Recently we were attempting to build a DVD with Adobe Encore CS3.  Due to Encore's oddities, it took two days to figure out how to do it.  We look forward to the day when Adobe's video editing software will reach the same caliber as its industry standard Photoshop.  Perhaps at this point mentioning "I use Premiere" at a professionals' meeting won't be met with stifled giggling.

Until then, here's how we solved two most notable quirks.  The first was an error message that occurred upon build that went along the lines of: PGC "xxxx" has an error at xx:xx:xx:xy internal software error : %0, line xxxx - PGCINFO: name= xxxx, ref=BPGC, time=xx:xx:xx:xy

This error referenced a point on the timeline approximately one second from the end of the clip.  The last second wasn't significant so we simply trimmed the last second from the clip.  The error then referenced a point on the timeline TWO seconds from the end of the clip.  This was frustrating.


Google produced a great deal of posts from all kinds of forums with people having this issue.  At least we weren't alone.  Unfortunately, there seemed to be many causes of the error, and equally as many solutions.  And there were some people who couldn't reproduce the error if they tried.  The cause of the problem for us was that Encore was not able to build a DVD with files it had transcoded.  (!?) We solved this by using SUPER and MEncoder with the following settings: mpg / MPEG-II / AC3 / 720x480 / 16:9 / 29.97 / 7776kbps / 48000 / 2 / 192kbps.

This created another problem.  The error was: The aspect ratio of this file is not supported by DVD. As it turned out, we could use the Interpret Footage feature to select any aspect ratio except 16:9.  Cleverly, we configured SUPER to encode the footage as 4:3 instead.  Only then did Encore allow us to interpret the footage as 16:9.

We file these solutions under the category "simple but strange".

We edit this post to add two more quirks.

We finally got our DVD to build.  But then, we discovered that the timelines were all in the wrong order.  The Adobe Forums tell us that timelines are written to the disc in the order in which they were created.  And, there is no way to change that.  You had better create the timelines in the proper order the first time, because if you don't, you're going to be deleting and rebuilding them.

Okay.  Idiotic, but we can do that.

But wait!  You can't copy and paste assets into the new timelines!  All Adobe has to say is "This behaviour differs from Encore 2.0."  Fortunately, we discovered that you can copy and paste entire timelines so that after that, all we needed to do was reconfigure our buttons.  However on the third day of what should have been a 20 minute project, Mango feels compelled to add the following:

ADOBE ENCORE CS3 IS A STUPID PIECE OF OVERPRICED CODED BY INCOMPETENT PROGRAMMERS WITH GARBAGE FOR BRAINS.

!!

We note that Adobe is not helping Mango's resolution to quit swearing.