Encore+Mac (Leopard) +Blu Ray=Wrong

I am reposting something I wrote in a thread below as I don't want it to get lost on the forum. Apologies if this is bad etiquette, but I think it's important to share this, as others clearly have the same problems:

Walter

Here's a quick rundown of my first Blu-Ray build. Like others here, I would guess, I am a FCP user who bought Premiere Pro just for Encore. I read it was the only professional authoring solution for Mac available.

I run an 8-Core 2008 Mac Pro running Leopard 10.5.4 - 8 Gb Ram

I have built a simple disc with 3 menus. Start, Chapters, Special Features. Start has 3 buttons, Chapters 8, Special features 5.

I built the whole disc as blu-ray, simulated it and checked it. I was impressed by the ease of building and testing in Encore. Although it lacks the pizzaz of DVD-SP, it does the basics well IMHO.

Having build an HD project, I let Encore build me a SD DVD of it. I expected some problems, as the disc was built as 23.98p from a 24p master and then sent to DVD as 29.97.

Apart from the encodes taking ages (overnight and then some for 1.5 hrs footage) I was impressed that the disc worked in SD first time. The picture quality was excellent. The Dolby surround track was in place. All was well in the world.

Then I tried to burn the Blu Ray. That was 2 days ago. I'm still here.

The problem for me can be summarised as follows: My buttons do not appear. They are the sort of buttons that have 'no' unselected state. In other words, you only see them when they are selected. I needed to do this, as I built motion backgrounds for the menus in motion, and the text for the buttons animates on - so the buttons cannot be visible until selection is possible at the loop point.

I think most of the navigation is working, although with invisible buttons (which - BY THE WAY - aren't invisible in the simulator) it's pretty hard to tell. The video is all there and looks fine. I think I have the same issues others have reported with the disk not starting menus on the right button - but I can't be sure.

I should say at this point that after one failure attempting to burn straight to disc, I now output an ISO and burn in toast. This has not failed once in all my attempts to burn an ISO to my internal Pioneer BD-202 drive, which appeared plug-and-play in OSX when I connected it to the internal SATA ports.

I have built a test menu from my main project and inserted various stock buttons from Encore. About half of them work properly when burnt. When I tried to modify one so I could use it in place of my own buttons it again failed to appear where required.

Even more frustratingly, everytime I try to fix the buttons and re-build the ISO, Encore starts re-encoding ALL the video in the project, even though it shows up as rendered in the project window. This means each test takes hours to complete. I am running out of hours.

As of now, I am frazzled, fed up and out of time to deliver. I can accept that I may have made some error in my build (although I have tried unaltered stock buttons, and many do not work in Blu-Ray) I cannot accept that it works IN THE SIMULATOR AND NOT ON THE DISK.

I had my client around yesterday and I had to show him the problems. He pointed out that as a games developer, they had FREE software at their office for making Blu-Rays on PC that did all this - making menus etc. with no problems. I may have to give him the videos as QTs and let them build it. Frankly, that makes me feel sick.

As soon as I have found ANY solution to this build, I will be attempting to return Encore for a full refund. I'm sure it will not be an easy process. But here's the truth of it: For a simple Blu-Ray disk, Encore DOES NOT WORK as it should - because what it shows me in the simulator and what it burns to disk are two different things. End of story.

Adobe have lost my custom long term over this - it's inexcusable.

More to follow.

Ben

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