encore when you play them in the monitor they are clearly not in sync all the way through, ignore this and proceed anyway.
3. Make an ISO file with Encore, and use this to burn to Blu-Ray discs.
Needless to say, I'm really unhappy with this software.
My experience working with video was very positive for years. For about 10-15 years I used mostly Premiere (and briefly a more primitive program when I was just starting out) and it was a significant hobby of mine, as well as something I did semi-professionally (I did 10-12 paid projects, ranging from minor ones I finished in a day, to really elaborate multi-DVD projects that I worked on for months), and I always told people how much I loved it as a way to express my creativity, and how I could spend hours working on editing video and be so into it that it felt like a few minutes.
That has changed dramatically, and clearly the main factor was when I started shooting in HD, and I had to get later versions of Premiere that could handle HD. All of a sudden everything became vastly more complicated and unintuitive, and more and more things went wrong with the software. The stuff in this thread is one example, but this type of idiocy has been constant with Premiere and Encore.
I got so flustered with it a while back that I did try a competitor software, but I found that no better, and indeed it stopped working entirely after a few months. About the only thing I can think of now is to switch to Final Cut, which means spending yet more money, learning yet another program from scratch, and indeed switching to a different type of computer (Mac) entirely, so I'm hesitant to do that.
For all those years with the earlier versions of Premiere, I spent maybe 95% of my time actually working on my projects, and 5% of the time dealing with software problems that arose--retrying things, inventing workarounds, scouring the Internet for people having similar issues, posting in forums like this, etc. With the more advanced versions of the software needed for HD, it's been more like 20% of the time working on my projects, and 80% of the time dealing with these nonstop software dumpster fires. It has truly taken the joy out of something that was a real positive in my life.
Either from then compared to now I've become vastly dumber and even less adept with computer stuff, or this is just terrible, buggy software.
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