[David Yowell]

When I open the main screen there is no title bar and no controls at all. I am using Windows 7. Any thoughts?

[David Yowell]

When i inserted the DVD, the main screen of my project came up with no controls, other than the buttons that I had placed on the screen. That is exactly what I wanted, only I thought that there would be some type of control panel on the bottom. When I pressed one of the buttons, that’s when it went to WMP. Then, when it finished playing that particular video, I had to start the DVD up again in order to go to another video. I have viewed the videos on Lynda.com and it looked like I would be able to do what I’m attempting. I’m sorry to have to ask such beginners questions, but this is my first attempt to try and make my own DVD for my company

[David Yowell]

I don’t know what a Software DVD Player is. Do you mean that you have to have some special DVD Player installed in order to do what I want to do? If that’s true, is there any workaround that I can use to make the DVD the way I want to?

[David Yowell]

Thanks again, Jeff. I will try to duplicate the way that you suggested. Now I have another problem. I just finished my first DVD build and it looked like it came out just right when I inserted the DVD into the computer. The Main Menu screen came up just like I wanted. When I clicked on one of the buttons to view a short video clip, it played the clip in Windows Media Player. Can you tell me why it would do this. When I was putting the DVD together in Encore, I would preview it and it seemed to run just fine. I can’t find anything that I’ve missed, but I know there must be something. The DVD that I’m putting together is going to be used in computers only, so I don’t know if there’s something that I need to do for that or if that’s making it run in Windows Media Player. Thanks Jeff and I’ll wait to hear back from you.

[David Yowell]

Thanks for your response, Jeff. I will try to use the distribute function and see if that will help to place items more accurately. As far as copying a pasting a button, I tried that, but the buttons did not function. Is there something else that I need to do?

[David Yowell]

Thanks for your response Dave. I tried what you said, but didn’t have any luck. I’m probably not explaining myself very well. Here’s what’s happening.

I have a JPEG brick wall that’s a little bigger than the project that I’m working on. On the Brick wall are 11 pics that look like they are tacked onto the wall with drop shadows behind them. All of this is one JPEG that I did in Photoshop. I begin the project with a closeup of one of the pics an slowly scale back so that the pic is still the only thing on the screen, just not as much as a closeup as the beginning. This runs for about five second. Then in 15 frames, I move to another pic on the wall and scale it so that it’s the only thing in the picture. I do the same thing with this pic in that I slowly scale it for about five seconds and then quickly go to another pic within 15 seconds. I want to do this for all of the pics.

So Dave, here’s my problem. When I’m working on the pics in the corners, after I set the keyframes, as I scale out, it keeps showing a little bit of the black, outside of the brick wall. I can’t figure out why. I know this is confusing, but if you have any ideas, I would really appreciate your help. Thanks again.

[David Yowell]

Hello Stephen,

I have two layers. One has the original pic on it and nothing else. The other is a duplicate of the original pic, inverted and placed below the original so that it looks like a reflection. I then made a mask of it and played with the transparency until I got it exactly like I want it. I have parented the two layers so that they stay together no matter where I place them.

My question is, I know that there’s a way to easily add the mask and transparency to other pics, I just don’t know how. Otherwise, I’m going to have to do each one by hand.

I hope that’s the information you’re looking for. Hopefully, you can help me.

Thanks again.

[David Yowell]

Thanks Lucas. I really appreciate your advice. Let me ask you this. You mentioned getting a lot of ram. The Motherboard that I am looking at will support up to 16gb of ram. This is ddr2 ram. Is ddr 2 enough or is it really worth the extra money to go with ddr3 ram with another motherboard? Thanks again for the help.

[David Yowell]

The end product is a video tutorial of some Electronic Medical Record software. I own a distributorship and need these videos for my customers. The vendor of the software made a video tutorial, but the docs had to download it on their computer and they didn’t like it. So I decided to copy the tutorial program and make my own DVD out of it. That’s what the customers want in order to view the features and benefits of the product. If you have any other advice, I’d love to hear it. Thanks again.

[David Yowell]

I will probably be replicating several hundred. So price is definitely a factor. Also, there are many customers that still only have CD players on their computers. So let me ask you this. Is there a CD authoring software that might work? Thanks again for your help.