Tips on Using Apple Compressor: if the source file name contains L-R-C-LFE-Ls-Rs or any of the surround naming conventions used by Compressor, it will automatically recognize the file as a Surround Group instead of say a WAV multichannel.
This is wrong and will yield to bad results. Make sure to name the source file accordingly.
Basically it's a useless feature and does not work properly in Encore for Blu-ray. I tried everything and I cannot have it loop seamlessly, even less correctly. No matter what I try it truncates the beginning of the music/audio, or it puts an interminable silence at the end of the music.
The solution: DO NOT USE IT! It is much better, less aggravating, seamless and accurate to just set the loop to NONE always. If a menu needs to loop, just make it point at itself in the End Action. That's it.
More about this snafu here.
Be super wary of Adobe Encore's Replace Asset function.
It is very handy when switching asset, without the need to redo everything you've done with it.
There is a huge gotcha though, if the asset is of a different length for example, Encore still thinks the new asset is the old length.
Not good for looped menus with music. If the Music is 30sec. and you replace it with a 40sec. music, the loop is still stuck at 30sec. If you manually change it to 40, the image is cut short 10sec.!
The right way to do this is to relink/reload the new music in the Motion Menu Panel. Encore will register the new length and all is good.
Another troubleshooting of Encore this time with BD. Preview works great, everything is just fine. Build the project, open with BD player and... NO BUTTONS visible. No selection, no highlight...
The bug is in the Menu Color Setting. Anything that's not Automatic or 100% opacity does not work. Here is an Adobe forum page about it.
Now, another thing that might turn off the highlight color is "Export Highlights in Rich Color." If that's turned on, turn it off. Make sure each menu page has this option turned off. Encore will preview it correctly but the option sometimes is sticky and hard to get off of it. Select all Menus and turn it on and off a few times, then do it one Menu at a time.
Also, forget using an app the likes of Leawo for playing/checking Blu-ray packages on your Mac. It's not accurate and will make you doubt your build is correct.
For example: at the end of a menu the app stops everything. Not the case with a burned disc played in a set top Blu-ray player.
The app just becomes irresponsive and does not show any buttons with a looped menu that has background music. It will be fine on a burned disc played back in a regular Blu-ray player.
The buttons are not positioned properly. Not to worry, it will be fine again when played back from a disc on a set top player.
Another cryptic message by Encore CS6.
"frame values not permitted by indicated format".
As it happens the culprit in my case is the caption file.
The film asset is 23.98, Encore conforms the timeline to the asset.
The caption file (.scc) works fine with a 29.97 Timeline and asset, but it generates the error on a 23.98 Timeline/asset.
Fix: I imported the .scc into Annotation Edit set to 23.98 and exported it to .scc. The roundtrip worke, the exported file did not generate the error.
When you have an image embedded into a Photoshop project as Smart Object and you have resized it and done some work on it. How to swap for another image all the while keeping the work you've done?
Easy: Select the smart object/layer, in the Menu, go to Layer, Smart Object, Replace Contents and Select the new image.
That's it! And it's powerful. That's particularly handy when doing BD or DVD chapter menu pages with thumbnails.
I was ready to build my project when Encore flashed the following error:
What a mouthful! I Google the whole thing and it looks like there are a few different things that can generate the error. This eehelp forum posts from god knows when was helpful in putting me on the right track.
As it happened the culprit was an end marker too close to the end of the movie/file.
Moving the marker back one notch and the build flew right through.
