Encore CS3 Menu Question
 

I have a specific need from a bride wanting a DVD menu that has video at the top half and the bottom half are all the chapter points. She wants when the user rolls over any of the chapter points, the top half video changes to the video of the chapter point selected.

Is this possible to do?

thank you.

Andre,

Yes, it's possible, but it would take a lot of work and may still not function quite exactly like your bride would like.

First, of course, you need to design the menu. You could do this in Encore, but I find it easier to do in After Effects. But even in Encore, you are basically putting in video as the background with a graphics overlay that contains the chapter points. Then you would set the buttons up. They would have to be set up as automatically executing when you "roll over" them. Remember that on a set top DVD player, there is no "roll over" function. When you use the arrow to navigate to that button it would automatically execute. What it would execute is going to another menu that is exatly like the one you are on, just using different video for the background (i.e. video from that chapter). Note also that because of the way DVDs work, that there would be no way to keep a constant audio track going because you are jumping to a new menu. Also note that the "roll over" function on a computer player could be problematic because the menus would be jumping around as you rolled over the buttons. So you would need to create as many menus as you have chapter points, and navigate to that menu when you select that chapter point.

So bottom line is, it's possible, but not the easiest thing to do. Anyway, hopes this helps. Have fun!

Rob

I have done this before but on top of what was said above the menus on some players also take a little while to load.

thanks rob

yes i thought of doing it that way but i knew there would be no chance for audio. any authoring programs out there capable of doing this?

Adobe Encore 1.5+ does it. 1.0 might even do it but I cannot remember if it has auto button activation. That is all you really need to do the effect, then just link buttons to menus, then, make the button you moved to the default button on the new menu with a link to the actual video, if they click it they get the video, if the move to a new button they move to the new menu where the button they went to is now selected and links to a video. For how ever many buttons you have you have that many menus, I did not mind that part so much, it was mainly linking all the menus together correctly :-p

Andre,

If by <<any authoring programs out there capable of doing this?>> you mean can any authoring program do this without the audio restarting, then the answer is no. The DVD specification does not allow for continuous audio while changing to a new video stream, which is what you are doing by creating separate motion menus. So no DVD authoring program would be able to do it seamlessly.

Rob