[John Cuevas]

Stef

That is a problem I have run into also. If you set your loop point correctly and let it play over and over, it will loop back to the 10 second spot. Once you go to a timeline though it goes and finishes, it returns to the beginning of the menu, correct?

The only way around this is to make 2 menus. One menu for the first time, when you want the buttons to explode into place, and then a second menu when they are already in place.

Really there are two ways to accomplish this. You make your first menu only the first 10 seconds when your buttons explode into place. Then a second menu for the next 50 seconds. The first menu has an “end action” that points to the second menu. Menu’s load quickly, so the pause would be very brief. All of your timeline end actions will point to the second menu.

The second way is to just create a second menu. I think this would be easier, click the menu you have, duplicate it. Now in the copy, delete the background movie. Now in premiere, make an .avi of the last 50 seconds of your movie. Import that into Encore and set that as the background in the second movie. Now set all the end actions of the timelines to go to the second menu.

No worries about the english. Glad your project is working out for you.
johnny

[John Cuevas]

You can view the layer eyeballs here.

https://www.editorsbin.com/adobe/encore/reviews/designing_menus/

In encore, under the layers menu, you will see the eyeballs on the left side. They turn on or off the layer visiblity. I’m glad your project is coming along.

johnny

[John Cuevas]

We actually do this quite a bit, mixing video and print materials on DVD’s, but we don’t use director. I find that Sonic eDVD makes this process relatively easy. For $200.00 it just can’t be beat.

https://estore.sonic.com/enu/edvd/default.asp

And no I don’t work for Sonic or anything, just find that program to be really cool.

[John Cuevas]

You can view the layer eyeballs here.

https://www.editorsbin.com/adobe/encore/reviews/designing_menus/

What I mean by invisible buttons is that you have created a video of your button exploding into place. That isn’t your real button though, it’s just video of it(videobutton), though it looks exactly like the real button.

Therefore, you need to create a button that will look exactly like that button, have the highlights and exact same placement of that button so people will be able to access it. What you don’t want is for that button to be seen before the (videobutton) explodes into place. That is why you turn off the eyeballs, this will cause your real button to be there, but not be seen, then when your video reaches the loop point of 00:00:10:00, the button becomes active, now the highlights will be seen when you rollover it.

Hope this helps
johnny

[John Cuevas]

The steps are basically the same, but since I don’t edit with Premiere, someone may have to correct me.

You need to create your final menu, with final button placement. This should match the movie you have made in Premiere. Then you take this movie and import it as an asset. This will be your be your bottom layer, your actual buttons, that contain the links to the timelines will be on top, but invisible.

Either go to the motion tab in 2.0 or the alt-drag the movie into your menu. Now, go to your menu and under layers turn off the eyeballs. Go to “loop point” and set it at 00:00:10:00. This is when the buttons will become active, before that they will not be seen and the highlights won’t turn on.

Hope this helps.
johnny

[John Cuevas]

If I understand correctly, you want a first play movie that seemlessly brings in your buttons.

Create your movie and render it out as an .avi file.

If you created the movie in After Effects, go to the frame where you want the buttons to become activated(10 seconds) and from the “composition”, “save frame as” choose “photoshop layers”. This will be the menu you will actually be using, so you can set your links.

Import as menu. Open up the layers tab and turn off all of they eyeballs.

Now import the .avi file as an asset. Under the menu tab, “motion” (2.0) set video to your .avi file (in 1.5, alt-drag the movie into the menu). Now set the loop point to 10 seconds, this will keep the buttons turned off until your explosion is over.

Johnny

[John Cuevas]

Yeah, you could do it through Macromedia, it would be a heck of a lot simpler though eDVD though.

[John Cuevas]

Kudos Jeff, that’s a very innovative solution.

[John Cuevas]

No, the highlight, to my knowledge, can’t be animated, it’s a still image. With only one button, you could animate a blinking cursor on the BKG movie, but that’s about it.

[John Cuevas]

also look at this…probably a little easier then the first one.

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=1&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/james_colin/glass/index.html