[George Wing]

The Tutorial talks about the “delay” between the FIRST-PLAY and the MAIN-MENU. And it brings up a good point about menu background audio — you cannot have a continuous audio stream with the First-Play approach…

Regards,
George

[George Wing]

Some viewers *might* see a slight delay when it jumps from the FIRST-PLAY to the MAIN-MENU — it would depend on their playback device (i.e. probably transparent on a computer, but in some set-top DVD Players, it might be noticeable).

After the buttons fade in, does the menu still have motion, or is it a still menu after the intro-motion?

A method that would avoid the possible pause would be to render out one long motion menu with the fading-in buttons as part of the menu. And you use highlight subpics for the menu buttons. If the buttons finish fading-in at the 10-second mark, then set the LOOP POINT for the menu motion to the 10-second mark. You’ll have to decide what to do at the end of the motion menu (i.e. link to another menu, loop back around current menu, etc…). NOTE: if you loop back to the current menu, you will have to watch it from the start again (meaning all the buttons fading in again). You could “tweak” the finished DVD to bypass that intro section, but you would have to use an external utility (like IFOedit or PGCedit, etc…) to modify the DVD…

Regards,
George

[George Wing]

I *think* you are describing Buttons Over Video (BOV) — but even they would have some limitations during playback of a Title. Encore DVD 2.x doesn’t have a BOV feature, so not sure how you could do this using Encore…

btw — I believe the HD Authoring formats (eithe HD-DVD and/or Blu-ray) will allow for more “interaction” during Title playback — is that where you might have seen this technique implemented?

Regards,
George

[George Wing]

Thanks David — I think you’re right and that will probably do the trick (I’ll have to try it later tonight when I get back to my editing machine). I would normally setup the menu to be at least a minute long, but for download purposes, I cut it down to 10 seconds on the menu motion — and maybe doing so I mistakenly got rid of the “looping” settings.

Hoping to try the software a little more this weekend — my 30-day trial ends in a few days 🙁

Regards,
George

[George Wing]

Ahhh — maybe I forgot to set an END Action for the menu? I only just started using the TRIAL of Encore 2.0 — I’m not that familiar with the software yet (I usually use DVDLab Pro or DVD Architect 4). Sorry about that 🙁

Regards,
George

[George Wing]

Hi David,

I’m not sure why all 3 were showing at the same time (was that on he computer, or in a set-top dvd player)?

I used PowerDVD and WinDVD to play it, and only one was showing at a time.

I’ve done this in DVDLabPro, and burned to DVD+RW, all worked properly. I’ll try burning this one I created in Encore DVD 2.0 (TRIAL) to disc, and see how it plays in my DVD Players.

Regards,
George

[George Wing]

Here’s a sample of this technique using the Encore DVD 2.0 TRIAL

~10mb and Active for 7 days: https://tinyurl.com/2pfro7

NOTE: as mentioned, when selecting a button, some players will unhide ALL the other buttons for a brief moment before linking to the button target (it seems to be DVD Player dependent).

Regards,
George

[George Wing]

Hi David,

I can’t access those at the moment (maybe when I get home). But I think your description sounds right — perhaps the PREVIEW is different between 1.5 vs. 2.0?

I did this using the Trial of 2.0 — and in the Preview of my project, when selecting a button, all black buttons were gone 🙁

But when playing the DVD on my PC with PowerDVD and WinDVD, they played fine, and also on two of my dvd players (unfortunately, the other two dvd players did the same thing — selecting a button showed all of the hidden buttons 🙁

Regards,
George

[George Wing]

Hi David,

I think you are doing it properly — I noticed Encore 2.0’s Preview does what you are describing (as do *some* DVD Players). Compile it to your hard drive, and play it with PowerDVD or WinDVD to see if it does the same thing.

I was told that *some* set-top DVD Players will also do that — but I’m not sure why. I have two DVD Players that show everything, and two that play it properly…

Regards,
George

[George Wing]

“Switched Menus” works, but sometimes there can be a small “delay” while the menu switches (auto activates) to the other menu — the amount of delay can vary between DVD Players.

There’s also the “Inverse Selection” trick, where basically you have a solid background color. All your buttons are covered by the same solid-color highlight in the NORMAL state. Then the SELECTED/ACTIVATED states have full transparency so the object can be seen.

Here’s a link to a tutorial for this technique using DVD Lab PRO:
https://mediachance.com/dvdlab/tutorial/inverse.html

Regards,
George