For years, DVD Authors have been designing their menus in Adobe Photoshop, creating motion menus in After Effects and editing their content in Premiere. It only made sense that Adobe would create their own DVD authoring software. Encore 1.0 hit shelves back in 2003 and has been gaining momentum ever since.

For years, the complicated DVD spec was a huge hurdle for most would-be DVD authors. The book itself is $5,000 and is the size of a New York City phone book. Creating a DVD was like programming a computer at the machine level. A few DVD authoring programs on the PC have preceded Encore, but none have accomplished the same powerful simplicity at Encore’s price point. Encore features “under the hood” scripting and a streamlined interface that makes DVD authoring a walk in the park.

Adobe’s first attempt at a DVD authoring program laid a great foundation. Instead of trying to completely cover the DVD spec, Encore chose its first battles carefully. It’s much better to release a program with a few great features that work, than to try to include every feature and fail to perform reliably. Adobe’s track record with Photoshop and After Effects proves that great things start small and simple. Adobe included Encore in its acclaimed Video Collection. The collection offered Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects at a substantial discount. The entire collection sold for less than After Effect’s solo price.

By offering Encore along with the powerhouse motion graphics program After Effects and the industry standard Photoshop, Adobe let its reputation with these established programs speak for the future of Encore and for the future of digital video on the PC platform.

If you’re thinking, “this is all sounding like a nice ad for Encore,” think again. Before I even discuss Encore’s features it’s important to throw in this disclaimer. If you don’t plan to use the other programs in the Adobe Video Collection, you’re not getting the full power of Encore DVD. Adobe has made no apologies for its push towards total integration of their software. Without the rest of the suite, Encore is good for a hobbyist or casual DVD author, because, it’s not too expensive for the power when sold separately from the Video Collection and it’s very easy to use. Honestly I use Encore because it works well with Photoshop and After Effects, two programs I cherish more than my own kids. (Well I don’t have kids, but that’s beside the point.)

So what are some of these great features? First and foremost is Encore’s seamless integration with the rest of the suite, but the other articles in this series will concentrate on each facet of the integration.

When you look at Encore as a separate program and in a general sense, Encore makes some of the most complex DVD spec operations seem as simple as a point and a click. One great example is motion thumbnails.

A motion thumbnail is a button or window on a DVD menu that shows a small clip of the video it links to. We see a lot of these in today’s professional DVD’s. The advantage for the viewer is they can get a preview of what they are selecting. Encore provides motion thumbnail menu templates and individual thumbnail buttons for use on custom menus. Putting a motion thumbnail to work is as easy as linking the button to a chapter point in a timeline then animating the buttons in the menu. A two step process. And if all you want are still pictures, cut out the second step. It’s that easy. (Come back and check out the free mini-tutorial that will be posted here in the coming weeks.)