Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac
by Mitch Ives
on
Aug 27, 2008 at 3:21:46 pm
I have to tell you that I am very disappointed to read all of the issues that are plaguing Encore users on the Mac, and I'd like to hear the opinion of others on this subject. Check out the Encore forum to see what I'm referring to.
Many of us have been watching Walter go out on point in this process. Based on the posts out there, we bought Premiere/Encore with the intention of doing BR discs. I find it inconceivable that Adobe cannot make Encore function correctly on Leopard. Worse, they don't seem to be doing anything about it.
For the last two years I've been on industry panels with Adobe reps where they hammer home the point that FCP can't do BR, but they can. How can they say that when they know it isn't true?
A few weeks back I asked the Adobe guy when we could expect a fix that allowed Encore to burn a disc rather than having to use Toast (unfortunately, I wasn't aware of all the other problems then). His response indicated that no fix is forthcoming... not until CS4. So the solution is for us to pay (heavy) upgrade fees to get something that works? If it works?
Between the draconian upgrade fees on Adobe products, their "bundling" scheme to force upgrades you don't want, their meddlesome registration requirements (don't ask about that horror show), and the fact that tech support is now in India (where they can't find any of your registered product serial numbers), I'm beginning to wonder about the continued viability of this company... especially with the recent memories of their mishandling of the Mac programs.
Does anybody have any thoughts on how to communicate the seriousness of this to Adobe? I know I'm not giving them $1500 when the CS4 upgrade comes out... not when they fail to recognize and address the seriousness of the problems in Mac Encore... how can I take that chance?
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by Chris Poisson on Aug 27, 2008 at 5:21:53 pm
Hey Mitch,
I'm miffed about this for another reason. I bought Encore for Mac about two months ago with the intention of creating some interactive Flash stuff with it, and it won't work because of some QT conflicts, which looks to be far from resolved.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by walter biscardi on Aug 27, 2008 at 5:59:18 pm
[Chris Poisson]"I bought Encore for Mac about two months ago with the intention of creating some interactive Flash stuff with it, and it won't work because of some QT conflicts, which looks to be far from resolved. "
Should have contacted me, I could have told you that, and I believe I did mention something about that on my blog.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by eric pautsch on Aug 27, 2008 at 5:59:34 pm
I wish people would do their homework and get over the fact that Encore is not to be used for BD production. It never has worked and probably never will. Adobe has great products - except for Encore :) They didn't lie to you. Encore does BD and FCP does not.
Blu Ray is advanced technology. Its not for those who use prosumer tools like Encore. It requires doing your homework. It requires larger budgets and time which, frankly, most clients can't afford right now. Things will be changing with cheaper and "easier to use" tools but everything BD should be considered beta at this point.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by walter biscardi on Aug 27, 2008 at 6:05:24 pm
[Mitch Ives]"For the last two years I've been on industry panels with Adobe reps where they hammer home the point that FCP can't do BR, but they can. How can they say that when they know it isn't true? "
TECHNICALLY it's true. DVDSP cannot produce BluRay Discs. Encore can IF all you want is a Play Button. Adobe simply doesn't own up to this limitation.
[Mitch Ives]"Does anybody have any thoughts on how to communicate the seriousness of this to Adobe? "
Mitch, I was in communication with Nathan Gentner, the product manager for Encore for about 8 months. The last four months he has stopped communicating with us. Not sure how much higher up the food chain you can go that directly to the head of Adobe.
I honestly think Adobe just don't care because if you look at the Adobe Home Page and the Adobe Products page, Encore is not shown at all. You have to go into the list on the Products page to even find it. But every other component of CS3 is featured prominently on both of those pages. You have to buy Premiere anyway just to get to Encore so as long as Premiere works, I guess Adobe figures we have nothing to complain about because we're getting Encore "for free."
Bottom line is Encore is not what you want for BluRay authoring, it does not come close to what Adobe says it will do.
I have purchased a new HP Workstation and will begin using DoStudio from NetBlender in about two weeks to work on our BluRay discs. I will report our progress in my blog and will also give an update here once we have been able to produce a title or two.
I really hate having to purchase a Windows machine, but on the flip side, the fully tricked our HP machine, including the BluRay burner, was only $1700. My tricked out Octo Core was just over $5,000.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by Mark Suszko on Aug 27, 2008 at 8:20:07 pm
I think instead of harping so much on Adobe - which, after all, bad or indifferent, at least has *something* out there, and had it for some time now - we should be pestering Apple more for a BD upgrade or add-on to FCP/DVDSP. Soonest.
I'm sure the delay is because Apple and Sony's lawyers are still in the thunderdome over rights and piracy and royalties, etc. and not so much over engineering issues. But meanwhile BD technology for our community's needs is suffering greatly.
Frankly, I would be happy at this point just to have some stable Apple app that would burn an FCP project to a BD disk, even if it was just a straight play-thru format. For distributing spots and the like to broadcasters, you don't need all that much authoring and interactivity, and even just a little utility like this would be enough to launch a lot of HD work on the mac platform. I mean it would be better to HAVE all the same things in high def we have in SD with DVDSP, but at this point, very little is getting done on the mac platform in BD, simply because of this holdup.
And it makes me crazy, because you have the makings of an HD content creation explosion, all corked up because the "last mile" - burning to HD on bluRay... is not worked out yet.
Come on, Jobs, get those guys to cut the knot and release something that works, even if it is just a simple "archive to BD" utility. We're dying over here.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by walter biscardi on Aug 27, 2008 at 8:38:02 pm
[Mark Suszko]"I'm sure the delay is because Apple and Sony's lawyers are still in the thunderdome over rights and piracy and royalties, etc. and not so much over engineering issues. But meanwhile BD technology for our community's needs is suffering greatly. "
I'm pretty sure it's over engineering issues. I've you've followed any of my threads on the Encore forum, creating a BluRay authoring tool is far and away an incredibly complicated matter and I'm sure that's one of the reasons Apple has not updated DVDSP to include BluRay authoring.
I have been contacted by numerous folks in the commercial BluRay industry, including folks working at some major studios in Hollywood, who have explained to me the incredibly complicated matter that is BluRay authoring. As one described it to me, "A 16 year old can create DVD Authoring software, that's easy, BluRay is a whole different matter. Especially if you want to get into BD-J authoring."
DoStudio is the cheapest option out there right now to make a BD-J and to make BluRays period with fully featured menus. So that's where we're going as I honestly don't see Apple adding BD Authoring to SP anytime in the near future. It would most likely be incredibly limited and then folks would whine about the limited functionality.
[Mark Suszko]""archive to BD" utility."
You can already do that with Toast 8. Just install the BluRay Burner and archive away just like you use Toast now to archive to DVDs.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by Eric Pautsch on Aug 27, 2008 at 9:16:00 pm
Also remember, your disc is only as good as your encoder. The cheapest BD complaint AVC encoders run around 4K. I think compressor as a BD option but its MPEG 2 only. On top of the fact that I wouldn't use compressor for an SD disc much less and BD title :)
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by Mark Suszko on Aug 27, 2008 at 9:57:14 pm
Walter and the rest of you seem to mostly be thinking about fully-authored interactive BD titles, stuff for public release to the consumer, things that would go to a mass-replicator facility. And that kind of stuff I know is complicated even for SD DVD's that we have NOW.
But my particular issue, and sorry for me bringing it up so often, is that the BD media looks great as a way to master things like High Def commercials, PSA's, VNR's and similar promo material, to archive on a shelf as well as to send to a broadcaster that's not reachable with an FTP solution, or for some reason wants physical media. To my way of thinking, BD HAS to be a cheaper and more efficient method than using (very!) expensive HD tape decks to move and distribute HD broadcast media. So, the needs for a person like me, who is making specialized product for airing on TV stations and cable networks, are very much simpler than someone authoring full-blown feature-filled and navigable BD titles for the consumer and industrial markets and mega-large duplication runs. I just need my gorram HD spots to play thru or be readable for transfer to a station's server, period. And I want to simply lay off HD programming to a BD disk, burn 20 or 50 copies in a BD capable Bravo printer, put a master BD disk on a shelf, and forget about it for a year or two, until someone needs it again. That's about as simple as one could ask for.
For me, for my needs, I can afford to wait for a fully developed HD BD authoring tool for the mac. But I am DYING right now for that simpler utility I mentioned. If I have to buy Toast I will. This method might make an interesting tutorial online or for the magazine, actually. "Simple offline HD archiving and linear playback distribution on BD for the mac... without making you nuts".
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by walter biscardi on Aug 27, 2008 at 10:11:49 pm
[Mark Suszko]"Walter and the rest of you seem to mostly be thinking about fully-authored interactive BD titles, stuff for public release to the consumer, things that would go to a mass-replicator facility. And that kind of stuff I know is complicated even for SD DVD's that we have NOW. "
No, all I'm talking about is a static Main Menu and a static Chapter Menu. Encore can't even do that.
[Mark Suszko]"And I want to simply lay off HD programming to a BD disk, burn 20 or 50 copies in a BD capable Bravo printer, put a master BD disk on a shelf, and forget about it for a year or two, until someone needs it again. That's about as simple as one could ask for. "
Again, Toast to burn the media, then get a Panasonic duplicator like we have. We've run 60 BluRay discs in one day here using the Panasonic duplicator to burn the discs and our FlexWriter IV to print them. Yes, what you're asking is simple and it's something you can achieve right now. Actually we've been using BD-R's for over a year now and one thing we use the BD-R's for is archiving projects.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by walter biscardi on Aug 28, 2008 at 12:07:49 am
[Mark Suszko]"So, any chance of a COW tutorial or podcast how-to for doing it?
Outlining the workflow and any particular settings, I mean? "
You mean for archiving material? Just export a self contained Quicktime from your timeline, Launch Toast, drag the quicktime to Toast and burn using the Data setting. Be sure you have your BluRay burner selected for burning.
If you mean archiving your final video to BluRay and then being able to bring that back, no I would not recommend that. You're still saving a re-compressed file that is degraded file from the HD original. I said the resulting BluRay "looks" identical to our HD originals, but of course it's not. It's been recompressed and i would not want to have to convert that MPEG-2 to Quicktime for further editing.
Actually just for that, Toast will probably work fine. Compress in Compressor and burn using Toast's bluray settings. But again, I would not recommend the BluRay format itself as an archive format. I would still archive the Quicktime movie in the original HD codec.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by Jeremy Garchow on Aug 28, 2008 at 2:01:56 am
Damn, I wish HDDVD would have won. So. Much. Easier.
You can do it right now, as a matter of fact, in DVDSP on red laser discs, the only thing that was missing was blue laser HD DVD burners for macs.
Oh well...I digress.
I am usually not too much of a pessimist, but I don't see DVDSP being updated anytime soon either. I would imagine it's hovering around the middle of the FCS 'to do' list.
Although remember DVDSP v1? Wow, what a nightmare that was. It was also very expensive to get anything duplicated in any amount of quantity. I remember our first big dupe run we had to get 1000 discs made (and pay for all of them including the slop) even though we only needed 450. It has come a long way and perhaps BluRay for all video production will too. The war officially ended about 6 months ago, that's not that long.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by walter biscardi on Aug 28, 2008 at 2:05:26 am
[Jeremy Garchow]"I am usually not too much of a pessimist, but I don't see DVDSP being updated anytime soon either. I would imagine it's hovering around the middle of the FCS 'to do' list. "
I honestly hope Apple learns from Adobe and what happens when you rush headlong into something you really don't understand just to be first. Adobe clearly wanted to be the first low cost BluRay authoring solution. They got that distinction, but they delivered an utter piece of crap.
NetBlender has a really nice solution and at $250/month license, it's something that i can easily afford. A typical BluRay disc takes about 2 or 3 days to author and thoroughly test. So figure 20 business days per month we could conceivably author 10 titles in one month. That will easily make up the $250/month fee and earn us a nice profit.
AND with any luck we'll have really nicely authored discs starting next month.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by Paul Dickin on Aug 28, 2008 at 12:25:56 pm
[walter biscardi]"You have to buy Premiere anyway ...so as long as Premiere works," Hi
It doesn't - certainly for PAL/50Hz users in the UK :-(
May 2008
Dear Ms. XXXX,
Premiere Pro and Encore CS3 were never tested on an Apple 8 core processor system, as that processor was not available to Adobe for testing before the release of the product. As a quick check for us to know how do Premiere Pro and Encore deal with your system information, please open Encore CS3 and under the Help menu, click on System Info, what does it say in there?
If you need any other Technical assistance, please feel free to contact us again.
Re: Encore & Blue Ray on the Mac by Mitch Ives on Aug 28, 2008 at 1:51:25 pm
[Paul Dickin]"May 2008
Dear Ms. XXXX,
Premiere Pro and Encore CS3 were never tested on an Apple 8 core processor system, as that processor was not available to Adobe for testing before the release of the product. As a quick check for us to know how do Premiere Pro and Encore deal with your system information, please open Encore CS3 and under the Help menu, click on System Info, what does it say in there?
If you need any other Technical assistance, please feel free to contact us again. "
Well, that sort of confirms the experiences of people like Walter and myself. What was it they used to say about odd kids in school... "they're special". Well, I guess the 8-core is "special".
FWIW, we've had problems here as well. Most of the companies don't have an 8-core machine to test on, and when they do, it's a 2007 model, whose architecture is completely different...
