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Small video window playing within a .psd menu. Possible?
I have a very cool menu a graphic artist designed for a project Im doing for a friend. DVD authoring is not my specialty by any means, especially not in Encore, so this may a very simple question. I hope.
The graphic designer has a polaroid lying on a desk in my menu, every element is a clean photoshop layer, including the inset of the polaroid. currently there is a still pic inside, but the client is wondering if I can put a 30 second looping video within the layer.
I’ve been taking a few stabs at it and not making much headway, is this a simple thing to do? Anyone have any tips?
I appreciate any help I can get.
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4 Replies
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Encore supports placing motion video into designated areas (drop zones) when they are buttons. If the Polaroid insert was in a button group, and you gave it a (%) prefix, you could then drag a chapter from a timeline into the region, and select “Animate Buttons” in the motion tab.
This of course means your 30 second video now becomes a button on the menu, and once selected, would start playing that video.
It doesn’t sound like this is what you want to do, and Encore was not designed to be a compositing program either. You should be using After Effects to place a video into the Polaroid.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
Thanks for the suggestion. Just out of curiosity, would I need to make the entire background a video at that point? Im assuming yes, if so what would happen to all of my layers currently in the psd which I am using as buttons?
I know I could easily bring the PSD into AE and quickly comp the video in, but then I would be left with a flattened video and all the other layer information would be gone for the menu. Is there a way to comp video into the psd without this happening?
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Yes, the entire background would need to be a video. This is how all motion menus work; there is a rendered video for the background, and button highlights that overlay it.
I’m assuming your PSD is already configured as an Encore menu, with button groups prefixed with (+), etc. You should save that as a new file that will act as your button template. You can delete everything from that PSD except for the button layer groups and the highlight layers. Button layer groups are prefixed with (+), and highlight layers are prefixed with (=1), (=2), and/or (=3). Your PSD should also have a background layer, which can be all black or anything you want (it will be replaced by the rendered video).
Now import your full PSD into AE with the graphics, and remove the button highlights (they will not be rendered into the background). Place the 30 second video into the Polaroid, change it’s perspective if necessary, and render out (I recommend the Quicktime Animation codec).
In Encore, import the button template as a menu. Then import the rendered background from AE as an asset, and assign as the motion background for the menu. Your audio should also be the same duration as the video, and can even be rendered into the AE composition.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
Wow, that makes perfect sense.
Thank you so much for your help! I really appreciate it.
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