With the upcoming launch of our new redesigned website, we will also be launching many more Pro Motion Menu Kits and Zip Kits! With the new website, we will also have complete information about our extremely popular and low cost professional authoring services that we’ve been providing to many of the top video production studios for the past several years. I don’t want to give away too much about what we have in store for all of you, so lets get back to the new minimum requirements…
Using version usage statistics we have obtained from Adobe, we have decided to change our minimum Adobe Creative Suite version from CS3 to CS5 on all future released templates. Adobe made some very significant changes to pixel aspect ratios and other things starting in version CS4 that we’ve had to implement workarounds for and separate CS3 and CS4 Render Compositions.
This change will require slightly less time on our end preparing each template, eliminate any confusion introduced with separate CS3 and CS4 render compositions, and allow us to use features implemented starting in CS5.
By the way, if you are still using an older version of the Adobe Creative Suite, I highly recommend taking advantage of Adobe’s new licensing option of just $30 a month for the CS6 Master Collection (non-upgrade price is $50 a month). This is much cheaper than spending over $2600 to buy it, then over $500 each year to upgrade to the latest version. Using the new “Creative Cloud” licensing, you will always have the latest version of the Adobe applications… even before they are officially released through their standard licensing option.
Your comments are welcome!
In reference to your comment about pixel aspect ratios in your products… I experienced an issue the other day while creating a main menu using Zip Kit 4… when changing out the image on the main menu screen the new image I brought in was not proportionate to the drop zone…I had to stretch it out to look right…and yes I did check my pixel settings…a frame from HDV in this case….and those same settings work for the DVD cover drop zones when I replace with the new images….what may be happening here??
FYI…I tried the drop zone replacement in Photoshop and directly in Encore…same results.
Thanks
@MichaelScalise
Could that be a square pixel vs non-square pixel issue?
I’ve never used these products from this website, but have experiences similar issues in the past and that’s what it turned out to be.
Michael,
We have experienced the same issue with non-square-pixel aspect ratio images that are drag-and-dropped directly in Encore. This bug has been reported to the Adobe Encore engineers and will hopefully be fixed in the next version. Until then, you can use Photoshop to place your image in the drop zone (place directly above the drop zone layer, right-click on the image layer in the layer panel, select ‘Create Clipping Mask’). If you want to drag-and-drop directly in Encore with your pictures, you must first convert them to a square pixel aspect ratio. For example, an HDV 1440×1080 image will need to be placed into a 1920×1080 square pixel file and saved.