Not exactly sure why you're having Encore issues. I've been using Encore CS3 for a couple of months now and it works fine.

Regarding the Adobe forums; they decided to update the forum software and put out a notice last week that the forums would be down for a couple of days while they imported and indexed all the old messages. They came back up on Tuesday and they had some serious problems. They put the old forums back up, but made them "read-only." You can still read the forum, but no one can post anything. Anyway, you've never needed a user name or password to just read at the forums. You can go read the old messages and maybe someone else has had your Encore problem and it's been discussed. Certainly worth a look.

I don't know what I'd do if the Sony forums were offline for a couple of days. It's my start page in my browser.

John

Hmmm...Same here, Encore CS3 is very stable and functioning for me. It *is* a monstrous install, and it may be something was corrupted. You might try a reinstall? The suite forums on the COW and DVInfo.net are quite good as well.

I've yet to understand why Adobe's apps are such bloatware and very resource intensive.

SONY's apps use less space, require less hardware and give the majority of the same functionality of other competing products (except After Effects) - with better resource management.

I just don't buy into the idea any longer that Adobe's products are that much better than SONY's.

Cliff Etzel
bluprojekt

DVDA vs Encore (CS2 in my case). Both very stable, but I preferred DVDA. I didn't like the way Encore wanted to re-encode my audio/video.

The drag and drop authoring method is good, though.

But, as mentioned before, BLOATWARE!!! What matters, though, is what works for you... Which clearly isn't Encore CS3 ;-)

In all fairness to every software vendor of many different kinds of applications the majority of wierd problems are oftenly hardware related. I've got one PC that had issues with PPro years ago, one of the reasons I went to Vegas. Then I bought Truespace and found it was flakey on the same PC and even Bryce has the odd crash.
Since then though on two other PCs both Truespace and Bryce run without any problem.
The only Sony app that doesn't run 100% reliably on this same problem PC is CDA, figure that one out!
From my experiences decades ago the most likely source of screwball problems is RAM. You could have one dodgy bit that's never used until you run several applications and then crash. For what it's worth I know several Mac users who've had strange crashes that were eventually fixed by replacing RAM. At times even the RAM modules aren't faulty, just not plugged in fully or the contacts need a clean.
Bottom line is there's an aweful lot of people using Encore, Avid, Vegas, DVDA, etc, etc. It'd be a reasonable assumption that if something really wierd happens like it just will not run the first thing to look at logically would seem to be the platform that it's running on.

Bob.

now now now.... how do we feel when Sony products work perfectly fine on our systems & some new guy has issues & blasts them here?

:)

even though i don't like adobe's products they almost always started up. Try the reinstall several have suggested. Even to a different drive if possible.

Tried the reinstall (though not to a different drive).

Same problem! New project. Double click on a library menu template (w/ motion video), loads the assets (I see them in the project list), then "General Error" popup.

One thing I've noticed...using Windows explorer, I navigate into the Library folder under Encore. I double-click on the motion video files (of file type .m2v), and my system is unable to play them...there is no filetype association. That ain't right, I'm sure.

I've looked at Encore, it looks a lot more professional than DVDA, and has a great selection of themed templates preloaded, which is a plus....

having said that, I've never tried using it to create a dvd, so I don't know how it compares re final product quality, render times etc... but overall encore makes a favorable impression, much more professional looking gui (hint hint sony re dvda)..

it took me a long time to figure out how to make nested menus etc using DVDA, so I'm reluctant to stop using it, since I finally "get it" .. :p

thanks for the tip re lynda.com, I've been a member of that (and the new totaltraining.com) tutorial sites for months, didn't know they had encore, will watch a few to see how it all works..


-k

by kencalhoun:
I've looked at Encore, it looks a lot more professional than DVDA, and has a great selection of themed templates preloaded, which is a plus....
_________________________

The GUI of Sonic Foundry/Sony Media Software has always been an issue with me. I don't think any of the Sony apps (including Pro Titler) look anywhere near as professional as Adobe's.

The Menus, Templates, Buttons, etc.... are waaay better in Encore.

I'm definitely an Encore guy. Especially over DVDA. I even prefer Encore over DVDSP... but I LOVE the Transitions provided in DVDSP. They are seemless.
_________________________

I think the OP had a bad install or a Hardware issue.
Encore is Rock Solid on this end.

Well, it seems a hardware reboot fixed the problem, at least the simple case I had described.

I had gotten out of the habit of rebooting my machine after an install. So few products require that anymore! (Ostensibly, neither does CS3 as it did not mention a reboot after the install.)

That's good to hear, s2r...

it does make a difference, the gui (as well as underlying code of course)... since we feel more professional, using more pro-looking tools... and for those of you with clients, it makes a difference I suppose, when you're showing them the DVD prep in an encore type window vs a dvda one ...

well that's an easy easy fix for sony, right? making a more charcoal-grey/silver professional type gui would help w/vegas' image .. at least the looks... for functions, any function can be coded if the programming team is motivated enough..

-k

here ya go...

slap that on your monitor, cut out where the preview/start bar is & Sony apps will look as "pro" as any other visual POS out there. :D

Give me speed and efficiency of Vegas over the pretty GUI of the other apps any day of the week. Sure I miss the ability to tone down the interface like I did with PPro, but the resources required to run the bloody app aren't worth the pretty GUI. Vegas does plenty without the numerous hardware issues PPro seems to have (just read the PPro forums).

Give me the new 32bit editing mode, easy to use advanced color correction and advanced audio editing directly on the timeline (something that PPro can't do), along with being virtually hardware agnostic and I'm all good.

If its good enough for ABC's Nightline, it's good enough for me.

Cliff Etzel
bluprojekt

Can't the interface be changed using Windows themes?

There is an option in the preference to use themes. I've never tried it myself - I like the ugliness of the 'traditional' Windows layout...

"Watched all of the awesome Encore tutorials on Lynda.com. Very nice! Blows DVDA away!"

In what ways does Encore blow away DVDA? I'm not a very good DVDA user. I haven't bothered to figure out how to make menus and chapters and such. My clients only want to look at their performance, so it hasn't been necessary.

But, I find DVDA simple to use for my basic projects.

What would Encore give me that DVDA does not?

Just curious.

Caruso

The ability to create a flash DVD with menus for one.

Plus dozens of very professional templates, which are a great starting place, vs doing them from scratch in dVDA all the time...

-k

I've been using Encore CS3 (successfully, and without any crashing) for a bit over a month now. I can't say how much better it is than DVDA yet, thoug, as I only bought Vegas Pro 8 a few days ago.

However, I can tell you one way that Vegas/DVDA is definately superior to the Premiere/Encore combo... the latter lacks a native Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding solution. Encore can endode to DD stereo, however you need to pay another $295 for Minnetonka's SurCode Encoder before you can output 5.1. I found that somewhat shocking and dissapointing for such expensive software... especially since Sony can manage to include quite good DD5.1 encoding in the less-expensive Vegas. Even Sound Forge can encode DD5.1 by itself, and that's not even a program for video work.

Today I was troubleshooting a colleagues win XP machine running the Adobe CS Video Production suite - He wouldn't listen about using Vegas. He's getting "Error - Insufficient disk space" messages trying to render out a 2 minute SD clip to DVD or ISO from the PPro timeline - this coming from a 160GB boot drive, 320GB Raid 0 media and 500GB final render drive running with 2GB RAM with Core 2 Duo Intel processor and XP Pro. None of the supposed fixes listed on Adobe's website resolved the issue (No surprise).

Needless to say, when I read about those who jumped ship to Adobe from Vegas for so called increased workflow productivity - I can personally attest it is the total opposite for both his current and my previous experiences. He has lost valuable time with an issue that has no resolution - not only for him, but other Adobe PPro users as well.

I highly recommended again he switch to Vegas as the NLE to work with.

I'm not impressed with the bloatware known as Adobe Creative Suite. Again, Vegas does more with less.

Cliff Etzel
bluprojekt

I can see where you're coming from, though personally I haven't had those kind of workflow issues using Adobe's software. However I can also attest to the fact all of Adobe's programs run slower than their equivalents put out by Sony... though I'm not sure I'd go as far as "bloatware".

If Sony could come out with an After Effects-type program, there'd be even less reason to go to Adobe for that much. However, I can't deny I like have access to Flash Professional, Photoshop, and the other components of the Creative Suite.