[John Rich]

When you “edit in Photoshop”, Photoshop creates a new file to edit in photoshop, so you aren’t editing the original menu you made. Why the new file isn’t PAL if it started out in PAL, I have no idea.

However, if you want edit in AE, you can go directly from ENcore to AE, at least in AE 6.5 (a selection from either Edit or Menu), so if it’s PAL menu in Encore, it should be a PAL composition in AE.
John

JOHNR

[John Rich]

I think this was recently discussed and Dave Garrett made a tutorial concerning it (google for his website). Basically, it involves to making a menu with different pictures for each button outside the button itself on the menu. Then you make a highlight layer that covers the pictures that you want for the fake highlights. Then you go to the subpicture highlights and set the “normal” color for the highlight at 100% and make the color the same color as the background.
Set the seoected opacity to 0%. This uncovers each picture you have selected for the highlight.
Unfortunately, I think when you come back from selecting from the button, you briefly show all of the fake highlights briefly. If I remember correctly, that’s as close as you can come with Encore.
John

[John Rich]

There is a program called Camtasia which allows one to record the screen. However, it looks like most of the Cow folks particularly Aahron Rabinowitz(who makes great tuts), somehow transfer the screen capture to Flash.

I couldn’t find that in the “stickies” above, but I was probably looking in the wrong place.
John

[John Rich]

There is a great Russel Brown tutorial (Google Russel Brown because for some reason I can’t include the web site) which I think does what you want. It’s the very last tut on his page called Advanced Masking.

It sort of summarizes what everybody has said.
John

JOHNR

[John Rich]

Filip,

That’s really a great answer and idea. Have you ever used Camtasia for a screen capture of Google Earth ( the free version?)
I was just thinking about just typing in the city I wanted to scan to and then capturing the motion of the screen so I could create an AVI with Camtasia, but I haven’t used it yet?

I suppose I could use the Pro Version, but it is a little expensive. However, have you used the pro version and is it worth it.
Thanks again for the great idea.
John Rich

JOHNR

[John Rich]

I don’t think there is a subpicture duration control.
I may be wrong, but it seems you want to have a moving background that loops in your original menu, but completely fades out at the end of the loop. If so, you have to leave the subpicture highlight layer out of each of the buttons, ie no )=1) type layers and make a fake selection type graphic for the first button. Then in AE your background will include this graphic and it can all be faded out at the end only to reloop.

If you want to move to the next button ie from play all to scene select, while the background is playing, make sure the second button is set to autoactivate, so it goes to an identical menu, which now has the graphic on the second menu. Dave Garrett has several tuts on how to do this.
You need one menu for each button you have, but the selection graphics can be much nicer.
I hope this helps, but it looks complex when I re-read it.
John Rich

JOHNR

[John Rich]

When I use the R/W disks, I erase them first (using Nero either Fast or complete) and then reburn them with Nero. I’ve always made a Folder, with Encore, and burned it with Nero, because in spite of what Encore manual says, it is slower to burn the folder with Encore, than with Nero.

I hope that is what you had in mind.
John

JOHNR

[John Rich]

KirAsh4,
You can try this (third and fourth parts of “Turning Pages”) to work out a motion menu with AE (modified after Adam Kampia, and others).
jmrser.com.
John Rich

JOHNR

[John Rich]

Dave,
I appologize for interferring here, but I was thinking that if after effects was available, one could do the whole thing as a motion background (per Adam Kampia’s tut). You could do the “cut out” with a mask and then the second movie would play behind it and you could set the loop point to the spot where the cutout comes in.
KirAsh4, if your interested in that approach, I could be more detailed. I will say, the first menu I ever did was with Dave’s 4 part tutorial using Premiere and photoshop and it just takes a few more steps that AE, but is just as good.

John Rich

JOHNR

[John Rich]

Mike,

Sorry to be late in getting back about this, but a couple of problems came up.
Anyway, I did what I think might be an acceptable job. There is still some flicker on the TV (for some reason, the AE work area bar flickers the worst).
When I went back to the Total Training disk, they flicker some too and it is probably the same.

I don’t know how to post an MPEG2 onto my web site, since it won’t open in Media Player like the files I encoded in Windows Media Encoder. This might not be good enough for your projects, but I did want you to check it out.
Plus I would learn how to do the Mpeg to web site, if you could let me know how to do it.
I also, made a DVD folder of this, but it’s too big to post.
John Rich

JOHNR