Burning a 5.

1 Blu-ray with Adobe Encore

rev. 3/29/13

This guide will help you burn a simple looping Blu-ray disc with no menus and a 5.1 audio track. For more
complex authoring, consult the Encore manual, CS6 help menu and/or other resources like lynda.com.

Blu-ray burning via Adobe Encore is possible in all of the FVNMA 3rd floor editing suites (323-5, 328) and in
the 9th floor CRIT general access lab as well as rooms 519, 819 and 714 at the computers that are labeled with
“BLU-RAY” stickers. External Firewire Blu-ray burners are available for checkout from the Media Center.

This guide covers how to set up and burn a Blu-ray from a ProRes Quicktime file and 5.1 audio exported from
Pro Tools. For instructions on burning a standard stereo Blu-ray, see the other Blu-ray guide on our blog.

This guide assumes that you have already exported a ProRes 422 Quicktime of your FINAL EDIT (including
leader, slate, countdown, credits, etc)* and that you have edited and mixed your audio in the Mix Suite (room
1413--the only FVNMA room with surround sound capabilities) in a 5.1 Pro Tools session, in sync with the
Quicktime. Ideally, your Quicktime would be video-only, but if it contains audio you can easily remove that
audio in Adobe Encore.

*There’s a bug in Adobe Encore that results in the following situation:

if you add any content such as black leader or credits to your Quicktime
movie in an Adobe Encore timeline, Encore will create a new stereo audio
stream that will replace your 5.1 audio. It will appear in Encore as if your
audio is in surround, but the disc will actually be in stereo.

1. EXPORT 5.1 AUDIO FILES FROM PRO TOOLS

Choose Bounce to Disk... from the File menu.

Make sure your Bounce Source

is the “5.1” I/O setup preset.

For file type, select WAV or

AIFF.

Format MUST BE Multiple Choose Convert After Bounce to

mono. minimize the chance of glitches
and errors during your bounce.
We recommend 48/24 for your
sample rate and bit depth. If this
Your audio will record to disk in
requires a conversion, choose
real time. Listen closely to make
“Tweak Head (Slowest)” for
sure there are no problems with it.
Quality.

You will end up with six mono audio files, each labeled for their corresponding speaker: left (L), right
(R), center (C), left surround (Ls), right surround (Rs) and low-frequency effects or subwoofer (LFE). (1)
2. USE COMPRESSOR TO CREATE AN AC3 AUDIO FILE
If your ProRes 422 Quicktime video file is approximately 35 Gb or less, you won’t need to compress it in Com-
pressor. However, you will need to use Compressor to turn your mono audio files into a single AC3 file.

Open Compressor 4 in the Final Cut Pro X folder in Applications. If the “Choose a template for your batch”
window appears, click Cancel.

Click “Add Surround Sound.” A new window will appear.

Assign each of your mono audio files to its corresponding channel by

1) dragging it from the finder to the channel button or 2) clicking on the
channel button and navigating to the file, then clicking OK.

Go to the Settings window (if it’s not visible, open it via the Window menu
or Command-3). Navigate to the Apple folder, then Audio Formats. Drag
the AC3 File preset onto the Surround icon in the Batch window.

Double-click on the AC3 File preset in the Batch window to edit the preset.

In the Audio tab of the Inspector window,

change “Dialog Normalization” from -24 to
-31.*

Leave everything else as is and click on the

Preprocessing tab.

*see page 3 (2)

Click on the Compression Preset pop-up menu and change it from “Film Stan-
dard Compression” to “None.” Leave everything else as is.

vv
*Our recommendations to set Dialog Normalization to -31 and
the Compression Preset to None are derived from the Compres-
sor User Manual which states “If you enter –31 dBFS: The
attenuation is 0 dB (31 dBFS–31 dBFS), and the source audio
levels are not affected at all” and “The default of Film Stan-
dard Compression should only be used when you are encoding
an original mix intended for cinema. In almost all cases, you
should choose None.”

Click “Save As...” to save your preset into Compressor’s Custom Settings
folder. Choose a destination for your AC3 file or use the default, Source, which
will export your file to the same location as your mono audio files.

Double-click in the
Batch Window’s text
box to name your
AC3, then click Sub-
mit. Another window
will appear (to give
you the option of
compressing via a
cluster of computers.)
Click Submit again.

3. AUTHOR AND BURN A BLU-RAY IN ADOBE ENCORE

Open Adobe Encore CS6.
Create a New Project.

Choose “Blu-ray” as your Authoring Mode, name

your project, choose a location for it (this is where
Encore will create and store media) and then click on
“Default Transcode Settings.” (3)
Change your transcoding settings to those shown here*. If
the frame rate of your video is something other than 29.97,
set it accordingly.

*If your piece is longer than 60 minutes, you might

need to reduce your maximum audio/video bitrate to
35 Mbps or lower.

Click “OK” to proceed.

Choose Import As > Asset from the File menu to bring your Quicktime video and AC3 audio files into your
project. Make sure that the Duration of the two files matches up (if it doesn’t, you’ll have to go back to your
video editing software and/or Pro Tools to check the sync).

With both your video file and AC3

highlighted in the Project window,
go to the Timeline menu and choose
New Timeline. This will create a new
Timeline (similar to a Track in DVD
Studio Pro) that contains your video
file and surround audio.

Notice that the Transcode Settings of

your AC3 file appear as “Don’t Trans-
code.” Encore does not have the abil-
ity to encode 5.1 audio--it recognizes
that your AC3 file has already been
encoded properly for Dolby surround.
However, your .mov file will need to
be transcoded.

Right-click or control-click on “Untranscoded” and select “Transcode Now” from the pop-up context menu. A
progress window will appear. The transcoding can take a while depending on the size of your Quicktime file
and the speed of your computer, but you can continue working on your Encore project while the file transcodes.

In our tests, we noticed that even after a video file was done transcoding it still appeared as Untranscoded in the
Project window. To be sure that Encore has created a .m4v file to burn to disc, navigate to the folder where your
Encore project is located (see page 3), then the Sources folder, then Transcodes, and you should see a freshly
created .m4v file.

(4)
We’ve found that Blu-ray discs burned in Encore sometimes end up with
no fast-forward/rewind capabilities in Oppo brand Blu-ray players such
as the one used at the Gene Siskel Film Center. In order to skip around to
different points in your piece (e.g. during a “tech check”) you can create
chapter points at regular intervals (30 sec, 5 minutes, etc). A timeline can
have up to 99 Chapter Points.

To add Chapter Points manually or at intervals, go to the Timeline menu

and choose accordingly.

In the example shown here,

Chapter Points will be added
every minute.

To make a looping Blu-ray disc, highlight Timeline in the Project

Window (at the left side of your screen) then go to End Action in
the Properties Window (to the right) and choose Chapter 1 of your
video Asset (you can also do this by dragging from the squiggly
End Action icon to your Timeline in the Project Window).

*You should connect Menu Remote to your Timeline as well--this way

the Menu button will start your video and not take the user to a blank
menu screen.

Click in the blank space of the Project window. The Timeline

Properties window will become Disc Properties.

Name your Blu-ray disc

here, and make sure that
your video is designated
as “First Play.” You should
also set your video to play
when the user presses the
Title Button by connecting
it to the Title Button here
(if this action is forbidden,
click on the arrow to the
right of Title Button and
drag down to “Specify
Link.”)

In the Project window, click the Build tab. Set Blu-ray as your Format and Output. Click Check Project to make
sure that your disc is error-free. Finally, click the Build button and insert a disc to burn a 5.1 Blu-ray.
To burn more discs at other computers, you’ll need NOTE: it’s not possible to play a Blu-ray disc in
your .ncor project file and the project folder contain- a Mac computer! To check your Blu-ray you will
ing your Cache & Sources (see page 4). Encore should need to use a Blu-ray deck (e.g. the Pioneer or Oppo
have given this folder the same name as your project. models in FVNMA classrooms or a Playstation 3).
(5)