Encore CS6 On OSX Mavericks

[IanatCintrexAV]

Mac and Encore CS6 user here. I've been using the last dying version of Encore () on OSX 10.8.5 with no major issues for several months now (yes I know it's technically not supported beyond 10.7.x).

I'm just curious if anyone has tried it on the new Mavericks update yet and if so please post your results here. I may test it myself in the coming weeks and if I do I'll provide an update.

Thanks.

[Stan Jones]

Also, what about Windows 8 or 8.1? I think you said that it's not officially supported, but does it work for those?

Encore CS6 works just fine on my mac running 10.8.5 even though I think I read that it was only supposed to work through 10.7.

The Encore eol faq includes:

Encore CS6 is supported on Microsoft® Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1 (64 bit) and Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7. Please note that Encore CS6 support for future operating system updates or new hardware platforms will not be provided.

Clearly Encore works pretty well beyond those supported os's.

[Isaac_T_]

Hey Guys,

If you're having trouble using Encore in Mavericks, try these.

Encore Crashing on Launch

1. Grab Digital Rebellion's Preference Manager (free).
2. Trash Encore's preferences.
3. Empty your Trash and restart. (If your Trash won't empty, restart, then try again.)
4. Relaunch Encore.
5. If crashing continues, grab OnyX.
6. Repair permissions, then clean system and user caches.
7. Relaunch Encore.

Note: these steps should only happen once, not every time you use Encore.

Encore Crashes Opening an Existing Project

1. Do steps 1-3 above.
2. Create a new Encore project. Doesn't matter if it's DVD or Blu-Ray. Just pick something based on whatever assets you have lying around. Keep the Untitled project default settings.
3. Import an asset or two. (The smaller, the better.) Now, stop. Go to Step 4.
4. Open your existing project. No need to save Untitled.
5. Encore should be fully functional. When you quit, though, it'll be a Force Quit.

Thankfully, these are the only steps you need for regular usage. Creating new projects should be status quo.

Finally, here's a Digital Rebellion article on fixing project corruption. It didn't apply to me, but it might help you.

Unfortunately, we're all in that weird place where discs are dying, but you can't tell your clients, "Haven't you heard? Discs are dead." We have DVD Studio Pro, but it can't do Blu-Ray. The only other pro option would be Scenarist, but... we're not authoring for the Criterion Collection. If any Criterion staff are reading, though, we're available.

[jvalal]

Has anyone discovered another menu making program for macs?  This is ridicuouls that Adobe is not supporting Encore.  Physical media may be going away, but the need to create interactive videos is not disappearing. Especially as people are creating more interactive resumes, etc.

j

[John T Smith]

>ridicuouls that Adobe is not supporting Encore

This is NOT Adobe's fault, or decision... Read reply #8 here for why http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1337952?tstart=0

[jvalal]

@John it is Adobe's fault just as much as Apples.  If adobe wants to keep their software in play they have an obligation to understand how any OS upgrade impacts their software architecture for programs and adjust accordingly. That's why companies like Adobe work closely with MS and hopefully apple in advance of OS releases to ensure things work properly.

[John T Smith]

No this is NOT Adobe's fault, and the link I provided does NOT say Apple is involved in Adobe not being able to update Encore... the company that supplied the "burning core" is no longer in business... Adobe is legally not able to update Encore

If you sell cars but you don't build your own engines, and the company that builds the only engines available goes out of business, you stop selling cars

The software that Adobe licensed was the "engine" that powered Encore... no software engine, no Encore... and this has nothing to do with Apple or Microsoft

[jvalal]

John,

If there was a strong business case for Adobe to acquire the engine they could.  It's bad business that they didn't do one of many things.

1. Include some contingency in the contract if said company went out of business they would have an opportunity to take over the core or code

2. When or if said company was going out of business someone from adobe could have reached out to said company.  If you were going out of business you'd want to leverage any opportunity to generate revenue, even if you were closing your doors.

So in my mind this "issue" could have been avoided with better contracts or simply just common sense.  Someone has that core code and it's not just disappeared.  Adobe just decided not to pursue it.

If you sell cars and the company that you buy engines from is closing their doors AND you want to keep selling those cars you either buy that business, buy the IP, or reverse engineer the engines to work in your car.

Camtasia will do what I need at this time.

[Stan Jones]

The situation is frustrating.

We really just don't know. You are missing that Rovio (the company that we believes now owns the authorcore at issue) is not out of business. They have deliberately stopped selling it. In their view, I suspect they see themselves as helping the world to move along to streaming. I mean the world adapted to no 8-track tapes, right?

Rovio no longer sells the sdk, and it is possible that Adobe's only option was to develop DVD/BD authoring from the ground up. We don't know how much Adobe offered to keep the rights to create a CC version.

I'm not sure which threads you have read, but many of the issues in Mavericks were driven by permissions not being set for adobe programs to be able to write to various folders, and it is my belief (although without enough users reporting), that Encore does still work with Macs. One day that will not be true.

[jvalal]

Hey Stan,

Yep it sure is.  That's fine if people stream, but it seems that Rovio is short-sighted to think that interactivity is going away.  For those of us that don't have HTML,CSS, etc skills, but are utilizing AE for motion graphics, inforgraphics, etc to tell stories I believe that we'll want more interactivity in our videos, not less.

I'm less irritated with the removal of "DVD authoring", because I see what Encore did as more than that.  Guess it's all how you see it.

I haven't been able to get a download of Encore to work yet on Mavericks, but maybe it's just me.

Someone will fill the space if it's needed.

[jvalal]

Any other options in play?

[John T Smith]

>haven't been able to get a download of Encore to work yet on Mavericks

I'm Windows, but some saved links that MAY help

-Mac 10.9.3 workaround https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1489922

-more Mac 10.9.3 https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1491469

-Mac 10.9.3 and CS6 https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1480238

-Enable Mac Root User https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1156604

-more Root User http://forums.adobe.com/thread/879931

-and more root user http://forums.adobe.com/thread/940869?tstart=0

[neil wilkes]

jvalal wrote:

If there was a strong business case for Adobe to acquire the engine they could.  It's bad business that they didn't do one of many things.

1. Include some contingency in the contract if said company went out of business they would have an opportunity to take over the core or code

2. When or if said company was going out of business someone from adobe could have reached out to said company.  If you were going out of business you'd want to leverage any opportunity to generate revenue, even if you were closing your doors.

So in my mind this "issue" could have been avoided with better contracts or simply just common sense.  Someone has that core code and it's not just disappeared.  Adobe just decided not to pursue it.

If you sell cars and the company that you buy engines from is closing their doors AND you want to keep selling those cars you either buy that business, buy the IP, or reverse engineer the engines to work in your car.

Camtasia will do what I need at this time.

Not necessarily true.

If, as I suspect, Rovi killed Sonic to protect their streaming on demand models then they will not let anyone else get the authorcores.

[neil wilkes]

Isaac T. wrote:

Unfortunately, we're all in that weird place where discs are dying, but you can't tell your clients, "Haven't you heard? Discs are dead." We have DVD Studio Pro, but it can't do Blu-Ray. The only other pro option would be Scenarist, but... we're not authoring for the Criterion Collection. If any Criterion staff are reading, though, we're available.

Oh please!

DVD is not dead, discs are not dead - this is all BS from streaming on demand freaks who want to believe this.

Scenarist is no longer available because Rovi (who bought Sonic) seem to have bought it with the sole intention of killing off what they see as competition.

Macs have never been any use for Blu-Ray authoring either as Jobs did not approve of it,. and there were never any of the decent tools available on Mac OS.

Scenarist SD/BD = PC apps.

Sony Blu-Print - PC

Sony DoStudio - PC

Nothing else can create AACS formatted replication masters so unless you have one of those 3 tools, forget replication.

There was an add-on available for Encore to create BDCMF replication folders but if Encore is not running on latest Mac OS it is futile - which starts to beg the question "why update to a new OS that breaks the software you rely on to earn a living?"

[Isaac_T_]

Dipped back into Encore today. (Still works in OS X 10.9.2)

Then I remembered this thread. Saw one response in particular, and thought I would clarify.

First, if you haven't read Neil Wilkes backgrounder on why Encore was end-of-life'd, read it:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/6123689#6123689

Second,

Neil Wilkes wrote:

Oh please!

DVD is not dead, discs are not dead - this is all BS from streaming on demand freaks who want to believe this.

Here's what I've seen in the last 18 months:

• Discs for client proofing - Clients don't wanna wait for an overnight. They want it now. All but replaced by file sharing over services like Dropbox or WeTransfer.
• Discs for final delivery
  • Broadcast - finals are uploaded to a local affiliate's server.
  • Client Projects - the overwhelming majority is distributed on the network – either publicly on YouTube, or privately on an internal network resource.
  • Live events - files are played back digitally from a hardware/software appliance (e.g. PlaybackPro, GrassValley's iDDR Turbo 2, etc.).
    

Discs aren't dead, but they're definitely fading away. Not advocating, just reporting.

Also,

There was an add-on available for Encore to create BDCMF replication folders but if Encore is not running on latest Mac OS it is futile - which starts to beg the question "why update to a new OS that breaks the software you rely on to earn a living?"

But it does run on Mavericks! I just authored and built a DVD 10 minutes ago. Check out my previous post, then do what you gotta do.

Speaking of, Stan Jones can some of these posts be marked as "Answered?"

• https://forums.adobe.com/message/6303293#6303293
• https://forums.adobe.com/message/6202462
  • He cross-posted in the Avid forums too - http://community.avid.com/forums/p/125680/722719.aspx#722719
• https://forums.adobe.com/message/6276500

So - Encore still works. It's still the best authoring solution on OS X. Discs aren't dead, but they're mostly dead.

That's today. Maybe I'll be back after Yosemite's released.

[Stan Jones]

Thanks for the comments and update.

The person who posted the question and a moderator can mark questions as "answered." (I'm not a moderator, if you were asking me to mark them.)

[neil wilkes]

Hey Isaac.

Discs ain't dead, not even mostly dead, and all who advocate dumping replicated media for a streamed on demand model are doing everyone - themselves included - a huge dis-service.

I say again, 33% of households in the UK have no internet access at all.

Even those who do have it tend to have either slow or bandwidth limited connections - and I get fed up with hearing on the news all the time that because I live in West London i am supposed to have this high speed internet & G4? Dream right on - no G4 and no fibre available where I am at all, just twisted copper pair and an absolute maximum downstream of 6Mbps if I am lucky & there are not too many others on a contention ratio I am told by insiders at BT is in the region of 200/1 where they have massively oversold the capacity of the system. Then there are the thousands & thousands who sign up to special deals - again let me quote BT';s "great summer sale" where you have a monthly USAGE limitation (note, usage, not downloads) of just 10Gb/month. Given these days of austerity do you really think many households will have the unrestricted service constant streaming will require? Nope, they will not is the answer and again streaming is another way to bump up your monthly data bills. It is greed driven and nothing else. Moving right along. How much longer do you think the current online anarchy will last? All streaming sites are getting monetized now and sooner or later it always ends up at pay per view, with all "free" content being either seriously limited in scope (NetFlix has less on it now than Sky On Demand does) or else missing altogether. Plus the streamed quality is, let us be quite honest, usually not up to very much.

Replicated content once bought is yours for life. Streamed or downloaded gets you a file that easily corrupts

[Isaac_T_]

Two weeks ago, one my of editors was having trouble with Encore crashing on startup, failing to open existing projects, and stalling on Quit. He also informed me the problem had been there for almost a year. Since Encore never worked for him in Mavericks, he used DVD Studio Pro or used someone else's studio for Encore. The irony? My revival process was born from his trouble with Encore.

Anyway, I went through my trusty revival process, and... Encore continued to crash, fail, and stall.

After a day's worth of work and research, I discovered something: Encore loads MediaCore plugins. Encore wanted to use them, but Encore didn't like them. I removed them, and Encore came back to life.

I only saw this by relaunching Encore after a crash, and watching the output in OS X's Console. I noticed different plugin packages being referenced. One of these was AJA's Adobe plugins. We use these for live previewing After Effects through a client monitor connected to an IoExpress. For whatever reason, Encore tried loading these AJA plugins. I manually removed them, relaunched Encore, and success! No more crashing, failing, or stalling.

(MediaCore plugin path - /Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Plug-in's/CS6/MediaCore)

So if my process doesn't work for you, you're solving the wrong problem. It's OK, I started out solving the wrong problem too! For example, if you see a "Photoshop file error -1" dialog, that's a different problem. Apparently it has something to do with either bad fonts or type rendering when round-tripping with Photoshop. Flatten the type layers (i.e. convert the text to graphics), and you're good to go.

References:

Re: Adobe Encore - Background Video Rendering & 'Photoshop File Error - 1'

OS X 10.9 Mavericks: Will Adobe software work? | conrad chavez | blog

I realize many of you won't read this. You'll post something like videofinest, who apparently hates to read. For these I say,

• Encore CS6 is the last version. It's unsupported. Don't call Apple or Adobe. Google your problem. Read.
• Encore is still the best app for authoring DVD / Blu-Ray affordably.
• Discs are dead. Not "mostly dead", dead.

[Isaac_T_]

Hello Everyone,

Just upgraded from Mavericks (10.9.2) to Yosemite (10.10.2). Didn't do a clean install, just upgraded. Does Encore still work?

Yes, but not right away. I went back to my post (Re: Encore CS6 On OSX Mavericks), performed the steps under "Encore Crashing on Launch", cleared Encore's Media Cache files and database, opened a project from a year ago, BOOM – ready to go.

Note: if you change the Media Cache files and database location, video assets'  will be Pending... until everything's rebuilt. Open a new Finder window and go to that new location. You'll actually see it rebuilding.

So with a bit of maintenance, Encore still works in Yosemite. Enjoy!

[jvalal]

My issues are this. I don't have Premiere any more because I installed it in the cloud and then uninstalled it locally and now don't have CS6 Premiere.

I then found an older Encore floating around, but any time I try and import media to a timeline Encore crashes.

I've downloaded the update, but still nothing.

Anyone know any great devs?  I bet we could put together a mac version of a video authoring application with menu creation and make some money

[colinsteed]

Yes, I just downloaded it and and run a couple of tests (I am learning how to use it) and it all seems to work fine on Mavericks ok.

[jvalal]

Colinsteed, where are you downloading Encore from?

[colinsteed]

I subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud so I went to the section Find New Apps and to the right is Filters & Versions. Choose Previous Versions and you should see Premiere Pro CS6 - install that (which installs Encore). If you use another editing program you can uninstall Premiere Pro CS6.

Hope that helps.

[jvalal]

Nope, I can't download it.

2014-06-23_2112 - JasonValalik's library

[jvalal]

See link in prior post.

[Stan Jones]

You already have Premiere CS6 installed in your cloud desktop. I do not know how to fix a problem when you "uninstalled it locally" and that did not remove it from the cloud.

I would, however, log out of your cloud desktop and back in. You have a mixture of "Try" and "Install" in your "find new apps," and that is one way to clear some issues up.

If the sign out/sign in routine does not fix it, search the cloud forum for the issue of cloud showing an installed version when you have uninstalled it locally.