Work arounds for Encore CS5 broken video menu backgrounds

[wmw]

Hi,

Work has given me the task of building a BluRay show reel, so with a copy of CS5 I built a pretty basic but good looking disc with one problem.

Encore is transcoding the video (as MPEG2 even though the disc is h.264) for the main menu background incorrectly (wrong frame rate?) so on playback the menu video stutters, all other videos are fine. The menu m2ts file stutters in vlc which is reporting a 48fps. I've reported this to Adobe but I don't think a fix will be out any time soon.

So I'm looking for a way to replace the broken video.

I've tried using multiAVCHD to open the disc image, replace the menu stream with a h264 version and save a new disc image. But the new disc has lost the menu, it just loads the new menu video without any of the buttons.

BDedit shows the menu stream has been replaced but it has also lost it's 'IG' layer.

So any advice? Can it even be done? Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks in advance.

wmw

[chompy]

You have to force Encore CS5 to out-mux the IG layer, I know it can be done as I did some tests long time ago, but I don't remember how I did it. Then you only have to change the m2ts file with the background video, its clpi and with BDEdit change in the STN table of its corresponding playlist the video format from MPEG2 to the AVC.

Greetings

[wmw]

Cool, thanks.

I've not found any obvious ways to get Encore to out-mux the IG layer yet. I'll keep digging.

Thanks again.

[chompy]

If my mind isn't fooling me, there wasn't an option to in or out mux the IG layer... By default it uses in-mux, but in some compilations it uses out-mux (maybe it was when creating a blu-ray project with multi-page menus, but I cannot assure it).

Greetings

[wmw]

Ok, by out-mux do you mean it adds a separate IG stream for the menu? I'm using a multi-page menu for both the front and the pop-up menus and only the video steams with pop-ups seem to add an extra (very small) IG stream.

Maybe I could use a normal video with a pop-up as the main menu. Hmm, can you force the pop-up to always be on?

Thanks again.

[chompy]

Out-mux is when the IG stream is generated in another m2ts file outside video m2ts, and in-mux is when the IG stream is in the same m2ts as the background video.

The way to link the out-mux IG stream is using a SubPath (IG menu) in the playlist containing the background video.

Greetings

[alluringreality]

Here was my general process for changing the mpeg2 menus from Encore to AVC when I was trying to convert the HDMV to AVCHD http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1430422#post1430422

Much of this has already been commented, but my thoughts are:
- I know Encore CS5 creates out-of-mux menus for my 1080p multi-page menus
- I think you have to use a static image for the menu in Encore to have multi-page menus
- My best guess is that if you create a multi-page menu using a static background image in Encore, you should get an out-of-mux menu background that you can replace with either multiAVCHD or BDedit

Edit: I skimmed the manual again, and it actually it says "Animated buttons are not supported by multi-page menus." Anyway, all I know is that it's possible to replace the background image (m2ts file) and keep the controls in the multi-page menus from CS5. All my CS5 menus I've looked at were multi-page, so I didn't even know that CS5 still created in-mux menus like used in CS4.

[wmw]

Cool, thanks.

I think I have a clean and simply fix that will work for me. Not fully tested it yet so not 100% sure how reliable it is.

You can edit Encores tmp files and it's media list xml to point to a h.264 version of the background video so when you build the disc again it will use it instead.

[alluringreality]

I did a quick change to the Encore ProjectMedia.acx file for the filename, size, and codec. It seems to play fine on PowerDVD and TotalMedia. I haven't decided which way I'm going to go with my half-finished AVCHD compatible authoring, but thanks for the update.

[wmw]

Done some testing any it's working well for me.

Updating the ProjectMedia.acx to point to the working h.264 file is working great.

[drelin]

Done some testing any it's working well for me.

Updating the ProjectMedia.acx to point to the working h.264 file is working great.

Hello,

I search a solution with the same problem with the mpeg2 menu stream created by encore CS5
Can you explain with more details the steps for the update of ProjectMedia.acx because each time I'de try to modify the file and start compilation, Encore not use the the h264 file and recreate a mpeg2 file for the m2ts menu stream

Thank a lot for your help

[wmw]

Sorry for the wait, been on holiday.

Lets see if I can remember all the steps.

1. Wire up the BluRay.

2. Build the disc at least once.
This will make all the tmp media. Look in <project>/Sources/Menus/ and you will see the m2v file used for the background. This is the file we want to replace.

3. Save and close Encore.

4. Encode the background video as a m4v using Media Encoder.

5. Open <project>/ProjectMedia.acx and search for the m2v file.

6. Edit following PhysicalMedia data
a. 'file' to point to the m4v file.
b. 'size' to match the new m4v file size.
c. 'codec' to be "H.264".

7. Save the file.

8. Reopen the project and rebuild the disc. Fingers crossed it should now use the h.264 file.


I have noticed that Encode likes to randomly delete and change it's mind about cached files. So be aware that the edits you make may revert back with little warning. You may also find you need to manually delete the <project>/AuthorScriptHDMVSessions dir.