Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity Forums VEGAS Pro DVDA – graphic as pointer

  • DVDA – graphic as pointer

    Posted by Gilles Gagnon on June 28, 2011 at 9:16 pm

    I’m creating a DVD using DVDA.

    I want to have a scene selection where the scene selector is actually a small graphic. as the user moves from selection to selection in the menu, the graphic moves along “as a cursor/pointer”.

    I’ve tried all sorts of things, without any luck.

    How is this done?
    G

    Gilles

    Gilles Gagnon replied 15 years ago 3 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Stephen Mann

    June 29, 2011 at 2:12 am

    It’s not.

    Show me a Hollywood DVD that does it and I’ll tell you how it’s done.

    The way Hollywood (and I) make DVD menus is that the indicator/pointer, whatever you want to call it, is a button overlay mask. You can put the overlay mask anywhere you want, and each buttons’ mask can be different.

    Steve Mann
    MannMade Digital Video
    http://www.mmdv.com

  • Aleksey Tarasov

    June 29, 2011 at 4:45 am

    Actually, there is a trick, which I used in DVDLab Pro (it is another authoring software).
    Description is here
    (I don’t know whether this can be done in DVDA)

  • Gilles Gagnon

    June 29, 2011 at 11:46 am

    Thanks Stephen, I was afraid of that after looking everywhere for an answer.

    Aleksey, thanks for the link but… how did they create the graphic of the 2 circles?

    Gilles

  • Stephen Mann

    June 30, 2011 at 2:34 pm

    The DVD menu in the sample is made just like I do – in Photoshop. All that they are doing in the example is to hide the buttons with the button masks.

    I am in the middle of a couple of projects, but when I get some time, I intend to make this happen with DVDA.

    I like the challenge.

    Steve Mann
    MannMade Digital Video
    http://www.mmdv.com

  • Gilles Gagnon

    July 14, 2011 at 10:12 pm

    Yes,

    the example is for DVD Lab and being not fully qualified in DVDA, I’m not sure how to convert the instructions to DVDA.

    Looks like just what I need though.

    Gilles

  • Stephen Mann

    July 15, 2011 at 3:46 pm

    I was able to do it in DVDA with masking, but there are two significant restrictions. First, it only works with two menu items, and second the background has to be a solid color.

    I use the button-01-highlightTrans with the color set color the same as the background, but the trick is that the overlay for button one (a black square) masks the image of button two. (And vice-versa)

    The problem is that DVDA simplifies the mask and will not permit discontinuous button masks. That it, if I have three button images and want to mask one and three to expose button image two, DVDA “joins” the mask regions in the PSD file for buttons one and three into a single mask. Covering (masking) button two in the process.

    I am still not convinced that I can’t do it in DVDA, but that was my first attempt.

    Steve Mann
    MannMade Digital Video
    http://www.mmdv.com

  • Gilles Gagnon

    July 15, 2011 at 4:08 pm

    Thanks Stephen,

    Most of my menus have more than 2 buttons so you’ve saved me much time as I won’t bang my head against the wall as a solution is not obvious.

    For now, I’ll continue to use an underline or such.

    Thanks again,

    Gilles

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy