Is there a way to copy DVD menus?

[John Rofrano]

[William Mitchell] “The closest I can find (after spending days on this) is to copy each menu as a theme, but it doesn’t copy all the buttons with it. And, I can’t find a way to copy the buttons even separately, although I see there’s a way to select button styles, so there must be a way to save buttons. This would be my second choice in solving this problem, a lot more work than simply replacing the file and rebuilding the links.”

Hopefully you’re going to laugh when you see how easy it is. 😉

Double-click the button that plays the movie. Drag and drop the HD version over the SD version on the timeline. That’s it!

Change your project from DVD to Blu-ray and burn it.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[William Mitchell]

Thanks John, ya, that’s reeaaaalll funny ;^)

Well, I JUST finished rebuilding the menus for the BD version from scratch. It is rendering as I type this.

The good news is a) more experience with the software, and 2) it’s much faster doing it the second time LOL

Thanks for the (SIMPLE!) solution, I will definitely use this in the future as I have many more hockey games to edit/burn.

I appreciate your time! After reading the forums for a few weeks I have to wonder if you are the one who programmed Vegas and DVDA ;^)

Thanks again, have a great day.
Bill

[John Rofrano]

[William Mitchell] “After reading the forums for a few weeks I have to wonder if you are the one who programmed Vegas and DVDA ;^)”

No, but I did program all of the VASST Software plug-ins (e.g., Ultimate S Pro, Caption Assistant, Mayhem, Production Assistant, etc.) so you need to have a pretty intimate knowledge of how Vegas works to be able to program plug-ins for it. 🙂

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Richard Vaughan]

Another way that works well:
1. Set the project properties to match your camcorder format. In my case it is HDV 1080-60i (1440×1080).
2. Edit your movie.
3. Render using the same format as the project settings. In my case it is HDV, and will produce a .m2t file. No recompression should be necessary except where you have added transitions or effects, so this step does not take too long.
4. Open DVDA and set its project properties to Blu-ray disc, with appropriate video and audio settings. In my case I take advantage of the fact that Blu-ray supports 1440×1080 AVC files, which should be easier to convert to from HDV than 1920×1080, with quality just as good.
5. Bring in your media file, create your menus, and check the preview.
6. Prepare your Blu-ray image file (this takes some time!)
7. Save your project.
8. Change the project settings to DVD. Be sure to make the aspect ratio 16×9 (for some reason this is not the default). Your menus will be magically converted to DVD resolution – you may see the text jump slightly as all the fonts are recreated, but the menus will be essentially unchanged.
9. Prepare your DVD folder (this takes time but not as much as the Blu-ray).
10. Save your project under a different name than the Blu-ray version.
11. Burn your discs. The two versions should work identically.

Best wishes! I hope your hockey footage comes out well. Years ago I used to watch a few games – I have seen Bobby Orr, John Bucyk, Rocket Richard, Jean Béliveau, Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, etc., play, and I wish they had camcorders back then!