| External Subpicture
The main menu is looped animated motion. In a NLE was added hand written text for the two buttons. One for the play all says "Play 'em all lil partner" and the second for episodes says "Pick a show and make it go".
I decided to extract the text from the video to use it for subpicture layer. In this case I will create the whole subpicture outside DVD-lab in a image editing application then import it with Load Subpicture.
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| I copied a frame of video 720x480 to image editing application |
Then I used curves to dim all below highs to extract the text. |
Then I invert it and make sure the white is 100% white using Levels. |
I combined it with some other graphics - red and blue stars. The image is still 720x480 |
If you work with DVD-lab for some time you already know the magic of Color Mapping on DVD buttons. Basically we have only 4 colors that are on the subpicture image represented by white, black, red and blue. These will be then mapped to different 4 colors on DVD where the white is in DVD-lab used for fully transparent background.
Here is the detail of a subpicture created in image editing application.
Since I used the video frame in its original size 720x480, then extracted the text from it, the subpicture is still 720x480 and therefore it should perfectly match the original video. It is important to realize that on a subpicture there cannot be other color except the white, black, red or blue. Not even a shade, not even anti-aliasing on the edges of objects. So all has the old-good pixelated look. I saved my subpicture as bmp file.
Back in DVD-lab I placed the video to the menu as a motion menu, then used Menu - External S-picture - Load External Sub-picture.
Then I used Menu - External S-Picture - Show External Sub-picture to make the loaded subpicture visible.
After that I used Group Hotspot to draw a hotspot around each of two buttons, then switched the External Subpicture off: Menu - External S-Picture - Show External Sub-picture
Then I added links to the hotspot so they become buttons.
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Now it is the time to open Color Map and map the subpicture colors to a new colors on menu. In DVD-lab the Color 1 represents the red color on external subpicture, the Color 2 represents the blue color on the external subpicture and Color 3 represents the black color.
So I mapped it to the color as shown here. The text (black on the bmp) is mapped to white (3), the small stars (blue on the bmp) are mapped to red (2) and the large star (red on bmp) is mapped to green (1) with half transparency.
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The mapped result (highliting) on the menu is shown below. Since my subpicture was created from the 720x480 video frame and never resized it should match the text on the video frame very well, both in DVD-lab PRO Simulation and on the compiled DVD.
Now I can make few test compile of the menu, play it in PowerDVD and fix few pixels here and there on the imported subpicture.
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