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Animated/Interactive DVD menu questions
Hi everyone, I am a struggling animator who’s been a film festival finalist.
I want to make animated/interactive DVD menus, formyself and also freelance for other filmfolk.
Okay, for a quick reference and coontext, I mean stuff like “Shaun of the Dead”, only with my own animation and better, so –
1: what sofware is needed and can it be done with any freewares?
2: are there any tutorials from the net anyone can recommend?
3: How much “code” does it involve? (I’m hoping very little or none…)
4: When finished, what dvd authoring softwares are needed to burn a disc that “works” when played, like “Scene it” the movie trivia game?
5: Can anyone give me a rundown of basically what steps would be required to make a menu like that on the “Shaun of the Dead” DVD?
Many thanks in advance!
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5 Replies
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DVD Studio Pro on the Mac, or Sonic or Adobe Encore on the PC. Not aware of any decent freeware DVD authoring programs but Google might be able to conjure one up for your needs.
Noah
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The preferred method of making animated menus or elements for DVD is usually Adobe After Effects plus whatever whiz-bang plug-ins to need to make the look you want.
Be aware that if you are considering doing something like “Scene It”, you are looking at preparing tens or hundreds of thousands of assets, and only the highest-end authoring systems will be able to deal with that.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
replies so soon! made my day!
so, “assets” are the individual clips, I take it?
I don’t have the wares mentioned above but a friend and peer does.
If I make all the “assets” myself (let’s say less than 50, even though that’s a lot of work), and they’re in mpg or avi or whatever file type Adobe likes best for final product to be burned onto DVD, will I be looking at working in an “organic” way like drag and drop/add effects etc. in PowerDirector and editing programs, or will I be having to deal with “code” like dealing with actionscript and commands in Flash?
Thanks again for the help!
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You really won’t have to deal with code unless you are creating functions called expressions in After Effects, which is essentially a javascript level code.
If you have access to it, I would suggest making all your clips in After Effects. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it is a very powerful program and will give you menus a very nice look.
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You would output the After Effects work and either encode it in a software encoder, or let your DVD authoring software encode it. Most DVD authoring software has a provision for transcoding quicktime movies to be used as motion menus or short elements.
Everything in your DVD comes together in the authoring. That is where all the elements are combined and the navigation constructed.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City
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