Encore being unruley with finishing a project
DawnTreader777 Aug 30, 2009 2:59 PMHello All
First, I want to thank anyone who can chime in on this ahead of time. I have been working on this project for over 2.5 years and I am about to cry, and I am not kidding around.
I have everything exactly as I want it; menus leading to menus, transitions, the whole project is set up and ready to go.
My computer specs:
AMD 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ 2.3GHz
3GB RAM
ASUS M3N72-D with onboard hybrid video card nForce 750a
EVGA nVidia 8600GT with 256MB PCIE video card
OCZ 60GB SSD as my C Drive
1TB Seagate SATA2 drive as the project drive
1TB Seagate SATA2 drive as my documents drive
320GB Seagate SATA2 drive as another video project drive
Windows XP SR3, 32 bit
Adobe CS4
Samsung Syncmaster 226bw
LG L1970HR
Gateway 17"
A while ago I had a problem with this project and the latest nVidia video drivers so I am still running 181.20 until I am finished with this project.
I have in this project 1 video intro with audio that I use to flow into the main menu. The main menu has a motion background and audio. There are 4 choices on the menu. The first leads to a menu that allows the user to choose to either play the entire main 16 chapter timeline, or start at one of the first 8 chapters. This menu has a link to a second menu where the user can start at one of the other 8 chapters that were not on the first sub menu, the button between the 2 chapter menus has a transition of only video.
The second choice on the main menu leads to a playlist chapter menu. The playlist basically takes a few chapters out of the main time line and plays everything else. The 2 chapter playlist menus work exactly like the first 2 for the full timeline.
The third choice on the main menu leads to yet another chapter playlist menu. This playlist only plays the chapters that were taken out from the last list. This has only one chapter menu, no need for a transition.
The fourth choice on the main menu leads directly to a "slideshow" video created from after effects. This video has audio.
I have a total of 2 major timelines, the main video is about 1.5 hours and the video slideshow is 18 minutes. According to Encore the encoded video of the main video is 6.036GB and the slideshow is 1.1GB. The other timelines are 4 small 2 second videos of fades between the main menu and the submenus or the slideshow video. These small video transitions are 2.077MB each. The intro video is 23 seconds at 24.3MB.
Looking at things I think I could have done it a bit different, simpler, but it is done now, has been for at least a couple of weeks, just trying to get it on a DVD and work. Currently my problem is getting it to render a DVD without complaint. I have 2 problems in this regard.
The first is that when I try to render directly to a disc Encore goes through and does all the transcoding and then prepares the file layout and then craps out on the error: Dual Layer -- This disc requires a layer break.
ok, so I figure somehow the setting was changed, even though I don’t remember making a change, so I will check the setting and put it back to automatic because that has always worked before. I go to the build pane and lo and behold the setting is AUTOMATIC. Well gee... what do I do now?
so I figure, ok, maybe I can trick it into re-doing the layer break and make the disc an 8.0GB disc by choosing custom and making it big enough for what encore is telling me the project will take in terms of size, but smaller than an 8.5GB disc. That way it might put the layer break in AUTOMATICALLY. After trying to render it this way I get the message Dual Layer -- This disc requires a layer break.
Hmmm.... so I need to get a prototype done so I can see that it is working, that my project is really finished, so let’s out put to a folder and use a burning program to put it on disc. This works great! I actually rendered and was then able to use Nero to burn a video DVD from the resulting folder and everything seems fine. There was one weird thing I notice however; in Encore it is now telling me that the DVD is 8.54GB in the build panel. Oh well, let’s test it out in the DVD player...
My DVD player won’t load the disc... but my Blue Ray player will... what gives?
So I am thinking that maybe Nero doesn’t lay it down proper for a DVD player, but my Blue Ray doesn’t care. So I try again to render to a disc image. Dual Layer -- This disc requires a layer break. WHAT?!?! Shouldn’t that be done by the program putting it on the DVD? After all this is just an image...
Ok. So... what to try next...
I think maybe the project is a little too big; maybe I need to limit the project to 7Mbps, instead of the 8Mbps that it was at by default. Changed...
so I have now cleared all the transcode copies from the transcode folder, deleted all the cache files and think, well transcoding is taking up the most time each time I try to resolve this issue so why not transcode everything now, and then when I ask it to build the project into something it would go a lot quicker. So I right click on the first file that it would need to transcode and tell it to Transcode Now. Happily an orange bar appears in the progress panel and things look great. The orange bar disappears and it says it is working on importing the file... ok... wait...
And wait...
The file it transcoded is 23 seconds of video at 706.4MB of data.
And wait...
Hmmm... where is the orange bar... shouldn’t something be happening by now...?
This is taking too long... wait some more... you know how impatient you can get when you think something should be happening and it doesn’t...
And wait...
706.4MB FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!...!
so... here I sit wondering what I am going to do, customer called this morning, I told him that I was about to be finished...
Killed the transcode by hitting stop. Clear all the transcode folders and clear the cache again. Close and reopen the project. Look for another way of getting this done.
Hmmm... what does a DVD master do?
I have never had so much trouble creating a DVD as I have had with this project. Does anyone have any ideas?


