DVD Menu Challenge

[John Rich]

I was just messing around with this, and to me it appears that one cannot have a video button on either side of the menu with the ” selected button” as the button link has to go to another menu with autoactivate selected. However, if you have eight buttons, then 6 of them could have button motion.

YOu might be able to get around this, by creating short clips of your destination movie for the two contiguous buttons, and then shrinking them in Preiere or AE and using this as a motion background. I think I’ll put this together as a screen capture, and if you want to see it let me know.
John

JOHNR

[John Rich]

I was just messing around with this, and to me it appears that one cannot have a video button on either side of the menu with the ” selected button” as the button link has to go to another menu with autoactivate selected. However, if you have eight buttons, then 6 of them could have button motion.

YOu might be able to get around this, by creating short clips of your destination movie for the two contiguous buttons, and then shrinking them in Preiere or AE and using this as a motion background. I think I’ll put this together as a screen capture, and if you want to see it let me know.
John

JOHNR

[John Rich]

I was just messing around with this, and to me it appears that one cannot have a video button on either side of the menu with the ” selected button” as the button link has to go to another menu with autoactivate selected. However, if you have eight buttons, then 6 of them could have button motion.

YOu might be able to get around this, by creating short clips of your destination movie for the two contiguous buttons, and then shrinking them in Preiere or AE and using this as a motion background. I think I’ll put this together as a screen capture, and if you want to see it let me know.
John

JOHNR

[John Rich]

I was just messing around with this, and to me it appears that one cannot have a video button on either side of the menu with the ” selected button” as the button link has to go to another menu with autoactivate selected. However, if you have eight buttons, then 6 of them could have button motion.

YOu might be able to get around this, by creating short clips of your destination movie for the two contiguous buttons, and then shrinking them in Preiere or AE and using this as a motion background. I think I’ll put this together as a screen capture, and if you want to see it let me know.
John

JOHNR

[John Rich]

Sorry, don’t know what happened here, but perhaps the moderators can remove all but one of these posts I accidently just made.
John

JOHNR

[Carlos Sanchez]

Hi, Jonh I appreciate your help and everyone elses help; would you be able to show me how to get around the problem with the animations, please.

Thank you

[Scot Sheely]

Carlos,

The missing ingredient in this equation is the before now unmentioned ninth menu, which was executed so flawlessly that it was nearly transparent in its function – not in the connotation of layer / menu visibility, just its function.

Take a very close look at the beginning of the DVD menu playback, especially at 1:01. In this section, you will see the words “Sonali Gulati” in the lower right-hand corner.

Take notice of the fact that no menu item is selected; this is our first clue at unraveling this mystery. Since it fades in and out, it is part of an animated BG, not a subpicture highlight text object. Consider this to be the “First Play” menu. It is using a simple “Play Once” function, then is set in its “End Action” to automatically lead into the actual menu #1.

When the first menu actually appears at around 1:13 (“Sum Total”), notice that the first menu item is automatically selected and that the text beneath the “picture” disappears. This is our next clue as to the function of the menu navigation. This same function is maintained throughout the remaining menus.

Without examining the actual DVD, it is hard to tell if their are 9 or 10 menus. It may be that the First Play leads into a full menu, which we will call Menu 0 (“Menu Zero”), which, once a menu item is selected, leads into the subsequent menus. In my best estimation, I believe he is using 10 menus for the navigation and opening animation.

It is important to understand and fully comprehend the Autoplay function to make this effect work properly. From the “Menu 0”, you need to set the navigation to any other menu as autoplay to make the transition between menus as smooth and transparent as possible.

Once and item is selected and the DVD player’s remote “Enter”, “OK” or “Select” button is pushed, it is no longer desirable to use the autoplay function. Just set this as you normally would with any other DVD menu selection to play the actual video.

I have used this effect quite a few times in the last 2-3 years, but with a different twist than Sonali did here in the example you provided the link to. Just for perspective, take a look at a simpler, yet similar menu design I did in 2006:

https://www.digitaljuice.com/dj_showcase/detail.asp?page=1&portfolioid={789958A7-FF87-4A8C-8638-522B81765890}&sortby=&cid=0&tagid=0&display=&workid=2064

Notice that the heart, which is the menu pointer icon, never stops beating. This function is maintained through all of the menu navigation, and the heart moves up or down to the corresponding text. The background is also animated, which also continues throughout every menu selection.

Although I did not demonstrate the menu navigation, only the animation aspects, it works in the same way that Sonali’s menu design does.

The one caveat to all of this that has yet to be spoken is that all of this takes a tremendous amount of pre-production planning to execute properly. Also, note that burned DVD’s tend to lag just a bit longer than replicated DVD’s in the naviation between different menus. In most cases, your clients won’t really notice the jump, but to most of us in this industry, that small bump can seem like a mountain at times.

If you get stumped, or just need some help on any particular aspect of pulling this off, feel free to call me at my studio at 803-708-8043. I am in the EST / EDT on the East Coast (USA), and you are welcome to call anytime from 8:00 AM until midnight, 7 days a week.

Scot Sheely
IMG -Interactive Media Gurus
Columbia, SC

[John Rich]

Carlos,

I put this together which might help with what you want. It ran longer than I originally thought, so I split it into four.
The web site is jmrser.com and look under tutorials and the tutorial called the Four Little Movies. I made it with Camtasia and you may need to download the codec from the Camtasia web site (Google it) to see them.
Let me know if it helps.
PS For some reason I couldn’t get the picture to come up you posted over at the Photoshop Basics area. Am I doing something wrong there?
John

JOHNR

[Sonali Gulati]

wow! I didn’t realize that my DVD menu design was being dissected here until one of my students directed me to this page.
Well, to answer your question, the part where my name shows up and fades out is something I did in Final Cut Pro and it’s the tail end of the intro movie that you see. The menu starts with selecting sum total etc. There is one main menu with 8 buttons. When one selects the button, the name of the film vanishes from the polaroid image and shows up at the bottom and a short looped clip from the film plays within the polaroid button. when one hits enter, the menu disappears and the film plays.
This DVD menu was created using Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, and Adobe Photoshop.

Sonali Gulati
https://www.sonalifilm.com