[Simon Bonner]

Hi Scott,

Sorry to not be overly constructive, but if I were in your position I would upgrade immediately. Then you’ll have more project options than those given by 1.5 (plus you’ll probably work faster with the newer interface in place since CS2)

[Simon Bonner]

Hi Travis,

How do you mean “before the button is shown”? I would need to know the exact setup of the menu. Do you have a video set as the background, partway through which a ‘button’ appears on the video? Or do you have a video file that is set to play before the menu? Have you modified the loop point of the menu?

[Simon Bonner]

Hi Andreia,

I don’t think this is possible. What you could do is have a button activate automatically when selected, sending the end user to a new menu which is a replica of the first except that the new menu includes the motion effect you want.

If you want to learn more about how subpictures (the official name for highlights) work, just search for that word rather than highlights. You might come up with something.

[Simon Bonner]

Hi Bryn,

Man, I must have done the wrong A levels!

If you post your email address here (though disguised so you don’t get inundated with spam) I’ll send you a copy of the preset. We’re talking about Andrew Kramer’s preset, yes?

[Simon Bonner]

Haven’t seen the tutorial you’re talking about, but when I make a menu in AE (version 7) I go to composition, save frame as, photoshop layers. Then in Encore I import the photoshop file as a menu. Voila!

If you’re not sure how to make the buttons etc transfer from AE to Encore, that’s easy too. In your comp in AE, select the button layer in the timeline and choose layer, adobe encore dvd, set as button. Your layer will be renamed with a (+) at the start, which is the Encore naming convention for buttons.

If you have a subpicture layer (an image that you want to appear over the button when it is selected with the end user’s remote), there is an additonal step which you should perform first. Select the subpicture layer and choose layer, adobe encore dvd, assign to subpicture 1. The prefix of this layer will be changed. Then select both the subpicture and the button layers and complete the above described step to make the pair of them a button (a new comp will be made containing both layers).

[Simon Bonner]

It looks like there are lots of things going on here, not just a single plug-in or effect.

There appear to be particles floating about in the water. This could be done with particle playground, or some 3rd party particle system like trapcode’s particular. I think Andrew Kramer’s tutorial “moving 3d lines” at videocopilot.net might show you a way of replicating this. Also, the inky shapes are rippling as though the water we’re seeing them through is refracting the light. You can achieve this look by using the displacement map effect which ships with AE. Aharon has a turorial on the effect in the AE podcast, so try looking that up. As for making the ink warp into shapes, well, I’m afraid I’m nowhere near proficient enough to offer a meaningful suggestion. But good luck!

[Simon Bonner]

Sometimes choking the matte about .50-.75 of a pixel gets rid of some of the awkward bits around the edges that are hard to remove by altering keylight properties. I’m not saying this is the best way, or even a good way, to work. I’ve just found that it works for me.

[Simon Bonner]

I haven’t tried this myself, but perhaps it will work: try making one comp with a high shutter speed, one comp with a low shutter speed, then nest the two comps inside a new comp. Then animate the opacity settings to fade between the two original comps. I don’t know what your project looks like, but maybe if there is a lot of motion blur, this will not be a noticeable switch.

[Simon Bonner]

I think you need to watch/read tutorials that use popular plugins like trapcode’s particular and zaxwerks 3d invigorator and decide for yourself if you want to use them. If you just buy a bunch of plugins for the sake of it, you might not get round to using them. What a waste of money that would be!

[Simon Bonner]

I’ve saved keylight presets before for when I’m filming a lot of shots in the same environment but need to apply the effect multiple times: very useful. Just select the keylight effect in the effect controls panel (click the name) and then go to the animation menu and select save animation preset. If you’re using other effects in conjunction with keylight (i sometimes use simple choker amongst others), select that effect too before you save and then when you apply the preset, all effects will be applied together. Ace!