Issues with Playlists in Encore 2.0 - Wisdom required!

Question

Hi Guys,
I'm seeking some wisdom with regards getting playlists to work in Adobe Encore 2.0
I'm producing a gymnastics training DVD and it's virtually complete.The DVD is essentially 72 exercises in 5 categories with "play all" functions within each category. There are also several other timelines with information/safety .etc.
In the testing phase I noticed that on some players my timelines were starting too quickly (cutting off some of the initial dialouge), despite being fairly generous with the edited starts anyway.
To counter this I created 2 seconds of black footage and dropped it at the start and end of each timeline - thus apparently fixing the problem without having to re-edit all of the clips. This did however lead to a new problem. Now when I played the "play all" playlist it has millions of 2 second pauses in it - very frustrating to try and watch through.
So. I figured what I'll do is create a playlist for each exercise, all the exercise timelines now having had the "black clips" removed. Now each exercise button on the menu links to a playlist of "BLACK TIMELINE, EXERCISE TIMELINE, BLACK TIMELINE". This enables me to create the "play all" playlist to hit all of the exercises without all the "black clips" inbetween (just at the start and end). Brilliant.
This all works perfectly in the preview window.
When I burn this onto disc and play it I start to encounter problems. Each playlist (individual exercise or "play all") simply plays the first "BLACK TIMELINE" and then goes to the last menu. This seemingly makes no sense as I believe I've set my playlists correctly. I have also endeavoured to not use any overrides as I've read about the issues there.
I'm burning onto high quality Taiyo Yuden discs on the lowest possible speed I can (6x). I'm using Encore 2.0 and would be prepared to upgrade if that would solve the problem. That said, I'd really want to drop my project into a new version (not rebuild) and I suspect that is fairyland stuff.
I'm really keen to fix this and any thoughts or advice would be extremely gratefully received.
Many thanks for reading! There are some screenshots of a few aspects of my project below.
Andy Wilton
^ Screengrab of a "play all" playlist. If we were to scroll down the "Timelines" we'd see more exercises and finally a repeat of the "Black Matte".
^ This is a screengrab of an exercise Playlist. All of the exercise playlists are the same.
^ This is a screengrab of an exercise timeline - they are all the same.
^ This is a screengrab of the "Black Matte" timeline (2 seconds of Black filler).

Answer 1

Hi Andy,
Making a training or trivia DVD is much like writing a software program, yet the authoring applications (not just Encore, but even the $50k ones) don't have a debugger. As a software engineer, this seems crazy to me. The DVD navigation commands are like a simple assembler, once you get down to what is underneath the "abstraction layer" created by a program like Encore or DVD Studio Pro.
We have a free demo of DVDAfterEdit which includes "Tracer", which is a debugger that we created.
http://www.dvdafteredit.com/node/1262
Our software is Macintosh only, it will run on any older Macintosh that can run OS X.
The concept behind DVDAfterEdit is that you can create all your assets with Encore or similar programs, then modify and expand on the navigation using the tools built-in to DVDAE. Others have used this to created titles such as "Scene It", and I created the navigation for "The Quick and Dirty Guide to Pilates" by Digifilm, available on Amazon. This title lets you create a playlist "on the fly", though unfortunately all DVD players discard such information when you eject a disc.
If you are willing to invest the time to learn what is going on underneath the drag and drop interface of Encore, DVDAE can be a very powerful tool. If you are interested, please take a look and try it out, and I will try to answer any questions you might have.
Regards.
Larry