Dialog Box

Put your After Effects project on a DVD

To save your After Effects composition on a DVD:

1. Create a new project in Encore DVD and select your Television standard in the New Project Settings dialog box. If you’re in North or South America (except Argentina and Brazil), Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, or Taiwan, choose NTSC. For everywhere else, choose PAL.

    

   

   Figure 1: Choose the Television standard for your DVD in the New Project Settings dialog box.

2. Use Dynamic Link to open your After Effects comp in Encore DVD by doing one of the following:
   • Drag the comp from the Project panel in After Effects into the Project panel in Encore DVD.
   • Choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import After Effects Composition, and then select the comp you want to open in Encore DVD in the Import Composition dialog box

    

   

   Figure 2: Choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import After Effects Composition…

    

   

   Figure 3: …and then locate your comp in the Import Composition dialog box and click OK to open it in Encore DVD.

   The next step is to choose the MPEG-2 encoding settings you want to use. All video is encoded to MPEG-2 for DVD, and you want to use encoding settings that will make your video look its best.

3. Select the comp in the Encore DVD Project panel, and then choose File > Transcode > Transcode Settings > NTSC DV High quality 7Mb VBR 2 Pass. This preset (which encodes your video to MPEG-2 at a bitrate of 7 megabits per second, doing a 2-pass Variable Bit Rate encode) works well for most After Effects work and is a great place to start with MPEG-2 encoding settings.

   Note: If you’re working in PAL, you’ll see the PAL presets in the Transcode Settings menu instead.

    

   

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   Figure 4: Choose one of the transcode presets from the Transcode Settings menu.

   Note: If you’re familiar with encoding, you can also choose Transcode > Edit Project Transcode Presets and create your own custom encoding settings.

4. With the comp still selected in the Encore Project panel, click the New Item button (it looks like a little page at the bottom of the Project panel) and choose Timeline. This step puts your comp on an Encore timeline.

    

   

   Figure 5: Add your comp to an Encore timeline.

5. Choose either Stop or Link Back To Here from the End Action pop-up menu in the Properties panel (in the upper-right corner of the Encore application window). Selecting this option tells the DVD what to do after it finishes playing your After Effects comp. In most cases you’ll want the DVD to stop, or maybe you’ll want the playback to loop instead.

    

   

   Figure 6: Set the End Action to determine what happens when the comp finishes playing.

6. Click the Disc panel (it should be nested behind the Project panel). Because the Properties panel is context sensitive, it now displays properties for the DVD (disc) instead of the comp.

    

   

   Figure 7: Click the Disc panel to view the disc properties in the Properties panel.

7. In the Properties panel, choose the first chapter of the timeline from the Title Button pop-up menu. This sets the action that should occur when the viewer clicks the Title button on the DVD.

    

   

   Figure 8: Set the Title Button action using the Properties panel.

8. The final step is to burn the disc. In the Disc panel (which is nested behind the Project panel), click the Build DVD button to open the Build DVD panel. Give your disc a name, specify how many copies you want, and then click the Build button to burn your DVD. Encore takes care of all the After Effects rendering and MPEG-2 transcoding behind the scenes.

    

   

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   Figure 9: Click Burn DVD and Encore DVD renders and transcodes the comp onto a DVD

Of course there is always more than one way to skin a cat. You can also use Dynamic Link to open your After Effects comp in Adobe Premiere® Pro, put the comp on a timeline, choose Window > DVD Layout, and output your DVD from there. If you’re thinking of adding menus or custom navigation down the line, then Encore DVD is a better choice.

You can use the project I just walked you through as a foundation to build on, and quite easily I might add.

Where to go from here

For more information on working with After Effects and Encore DVD, see the following resources:

• Create After Effects comps with Encore DVD, by Chad Perkins
• Manic compression, by Bob Donlon
• Add motion menus to your DVD with After Effects and Encore DVD (PDF, 138k)by the experts at Adobe

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