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Encore buttons in selected and activated states
Hi,
I’m having a difficult time getting menu buttons to behave the way I’d like in Encore CS4. I was hoping someone might be able to help me. Here’s a file that displays what I’m trying to do: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zjtprs68szs53q6/Menu01a_help.jpg
Anything you could do to help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Seth -
11 Replies
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How do they behave/misbehave? Do they look correct when you use the state buttons at the bottom of the menu viewer?
Stan Jones
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Thanks for your help. I can’t get the blue box to show up behind the text in the selected state, and the glowing blue box to appear behind the text in the activated state. Any thoughts?
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Start with a template from the Encore library. Click on the states buttons in the image. Now edit that menu to add your backgrounds. Still work?
Stan Jones
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Unfortunately, I didn’t find any templates that behave the way I’d like. It seems that highlights only appear over the text layer, not behind. And behind is the way I’d like them to appear. Am I out of luck with Encore?
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The template option is just to be sure you are testing correctly, and can use the template for testing.
From Encore, select the menu, “edit in photoshop,” and move the layer you want behind to a lower layer than the text.
Stan Jones
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Yes. I have tested and modified existing templates and they work as intended. I can’t figure out a way to make my concept work, however, in Encore.
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I assume you are looking for a button like this:
To look like this when selected:
Stan Jones
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Yes. Although, that button lays on top of the text. Ideally, I’d like the box to lay behind the text. And of course there’s the issue of the glow for the selected state… Is that doable in Encore? Or other DVD authoring program?
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This text is actually in the same layer as the graphic.
But yes, glow and such concepts are a problem in the DVD spec for highlights, not just in Encore. Highlights are only 2 bit color; really don’t allow effects or fancy graphics. Just move on to bluray, lol.
Part of what you were seeing is that Encore (any DVD authoring) bakes all of your button layer set (other than highlights) into a background and then the highlights get added on top of that. No matter how you arrange the button set layers, in the end, that is what you have. So text that is not in a highlight layer becomes part of the background, and the highlights appear over it. That is why so many highlights do not cover the whole button area.
Re the glow, in Encore, you can try a workaround using autoactive to actually go to a different menu where the normal state of that button has the glow; the user sees it as the button glowing when they select it. For a 4 button menu, you would have 4 menus, one for each button in the selected state.
But that technique does not work on computers because a mouse-over does not autoactivate as a TV remote “select” does.
Stan Jones
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That’s a great explanation and advice. Thanks so much. It does, however, leave me high and dry. Oh well. I guess I’ll have to redesign.
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