Encore CS6 [Mac] - Dual Layer Blu Ray Authoring

Thanks for the effort though, John.

Hi Everyone

Apologies for missing the thread, but I got Stan's email.

With Blu-ray there should be no need to manually set the Layer Break as the program should do it automatically. Please do, however, note the italicized "should"! Even in Scenarist BD if it is possible to set a legal break point, the software will do this for you - if you need to set a manual layer break in Blu-ray then it is time to cry because this will almost certainly mean there is nowhere it can actually go.

With BD, the players will buffer a lot more efficiently than with DVD so you will not get glitches, even if the break point is a PTS one (what in DVD terms would be on a chapter marker, in the middle of the playlist) the players will handle the transition between layers smoothly so I would definitely suggest that you just go for it & see what happens. The odds are absolutely in your favour, and if the main footage is larger than 23Gb in size then it will need to have chapter marks so the system can find a spot - this is the only thing you need to watch out for though.

With DVD things are quite different, and a layer break must always be set manually - even though Encore has an automatic option it often does not work because the break point can only be set after the project is compiled, plus you also have the whole DVD-R DL versus DVD+R DL situation to deal with - DVD-R DL will only ever split the data in roughly equal chunks, and you cannot set a manual break point when burning DVD-R DL discs. For DVD+R DL on PC systems you have a much better option for disc creation - IMGBurn. This piece of freeware will offer you a set of possible layer break locations and you can select where you want too place it as well as preview the locations - I cannot overstate how helpful this is. If you are sending DDP images to replication though, you will need to set this before creating the DDP set and that is a whole new kettle of ball games, and PGCEdit will soon become your new BFF as this will allow a break point to be set in a playlist much, much more easily than in Encore - plus once you then open up the Video_TS in Encore to create the DDP set it should honour the break point set by PGCEdit. Again, an emphasis on 'should' must be noted.

Stan, how would I manually set a break point?  I am on a Mac also, is Roxio Toast a good subsitute for ImgBurn?  Is there a specific White Printable BD-R that you would recommend?

Thank you John.  How would I set Encore to Run as Administrator as I am on a Mac.