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Encore 1.5
Adobe, $549
DVD
Authoring Tool
| DV Score: |  |
| Pros: | A quick study for Adobe users. Impressive integration with After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop. Playlist feature simplifies many authoring tasks. Can disable certain remote control buttons. |
| Cons: | Lacks some advanced features, such as multiangle and scripting capabilities. UOP feature not fully implemented. Dolby encoder lacks metadata settings. Can get a little bogged down when using very large files, though multiprocessor machines help. Windows only. |
| Bottom Line | A very good choice for Adobe users who work on the Windows platform, but not ideal for high-volume retail title work. Price is competitive with other Windows DVD apps. |
There may be some true tech geeks out there who are looking for a radically new way to author DVDs. However, many people in the video production industry like to stay in their comfort zone, especially if they haven't made a DVD before. If you are in the latter group, Adobe's latest offering could be the right choice for you. The Windows-only Encore 1.5 (http://www.adobe.com/) has a familiar user interface, offering basic Photoshop and Premiere functionality.
Like other midlevel DVD authoring programs, Encore gives you the tools to create custom menus and buttons, and then link them to imported video and audio assets. But Encore doesn't force you to work in a linear fashion. At any point in the authoring process, you can start an encode task and go back to creating a menu or building a timeline, even as the encoding runs in the background. You can put in placeholders for menus or video clips, and replace them with final versions when they're available. Or you can start without any video clips at all and just work on menus until you're ready to move on.
The Project window is where you start each new DVD. It lists all of the assets used in the project, whether they are files made elsewhere and imported into Encore or elements created in the program, such as menus and timelines. Similar to how you use bins in an NLE, you can create folders within the Project window to organize your assets. Besides organization, the Project window allows you to check links, view encode status, and verify bitrates and durations of all assets.
Timelines in Encore look like timelines in most NLEs. You get one video track plus multiple audio and subtitle tracks to play with. There's a time scale showing where you are in each clip. You can trim clips on the timeline and add chapter points and subtitles.
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| A look at Encore previewing a motion menu. Notice the Properties palette displaying the menu loop parameters, and the Layers palette lighting naming system. (Image used by permission:copyright CAPCOM, Shogakukan, ShoPro, TV Tokyo 2002, 2004 All Rights Reserved.) |
The Menu Editor is a customized version of Photoshop that's been streamlined for DVD menu design. With the accompanying palette feature, you can bring in stock elements from Encore's library or import your own images in various file formats, including Photoshop files. If you start with Photoshop, all of your work seamlessly carries over into Encore. At that point, you can reorder layers, reposition objects within layers, or add text or canned layer effects (known as Styles within Encore). You can't really create any elements other than text from scratch; there are no brushes, paths, or marquees in Encore. If you're already using Photoshop, you'll want to continue using it for making DVDs in Encore. You'll find that Photoshop is the ideal companion tool for authoring with Encore.
The Property window is a contextual menu that's similar to the inspector windows found in other apps. It varies its function depending upon whether you're working on a timeline, a menu, or a button. If you're working on a button, you can set links in the Property window. If you're on a timeline, you can set an end action to determine what happens after the timeline finishes playing. You can also set overall disc properties in this window.
Before you burn your disc, the Project Checker checks for authoring errors, such as unlinked or orphaned menus or timelines.
When you're ready to burn a disc, you can easily invoke the Build menu with a single button press. If there are any outstanding errors, the Build menu will warn you and give you a chance to correct them.
I ran Encore through its paces, spending most of the first day learning it. There are a couple of easy-to-follow books about Encore, including the Visual Quickstart Guide and the Adobe Encore Classroom in a Book. The supplied user guide comes with tutorials and is a good reference.
On the second day, I ran my usual DVD authoring application test: creating a simple anime title. I imported a Main menu, a Chapter menu, and a Language Setup menu. The video assets consisted of one half-hour episode from Japanese TV, along with two language tracks and a subtitle track made by a service bureau. After I brought the English soundtrack into Encore's timeline, I noticed it was out of sync by a few frames. Luckily, I was able to nudge the sound relative to picture using Encore 1.5's new track slipping feature. It took me about 2 hours to put the title all together and another 15 minutes to burn a DVD-R.
The only problem I ran into during this first test was with subtitles. If you need to crank out a large volume of them continually, you will probably need to hire a service bureau. Typically you give a service bureau a transcript and a reference videotape or MPEG-1 file to work from. When it's finished, you get back a subtitle script that lists each subtitle by its timecode position in the video program. With Encore, if the timecode starts with anything other than hour zero, you'll need to apply a negative offset to get your subtitles to sync up. Once you figure out what this offset is, you'll be fine.
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| Encore's Project Checker looks for authoring errors. In this example, three menu buttons are not linked to anything in the project. |
After getting over the hump with the first anime project, I tested the motion menu features. I imported a video clip into Encore's Project window, then dragged and dropped it into the Menu Editor, and I instantly had a motion menu. Using the Properties palette, I set a loop point, so that when the viewers first play the menu, they see an intro animation that builds the elements of the menu onto the screen.
After the menu reaches its end point, it repeats from the loop point and skips the intro section. Usually you don't want the users to access buttons during a menu intro animation. The Properties palette allows you to disable buttons and make their highlights invisible until the intro section has finished playing.
I found that Encore doesn't give you a simple way to control what happens when the user presses the Menu button and returns to a looping motion menu. The default behavior in this case is for the menu to start at the intro, instead of skipping past it to the loop point. You can work around this by creating another version of the menu that lacks the intro section.
After this point, I needed to make the buttons. I grabbed a target-shaped object from Encore's Library palette, then used the Convert To Button feature to make it a button. If you want true custom buttons, you need to do that in Photoshop. The trick is that you have to follow Adobe's naming conventions. Button layers must be denoted with a +, while button highlights must be named with an equal sign followed by a number from 1 to 3 (=1). The numbers refer to one of the three colors you can simultaneously display for each highlight. If you want a thumbnail from a video clip, use the percent symbol enclosed by parentheses (%).
I was on a roll by this point, so I created a third test project. This one incorporated an hour-long documentary edited with Avid Xpress DV and exported as a QuickTime DV file. I used Encore's Library feature to quickly create and modify prebuilt Main and Chapter menus. I made motion video thumbnails simply by dragging and dropping video clips onto the Chapter menu's buttons in the Menu Editor. Then I checked the Animate Buttons check box in the menu's Properties palette, otherwise I would have had static thumbnails.
This last project would have come together very quickly, if not for the fact that Encore forced me to transcode the QuickTime movie upon import. I got a message saying, "File is an unsupported QuickTime format and needs to be transcoded immediately. Choose a preset below." I followed the instructions and it took about 2 hours to convert a 1-hour QuickTime DV movie to MPEG-2. Once the encoding and authoring was finished, building the disc image took only 3 minutes and burning the disc itself took about 15 minutes. The DVD file size was 3.7 GB, out of a possible 4.7 GB.
If you like Adobe's Video Collection software, you probably feel that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Before you start planning a new DVD with Encore, Adobe gently steers you to create most of its elements with the collection's other programs: After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and the new Adobe Audition sound editing application. After you've created these elements, the tight integration between the programs has additional benefits. For example, after importing a Premiere Pro clip into Encore, you can modify it in Premiere and see the changes automatically reflected in Encore.
There are other options. Apple, Pinnacle Systems, Sonic Solutions, and Ulead all make worthwhile DVD authoring programs. Ulead's DVD Workshop 2 (July '04 DV), has many similar capabilities to Encore and a similar price. Ulead has its own suite of asset creation software that integrates well with DVD Workshop.
You may want to consider Apple's $499 DVD Studio Pro 3 if you work on the Mac. Some of its advanced features include multiangle capability, strong support for service bureau subtitles, and comprehensive User Operation controls. With eight variables (called GPRMs) and the ability to poll a DVD player's system parameters, DVD Studio Pro has very powerful, precise control of the user's experience of a DVD.
But in the end, if you're already a Photoshop user, prefer to work on the Windows platform, and don't need to dive into the intricacies of DVD authoring, Encore is an excellent choice. Encore costs $299 for Apple, Sonic, or Ulead users who take advantage of Adobe's competitive upgrade (see http://www.adobe.com/ for details); standard upgrades from Adobe Encore 1.0 are $99.
With Encore, you'll be up and running in a few hours and within a day, you will have explored all of its nooks and crannies. Then you can go ahead and make simple to moderately elaborate DVDs quickly and efficiently. Not too shabby, indeed.
| Encore 1.5 | |
| System Requirements: | Pentium III 800 MHz; Windows XP Home or Professional; 256 MB RAM; 10 GB drive space for full install. Recommended: multiprocessor Pentium 4 with dual monitors, or a single 19-inch monitor. |
David O. Weissman is the general manager of Video Arts, a digital video and interactive design company based in San Francisco.