| Author |
Message |
Robert Roland
Guest
|
 Posted:
Sat Oct 30, 2004 5:58 pm Post subject:
Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
I have been trying out Adobe's Encore DVD 1.5 for a while. I even
cheated to get a longer trial period to see if I might learn to deal
with the problems. I have to say: If I had blown 500 bucks on this
thing, I'd feel seriously swindled. A quick search on Ebay shows
several copies for sale, with prices as low as 100 bucks. I am
apparently not the only unhappy user.
What I have been trying to do, is to take digital recordings from a
satellite TV transmission and put them onto DVDs. Should be dead easy,
and with "TMPGEnc DVD Author" it actually IS dead easy. Problem is, it
does not support subtitles or multiple audio tracks.
Many of my recordings are in a resolution of 352x576. As far as I have
been able to find out, this resolution is officially DVD compliant,
and every DVD player must be able to play this resolution. TMPGEnc DVD
Author will happily work with these files, and my dirt cheap DVD
player will play them perfectly fine, so I think I am right. Encore,
however, will tell me "Could not import <filename>. Video files for
this project must have a resolution of 720x576 or 704x576.". It seems
to me, Encore only supports half of the official DVD resolutions. Can
this really be true for such a high end product??
The subtitles from a TV recording are in text format. Encore can
import text based subtitles, but instead of using one of the existing
and established formats, Adobe had to create their own format. Not a
big problem in itself, but there's more: The format is defined so that
if a subtitle contains two lines of text (as most do), and the second
line starts with a digit, Encore declares the file corrupt and refuses
to import it.
Then there's the user interface. When something goes wrong or is
unallowed, you never get to know what went wrong or why something is
not allowed. While creating the disc, I could get an error message
like "DVD error -1. Unable to continue.". How helpful. Sometimes when
I import a video asset, Encore insists it needs transcoding. The
"Don't transcode" option is grayed out, but I get no clue WHY. I
suspect it has to do with video bitrate. If so, the limit is somewhere
near 8 Mbps. The DVD standard, however, allows 9.8 Mbps.
On top of these inherent design problems, the application hangs
spectacularly often. So far, I have been unable to finish a single
project without at least two or three spontaneous hangs. Sometimes, it
will even hang while simply closing the application. If this happens,
it will sometimes also cause the Explorer window from which I dragged
the assets to hang. The GUI disappears and the programs appears
closed, but remains as a process in Task Manager. When I kill the
process, the Explorer windows comes back to life.
I am really keeping my hopes up for DVD Lab Pro.
Are there any other alternatives I should take a look at?
--
RoRo
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 |
Robert Roland
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Oct 30, 2004 6:44 pm Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
One more thing: Whenever the program works with something CPU
intensive and time consuming (which is quite often, of course), the
application appears to be crashed. No hourglass cursor, the
application window does not redraw, and Task Manager shows the program
as "not responding". This is sloppy work. No excuse.
--
RoRo |
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Papageno
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Oct 30, 2004 11:43 pm Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
"Robert Roland" <no.mail@vailable.no> wrote in message
news:c1a7o01hlga575vql30c1it4mdo9800jvt@4ax.com...
| Quote: | One more thing: Whenever the program works with something CPU
intensive and time consuming (which is quite often, of course), the
application appears to be crashed. No hourglass cursor, the
application window does not redraw, and Task Manager shows the program
as "not responding". This is sloppy work. No excuse.
|
Agreed. I gave up on it after the first use. Their older product (Adobe
Premiere) was similarly plagued with bugs.
Adobe does well in the still imaging department (Photoshop), but they're 0
for 2 in video, in my book. |
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Moe Belli
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Oct 31, 2004 1:58 am Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
Actually, Premiere Pro 1.5 is pretty good and so is After Effects and of
course Photoshop.
I tried Encore, seems okay, but have to try it a little longer. Not to
tempted to use it as I'm in love with Ulead DVD Workshop (although it it
a bit buggy as well sometines especially in regards to chapter points).
MB |
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ON2DVD
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Oct 31, 2004 4:41 am Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
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|
There are so many DVD authoring apps that have limitations in one way or
another. I find that to cover my bases I need to have 3 or 4 different
authoring apps OR Sonic Scenarist (if only). Some programs crash more often
than others (Encore) but have more features. My biggest gripe about DVD
authoring applications is that they are all going down the lines of treating
users like dummy's. By that I mean, they are putting encoders and fancy
templates, video capture etc into their app and taking away the need for
users to think for themselves or learn new techniques to make proper DVD's
from the ground up and learning the real process. All of these additions is
why they creash so often.
For reliability on the PC, I always go back to SONIC ReelDVD! But alas, no
dual layer support and no multiple titles, there seems no future for that
product either.
"Robert Roland" <no.mail@vailable.no> wrote in message
news:aq57o0tn6fcm96e4is3u35s2t0p6icju68@4ax.com...
| Quote: | I have been trying out Adobe's Encore DVD 1.5 for a while. I even
cheated to get a longer trial period to see if I might learn to deal
with the problems. I have to say: If I had blown 500 bucks on this
thing, I'd feel seriously swindled. A quick search on Ebay shows
several copies for sale, with prices as low as 100 bucks. I am
apparently not the only unhappy user.
What I have been trying to do, is to take digital recordings from a
satellite TV transmission and put them onto DVDs. Should be dead easy,
and with "TMPGEnc DVD Author" it actually IS dead easy. Problem is, it
does not support subtitles or multiple audio tracks.
Many of my recordings are in a resolution of 352x576. As far as I have
been able to find out, this resolution is officially DVD compliant,
and every DVD player must be able to play this resolution. TMPGEnc DVD
Author will happily work with these files, and my dirt cheap DVD
player will play them perfectly fine, so I think I am right. Encore,
however, will tell me "Could not import <filename>. Video files for
this project must have a resolution of 720x576 or 704x576.". It seems
to me, Encore only supports half of the official DVD resolutions. Can
this really be true for such a high end product??
The subtitles from a TV recording are in text format. Encore can
import text based subtitles, but instead of using one of the existing
and established formats, Adobe had to create their own format. Not a
big problem in itself, but there's more: The format is defined so that
if a subtitle contains two lines of text (as most do), and the second
line starts with a digit, Encore declares the file corrupt and refuses
to import it.
Then there's the user interface. When something goes wrong or is
unallowed, you never get to know what went wrong or why something is
not allowed. While creating the disc, I could get an error message
like "DVD error -1. Unable to continue.". How helpful. Sometimes when
I import a video asset, Encore insists it needs transcoding. The
"Don't transcode" option is grayed out, but I get no clue WHY. I
suspect it has to do with video bitrate. If so, the limit is somewhere
near 8 Mbps. The DVD standard, however, allows 9.8 Mbps.
On top of these inherent design problems, the application hangs
spectacularly often. So far, I have been unable to finish a single
project without at least two or three spontaneous hangs. Sometimes, it
will even hang while simply closing the application. If this happens,
it will sometimes also cause the Explorer window from which I dragged
the assets to hang. The GUI disappears and the programs appears
closed, but remains as a process in Task Manager. When I kill the
process, the Explorer windows comes back to life.
I am really keeping my hopes up for DVD Lab Pro.
Are there any other alternatives I should take a look at?
--
RoRo |
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| Back to top |
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Starz_Kid
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Oct 31, 2004 4:46 am Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? <=-=-=-=-<< Yes... So |
|
|
"Robert Roland" <no.mail@vailable.no> wrote in message
news:aq57o0tn6fcm96e4is3u35s2t0p6icju68@4ax.com...
| Quote: | I have been trying out Adobe's Encore DVD 1.5 for a while. I even
cheated to get a longer trial period to see if I might learn to deal
with the problems. I have to say: If I had blown 500 bucks on this
thing, I'd feel seriously swindled. A quick search on Ebay shows
several copies for sale, with prices as low as 100 bucks. I am
apparently not the only unhappy user.
What I have been trying to do, is to take digital recordings from a
satellite TV transmission and put them onto DVDs. Should be dead easy,
and with "TMPGEnc DVD Author" it actually IS dead easy. Problem is, it
does not support subtitles or multiple audio tracks.
Many of my recordings are in a resolution of 352x576. As far as I have
been able to find out, this resolution is officially DVD compliant,
and every DVD player must be able to play this resolution. TMPGEnc DVD
Author will happily work with these files, and my dirt cheap DVD
player will play them perfectly fine, so I think I am right. Encore,
however, will tell me "Could not import <filename>. Video files for
this project must have a resolution of 720x576 or 704x576.". It seems
to me, Encore only supports half of the official DVD resolutions. Can
this really be true for such a high end product??
The subtitles from a TV recording are in text format. Encore can
import text based subtitles, but instead of using one of the existing
and established formats, Adobe had to create their own format. Not a
big problem in itself, but there's more: The format is defined so that
if a subtitle contains two lines of text (as most do), and the second
line starts with a digit, Encore declares the file corrupt and refuses
to import it.
Then there's the user interface. When something goes wrong or is
unallowed, you never get to know what went wrong or why something is
not allowed. While creating the disc, I could get an error message
like "DVD error -1. Unable to continue.". How helpful. Sometimes when
I import a video asset, Encore insists it needs transcoding. The
"Don't transcode" option is grayed out, but I get no clue WHY. I
suspect it has to do with video bitrate. If so, the limit is somewhere
near 8 Mbps. The DVD standard, however, allows 9.8 Mbps.
On top of these inherent design problems, the application hangs
spectacularly often. So far, I have been unable to finish a single
project without at least two or three spontaneous hangs. Sometimes, it
will even hang while simply closing the application. If this happens,
it will sometimes also cause the Explorer window from which I dragged
the assets to hang. The GUI disappears and the programs appears
closed, but remains as a process in Task Manager. When I kill the
process, the Explorer windows comes back to life.
I am really keeping my hopes up for DVD Lab Pro.
Are there any other alternatives I should take a look at?
--
RoRo
|
Hello Ro Ro, Actually DVDit version 5 by Sonic Solutions if Far, Far, Far
worse...!!!
Starz_Kid... |
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| Back to top |
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John
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Oct 31, 2004 5:21 pm Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? <=-=-=-=-<< Yes... So |
|
|
"Starz_Kid" <Starz_Kid@invalid.net> wrote in message news:<kBWgd.4181$cI.1775@fe70.usenetserver.com>...
| Quote: | "Robert Roland" <no.mail@vailable.no> wrote in message
news:aq57o0tn6fcm96e4is3u35s2t0p6icju68@4ax.com...
I have been trying out Adobe's Encore DVD 1.5 for a while. I even
cheated to get a longer trial period to see if I might learn to deal
with the problems. I have to say: If I had blown 500 bucks on this
thing, I'd feel seriously swindled. A quick search on Ebay shows
several copies for sale, with prices as low as 100 bucks. I am
apparently not the only unhappy user.
What I have been trying to do, is to take digital recordings from a
satellite TV transmission and put them onto DVDs. Should be dead easy,
and with "TMPGEnc DVD Author" it actually IS dead easy. Problem is, it
does not support subtitles or multiple audio tracks.
Many of my recordings are in a resolution of 352x576. As far as I have
been able to find out, this resolution is officially DVD compliant,
and every DVD player must be able to play this resolution. TMPGEnc DVD
Author will happily work with these files, and my dirt cheap DVD
player will play them perfectly fine, so I think I am right. Encore,
however, will tell me "Could not import <filename>. Video files for
this project must have a resolution of 720x576 or 704x576.". It seems
to me, Encore only supports half of the official DVD resolutions. Can
this really be true for such a high end product??
The subtitles from a TV recording are in text format. Encore can
import text based subtitles, but instead of using one of the existing
and established formats, Adobe had to create their own format. Not a
big problem in itself, but there's more: The format is defined so that
if a subtitle contains two lines of text (as most do), and the second
line starts with a digit, Encore declares the file corrupt and refuses
to import it.
Then there's the user interface. When something goes wrong or is
unallowed, you never get to know what went wrong or why something is
not allowed. While creating the disc, I could get an error message
like "DVD error -1. Unable to continue.". How helpful. Sometimes when
I import a video asset, Encore insists it needs transcoding. The
"Don't transcode" option is grayed out, but I get no clue WHY. I
suspect it has to do with video bitrate. If so, the limit is somewhere
near 8 Mbps. The DVD standard, however, allows 9.8 Mbps.
On top of these inherent design problems, the application hangs
spectacularly often. So far, I have been unable to finish a single
project without at least two or three spontaneous hangs. Sometimes, it
will even hang while simply closing the application. If this happens,
it will sometimes also cause the Explorer window from which I dragged
the assets to hang. The GUI disappears and the programs appears
closed, but remains as a process in Task Manager. When I kill the
process, the Explorer windows comes back to life.
I am really keeping my hopes up for DVD Lab Pro.
Are there any other alternatives I should take a look at?
--
RoRo
Hello Ro Ro, Actually DVDit version 5 by Sonic Solutions if Far, Far, Far
worse...!!!
Starz_Kid...
|
And the DVDit version before that (2.5) was even worse than that !!!
I've been using Encore since it came out and have produced over 100
DVD's of incredible quality. The difference is that I am authoring
using my own video and audio original material.
I do agree though - I would never have spent $500 on Encore to record
crap from the TV. :-) |
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Richard
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Oct 31, 2004 7:04 pm Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 13:58:29 GMT, Robert Roland <no.mail@vailable.no>
wrote:
| Quote: | I have been trying out Adobe's Encore DVD 1.5 for a while. I even
cheated to get a longer trial period to see if I might learn to deal
with the problems. I have to say: If I had blown 500 bucks on this
thing, I'd feel seriously swindled. A quick search on Ebay shows
several copies for sale, with prices as low as 100 bucks. I am
apparently not the only unhappy user.
|
Well I never had any problems with Encore. I have made many
(around 50) Dvds with this program (R+, R-, RW+) and I am very happy
with what I got. I must say I only work with my own video from DV
tapes. I never did anything from captured TV.
My DV tapes are imported into Premiere for editing, saved in
DV format with Premiere, then imported as assets into Encore.
Finalized Dvd are very good. |
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Mark
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Oct 31, 2004 8:59 pm Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
| Quote: | Well I never had any problems with Encore. I have made many
(around 50) Dvds with this program (R+, R-, RW+) and I am very happy
with what I got. I must say I only work with my own video from DV
tapes. I never did anything from captured TV.
|
I capture everything I use from TV and I too have never had any problems. Of
course, I don't capture at 352x576, my files never require transcoding
because I encode them correctly the first time, I don't get error messages,
have no need for subtitles and the app has never hung up on me.
So obviously, my perspective is a bit different than the OP.
_______________________________________________
Here's what I do with video:
http://www.onworldsedge.com/21452.html |
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sedum
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Nov 01, 2004 2:07 pm Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 14:44:32 GMT, Robert Roland <no.mail@vailable.no>
wrote:
| Quote: | One more thing: Whenever the program works with something CPU
intensive and time consuming (which is quite often, of course), the
application appears to be crashed. No hourglass cursor, the
application window does not redraw, and Task Manager shows the program
as "not responding". This is sloppy work. No excuse.
|
Two thoughts on your program 'crashing', from a hardware angle.
These video processing programs are very CPU intensive. A quick check
at Task manager will show you the job is probably taking 95% CPU time
which in turn, over time will vastly increase the temperature of the
processor. If your cooling is not sufficient, it is possible the CPU
can give problems like hanging. I've been there myself. If you have a
CPU temperature monitor, see what happens while running Encore.
The other thing is maybe you have a memory problem or not enough of
it.
David |
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luminos
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Nov 01, 2004 2:10 pm Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
"sedum" <sedum@nonsense.com> wrote in message
news:4cubo01he7buomlt25fvfgab632nm3chlq@4ax.com...
| Quote: | On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 14:44:32 GMT, Robert Roland <no.mail@vailable.no
wrote:
One more thing: Whenever the program works with something CPU
intensive and time consuming (which is quite often, of course), the
application appears to be crashed. No hourglass cursor, the
application window does not redraw, and Task Manager shows the program
as "not responding". This is sloppy work. No excuse.
Two thoughts on your program 'crashing', from a hardware angle.
These video processing programs are very CPU intensive. A quick check
at Task manager will show you the job is probably taking 95% CPU time
which in turn, over time will vastly increase the temperature of the
processor. If your cooling is not sufficient, it is possible the CPU
can give problems like hanging. I've been there myself. If you have a
CPU temperature monitor, see what happens while running Encore.
The other thing is maybe you have a memory problem or not enough of
it.
David
|
The question I have is whether the program *should* be so demanding for what
it does. I think it is total bloatware. |
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Robert Roland
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Nov 01, 2004 10:18 pm Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 09:07:01 GMT, sedum <sedum@nonsense.com> wrote:
| Quote: | Two thoughts on your program 'crashing', from a hardware angle.
These video processing programs are very CPU intensive. A quick check
at Task manager will show you the job is probably taking 95% CPU time
which in turn, over time will vastly increase the temperature of the
processor. If your cooling is not sufficient, it is possible the CPU
can give problems like hanging. I've been there myself. If you have a
CPU temperature monitor, see what happens while running Encore.
|
Thanks for your constructive comments, edum.
I am, however, very certain it is not a temperature problem. So far,
Encore has only crashed once or twice while actually transcoding
(which is the really CPU intensive task). I also run CPU intensive
tasks with other applications. I ran a batch of TMPGEnc jobs which
finished just a few minutes ago. The CPU had then been running
continuously at 100% load for nearly 20 hours without any kind of
trouble.
| Quote: | The other thing is maybe you have a memory problem or not enough of
|
It could be. I have 512 MB, which should be enough. If my memory was
bad, it should cause problems with other applications as well.
Granted, Encore is extremely memory hungry, so it might "reach" some
parts of the memory which are rarely used when running other
applications. But memory fault will cause bluescreens and protection
errors as well as hangs.
--
RoRo |
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Some Guy
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Nov 01, 2004 11:15 pm Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
I wanted to like DVD Workshop 2. It had a nice composition screen with
everything I wanted. Problems arose when I fed it a 6.6 GB MPEG file that
was flawless (don't ask; I haven't found a better capture solution than
WinDVR, and it makes huge files for a 1:50 VHS tape). Upon burning a disc,
the audio was horribly out of sync with the video. Unfortunately, I'm too
new to even begin to guess where the real problem lies, but other apps have
not mangled my audio like DVD WS2 has. Also, when I tried to use its
capture ability, it was not very good. Every vertical edge seemed to have
thin knife-cuts in it. I don't know if that was just the preview window
doing that or if the captured video came out that way, but it looked
terrible and other capture apps didn't have that problem, so I didn't waste
any more time on it.
"Moe Belli" <mbelli@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:C8Ugd.43355$rs5.1363410@news20.bellglobal.com...
| Quote: | Actually, Premiere Pro 1.5 is pretty good and so is After Effects and of
course Photoshop.
I tried Encore, seems okay, but have to try it a little longer. Not to
tempted to use it as I'm in love with Ulead DVD Workshop (although it it
a bit buggy as well sometines especially in regards to chapter points).
MB |
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luminos
Guest
|
| Posted:
Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:20 am Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
"Robert Roland" <no.mail@vailable.no> wrote in message
news:1vqco0pf5015iilq503dbvf6bv73ur0u21@4ax.com...
| Quote: | On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 09:07:01 GMT, sedum <sedum@nonsense.com> wrote:
Two thoughts on your program 'crashing', from a hardware angle.
These video processing programs are very CPU intensive. A quick check
at Task manager will show you the job is probably taking 95% CPU time
which in turn, over time will vastly increase the temperature of the
processor. If your cooling is not sufficient, it is possible the CPU
can give problems like hanging. I've been there myself. If you have a
CPU temperature monitor, see what happens while running Encore.
Thanks for your constructive comments, edum.
I am, however, very certain it is not a temperature problem. So far,
Encore has only crashed once or twice while actually transcoding
(which is the really CPU intensive task). I also run CPU intensive
tasks with other applications. I ran a batch of TMPGEnc jobs which
finished just a few minutes ago. The CPU had then been running
continuously at 100% load for nearly 20 hours without any kind of
trouble.
The other thing is maybe you have a memory problem or not enough of
It could be. I have 512 MB, which should be enough. If my memory was
bad, it should cause problems with other applications as well.
Granted, Encore is extremely memory hungry, so it might "reach" some
parts of the memory which are rarely used when running other
applications. But memory fault will cause bluescreens and protection
errors as well as hangs.
--
RoRo
|
It is interesting that the recommended memory is at least 1 gig. |
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Moe Belli
Guest
|
| Posted:
Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:04 pm Post subject:
Re: Adobe Encore; is it useless crap? |
|
|
Some Guy wrote:
| Quote: | I wanted to like DVD Workshop 2. It had a nice composition screen with
everything I wanted. Problems arose when I fed it a 6.6 GB MPEG file that
was flawless (don't ask; I haven't found a better capture solution than
WinDVR, and it makes huge files for a 1:50 VHS tape). Upon burning a disc,
the audio was horribly out of sync with the video. Unfortunately, I'm too
new to even begin to guess where the real problem lies, but other apps have
not mangled my audio like DVD WS2 has. Also, when I tried to use its
capture ability, it was not very good. Every vertical edge seemed to have
thin knife-cuts in it. I don't know if that was just the preview window
doing that or if the captured video came out that way, but it looked
terrible and other capture apps didn't have that problem, so I didn't waste
any more time on it.
|
Well, my path to DVD Workshop is this. I encode MPG2 with Canopus
Procoder directly from the Premiere Pro 1.5 timeline, then I have a
seperate program to encode the audio to AC3, I input all that into DVDWS
and author, then burn with Nero.
No sync issues, no problems (except when inserting chapter points where
DVDWS does tend to be buggy).
I don't like the interface, but you're able to do pretty complex things
with DVDWS quite simply.
MB |
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