Where I'm at: I've got a big (two hours, approximately) project all set up in one big After Effects CS3 composition. Currently it's 1080p at 59.94fps, and by that I mean 1920x1080p @ 59.94.

My decision to look into the Encore option is fairly recent, having already dispensed with the pure chaos of directly encoding MPEG4-AVC for the PS3. (In short, once I discovered that the PS3 had trouble stably playing anything over ~10Mbps, I realized how futile it all was.)

But I did learn enough to be wary. From what I can tell, Encore CS3 will take pretty much anything and spit out a Bluray image that should play on most Bluray players, fortunately including the PS3. This no-hands philosophy suggests that it will tend to transcode, scale, stretch, and otherwise manipulate the source video however it pleases - perhaps without even mentioning that it's doing it, just like how PPro doesn't - in order to keep things in spec. That has me worried.

Concern #1: In essence, this will be a two-part process. a) Encode the video into a Bluray-compatible H.264. b) Use Encore to generate a Bluray image from that video. How should I handle that? Encore supposedly has the ability to import AE CS3 projects directly. Would that be faster or slower than letting AE generate the encode itself? Would it even work with any reliability? (Theory is one thing; practice is reality.)

Concern #2: I've taken great pains to ensure that my video is 1080p from start to finish. Now, I recognize that I'm going to have to find a way to modify that into 1080i60 because 1080p60 exceeds the "level 4.1" profile. Would it be better to make that modification from withing AE, or trust Encore to properly handle the video itself?

Concern #3: I have read many times that in reality, only a 1920x1088 (or something else that's a multiple of 16) will actually work. So what does Encore do.. stretch the image? Add 8 lines of black to the bottom? Nothing? What does the PS3 do with those 8 lines if they have to be added?

Concern #4: I have also made certain to take full advantage RGB24's luma spectrum (0-255). That's the range that After Effects works in. I'm fairly sure at this point that an H.264 Bluray is YUV12 or something like that. Assuming that's right, then something is going to happen to my luma range and there's no way around it. So the question is: What? Does Encore squish the 0-255 to 16-235? Does it chop off the 0-15 and 236-255? Does it somehow pass the full range, leaving it up to the PS3 / TV to crush the blacks/whites? It's very difficult to test things like this, and obviously unwise to guess.

Yay. Maybe the answers to these questions can be added to some FAQ somewhere. ;p Thanks much for any help.