Creating DVD Layout Appendix

I didn't cover the actual creating of menus for obvious reason - that is the basic.

However there are some tricks I used that should be mentioned.

Main menu.

The Text for play all and Episodes is all part of the background video created in Vegas

I wanted to create the highlighting as a star that appear behind the text.

This will be a procedure that is different than creating normal menu button in DVD-lab so it is good to mention it here:

 After I created the animated background (with the text burned in the video) I also render a single frame of only the text so I can later use it  as a sort of mask:

I saved this as a transparent PNG file so I can import it in DVD-lab PRO. (The white is transparent)

I used the star from Object Shapes and dragged it to the menu, then make another copy of it. I set the first star as red and the second, resized down a little I set as a blue.

The colors of this stars do not play any role - I just wanted them to be different so I can position them correctly. These stars will be a sub pictures for Highlighting. Sub-pictures get its color from a global Color Map settings. They don't care about what colors they are in the menu designer.

To create a combination of the objects for multicolored Highlighting mask I use the Button Hi-lite group feature.

Note: On a still menu, if I want to create a highlighting that is not visible normally I would have to set it as Invisible Normal - in the Link properties of the menu. With this option the background will be created without these objects and they will appear only as Highlighting (I hate spelling this word).

However because the menu is a motion menu in this case - any object placed on the menu will be automatically invisible!

This is the reason I created the text on the menu right in Vegas and not added it later in DVD-lab PRO as a text. The later would require to use Render Motion option to merge the added text with the motion background - which is the same effect as if I just create the text directly in Vegas.

Since I am not planning to use Render Motion I can leave the objects visible.

Button Hi-lite Group.

We have four color groups in DVD for the Highlighting objects. These represents the four colors that DVD specs allowed to use on menu Highlighting. The reason you see only 3 groups in DVD-lab is because the 4th color is used as fully transparent mask for all the parts of Highlighting picture where we don't want to display anything, but want to see the video/still underneath.

The first red star will be as Group 2 and I will set the Group 2 as a fully opaque Yellow in Selected state.

The next blue star I placed on top of it will be Group 3 and I made it semitransparent red.

Then the third object - my previously created Mask will be a group 1 that I set to fully transparent.

The sub-picture mapping is - a mapping of one color to a color + transparency. That means the compiler will create first one image of all the highlighting objects then map each color to one of the four available colors + transparency.

So by doing the above I created a red semi-transparent star with a yellow border that has the text punched out.

Something as ugly as this:

But combine this with the video background and you get this:

But I am speaking about the button too early. Before the group of these object become one button I must draw a Group Hotspot over all three objects.

The borders of this Group hotspot will tell the DVD player what is the dimension and position of the button. (Yes, DVD can have only rectangular buttons). The Group Hotspot will tell the compiler that all object below are part of the one button. Any link I add later I add to this hotspot, not to the objects.

I also set different colors to the Activated color for each group - this is when the user clicks on the button.

You may wonder if it simply wouldn't look better if I assign a non-transparent color to the text so when it is selected it will be highlighted. No, it wouldn't look better. One of the problem with the 4 color subpicture defined in DVD specs is that it is very hard to create a good looking text as a Highlighting. Text is too complex and all the curves will create amazing amount of jagged edges. On a small text it looks very, very ugly. That's why I decided not to highlight the text itself but do things around it.

That's it!

The Episodes menus.

First I thought that I will repeat the transparency mask trick from the main menu, but enough is enough. It is just a number that is near the TV.

Let it have some jagged edges. One one single number I can survive it.

It is basically the same trick as above, but without the need to have a mask. I will simply create a star, then place a text on top of it. Each will be different group and this time I will use almost opaque colors for the right punch.

Then I placed the group Hotspot - over the star + the whole TV.
Why I did this? For people who use computer and a mouse to select the button! They will move the mouse over the TV, but if there is no hotspot - nothing will happen. They will have to hunt with the mouse over the screen to see where is the damn sweet spot. By making the Group Hotspot large enough and placing it over the area where user is expected to click I will fix this problem with mouse owners once for all!

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