Once again, Encore proves to be difficult to work with. I have a bunch of m4v and matching ac3 files that I want to put into Encore to create a Blu-ray. However, I cannot place them all in a timeline and be done with it. Because of the null space at the beginning and/or end of the ac3 files, Encore insists on rebuilding them (to stereo instead of 5.1).
One thing I read as a workaround was to use a playlist. I tried that, and set the end action for each timeline to go to the next timeline. Works swell. However, there is no way to go to a previous timeline since each timeline acts like a seperate item on the disc and not as part of a whole movie. Is there a way around this? Is there a way to get items in a playlist to act like a complete movie instead of individual items?
I know another option is to just have one long ac3 file for the whole movie (as well as one long m4v video file), but this isn't really convenient. I like that Encore will tell me how much space is left on the disc as I drop items into timelines; creating one long video and audio file will leave me guessing at how long the move can be and will involve trial and error. On top of that, I will have to scrub through the whole timeline and manually add chapter marks (this is how I did it on my first project). It is a pain.
There has to be a way to use multiple ac3 files in Encore for a movie without them getting transcoded while having all the clips act as one complete movie instead of individual items. At least I hope there is a way...