Encore CS5 Blu-Ray Preview Playback Issues / Authoring Issues

Question

Hello,
I'm using Adobe Encore CS5 on a Mac Pro (Nehalem) 2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon w/ 8 GB Ram on Mac OS X 10.5.8.
I've recently upgraded to CS5 after having no luck using CS3 to make Blu-Ray discs.  So far my experience has been a little disappointing -- it feels like they still haven't got it right.  Below is a list of my issues thus far -- perhaps some of you have run into similar things:
- When importing MATROX encoded H.264 Blu-Ray files Encore CS5 hangs up.  I tried this with a 54 minute encoded file.  Instead I re-transcoded using the CS5 Media Encoder to the Main Concept H.264.  This worked fine, although the import still hung up for several minutes before anything made it's way into the project.
- When I try opening my already existing project with a 54 minute video inside it hangs up and takes as long as 3-5 minutes to finally open successfully.  This seems to happen consistently.
- After rendering motion menus and rendering them in the project the playback preview stutters.  It's very steppy throughout as the video plays in the background.  I even tried authoring a disc and playing it in a Blu-Ray player -- it did the same thing once authored.  I've tried re-encoding the video in Media Encoder and have found the problem persists.  Has anyone else experienced this with motion menus?  By the way, I'm transcoding @ 25mbps (max 30mbps) in the Media Encoder.
- While trying to re-author my Blu-Ray the playback preview does not play audio on the main video when I click to play it.  I've tried re-importing the asset and previewing but this does not work.  I'm going to re-author the disc anyway to see if it plays right on the disc but can't understand why the preview doesn't work even if the Blu-Ray itself is fine (which it is).  I should add that the first time I authored this disc the audio was fine on the main video.  Preview was also fine.  So I'm not sure what's happening now - I haven't changed anything in the project.
- Portions of my video on the authored video play back with slight stutter even though the source video (ProRes HQ QuickTime) does not.  Is this a problem with the Main Concept H.264 encode?  Should I try a 2-pass VBR transcode as another try (instead of 1-pass)?  My target bit rate is 25 mbps (with a max of 30 mbps).  That shouldn't be too high for a player to handle without stutter.  The stutter also happens in the same place every time so it makes me think it's the encode of the file itself that's the problem.
All in all these are mainly quirks about Encore that have begun to add up and frustrate me as a user.  It would be nice if these things just worked as they should.  But if anyone has ideas or can think of something I might be missing in all of this that would be great to hear.
Thanks for reading.
All the best,
JD

Answer 1

As a follow up, I tried knocking down the number of chapters by 1/3 so there would be a total of 28 chapters instead of 41. As it turns out, the disc is still exiting the timeline and returning to the main menu at exactly the same point (which happens to be one second into a particular chapter of the timeline, just shy of 90 minutes into the timeline). It's as if Encore has split my single timeline into two timelines.
If it's of any help understanding what's happening, the entire timeline is 02;05;23;21 long. When Encore creates the Blu-ray disc, playback of the timeline ends at approximately 01;26;43;10. I then have to go to my Scenes menu and pick up where I left off as it's the only way to see the last ~39 minutes of the sequence.
As I mentioned, if I burn this as a standard definition (4.7GB) disc, it plays normally with no breaks. It's only if I burn it to a 25GB single-layer Blu-ray disc that I see the problem (using multiple Blu-ray players).
Thanks in advance for any light that can be shed on this problem.