Switched menu

Here is the deal: We have 3 movies. Now we would like to create a menu which looks simple, but whenever user press the navigation buttons on his remote not only the particular text will be selected but also the image on left will change!
I will tell you right now it is not a big deal to create this.

You have two options:

a) Create this all manually and you will maybe learn new tricks
b) Use "Generate Switched Menus" wizard in DVD-lab :-)

In either case the first step is identical

1. Create the base menu (Manual way and Wizard way)

I am not going to spend much time here, this is a basic. Just drop a background create title text, the 3 right texts for links. Now add an empty frame.

Now add links. Simply drag and drop a particular Movie item from project (the left tree control) to the related text. Start with the top text so the button order is 1,2,3 from top.

Before we copy this menu the last thing is to Lock position on an items which may get likely moved when we will work on it.
These are the frame and the 3 link texts. First select the object then in the Color properties check the Lock Position.

Whenever you select locked object it will display LOCKED and you can't move it nor resize it:

Good. The base is done!
At this point you can now follow the next text to see how it is done the manual way or skip this and see how it is done using a wizard.

2. Copy this menu to two other menus (Manual way)

Creating Duplicate menu is easy. Make sure you are on the menu which you want duplicate and in menu "Menu" select Add Duplicate"

Now do this 2 x so the total number of menus is 3.

3. Start working on the first menu (Manual way)

Read carefully, you will do this 3 times with some minor changes.

Add the video still into the menu: This is very easy and if you don't know at this point how to do this then shame on you (or me for not telling you) Select a still-frame of the first movie (Monument valley) in the Preview. How? Just activate the particular movie window, then scroll to the frame you like, switch to the Menu and drag and drop the still from the Preview to the menu.

Now resize the video-still to the size of the Frame object,
Place it on top of it and click Move to background so it is behind the Frame object.

The frame looks nice but mostly it will help us to place the video stills in the other two menus in what will appear the same position without much effort. (The thick frame which is in the same exact position in all 3 menus will cover any offset)

Good. Currently all buttons links to the movie. In this first menu we are OK with the Monument Valley link. But all the other buttons should link to the menus and we also have to set Auto-Action to them.

Here is the link list (I renamed the Movies and Menus so it is obvious what they are)
Monument Valley links to the Movie Monument (Movie 1)
Las Vegas to link to the Menu Vegas (Menu 2) + Auto-Action
Zion links to the Menu Zion (Menu 3) + Auto-Action

(These colors are the same colors which appear on the link description below the object just to help you to recognize things)
Yes, the last two has set auto action (Tab Link), that means whenever user navigate here the player will go to the link immediately without waiting to press Enter on remote.

That's almost it, but one last thing on this menu should be done.
Switch to the Tab General in the menu properties and set Force-Select Btn: to 1

This means that whenever you are on this menu the first button (Monument Valley) will be selected. This is important since the DVD has habit to remember the last position of links. This will make it straight. That's the Menu 1

4. Work on the second menu (Manual way)

Again the same, here you put a video frame from Las Vegas movie and change the links to: Monument Valley links to the Menu Monument (Menu 1) + Auto-Action Las Vegas to link to the Movie Vegas (Movie 2) Zion links to the Menu Zion (Menu 3) + Auto-Action And set the Force-Select Btn: to 2

5. Work on the third menu (Manual way)

Again the same, here you put a video frame from Zion movie and change the links to: Monument Valley links to the Menu Monument (Menu 1) + Auto-Action Las Vegas to link to the Menu Vegas (Menu 2) + Auto-Action Zion links to the Movie Zion (Movie 3) And set the Force-Select Btn: to 3

2-b The Wizard-ish way

Now, you did all the steps 2 to step 5 because you wanted to learn something.
Once you know what's going on, you will probably use the wizard to do these steps for you.
For wizard we did the step 1. which is identical to both manual and wizard way. We don't have to actually Lock the buttons, because the wizard can do it for us, but a good think is to lock position on the frame (because wizard can lock only buttons and frame is not an button - has no link).
Make sure you add Movie links to the text buttons exactly as in step 1, this will save you time. That means after step 1 we have a normal menu where each text links to the particular movie - Monument Valley links to the Monument movie, Las Vegas links to the Vegas movie and Zion links to the Zion movie.

The next step is much easier - click the wizard button and select Generate Switched Menus.

A dialog box will shortly explain what you are about to do.

You will see that a 2 additional menus will be created and you can choose lock position of all the buttons.
This is exactly what we done before: a two additional new menus will be generated and buttons on all three menus will be linked together exactly the way as described in the "Manual" part. All three menus will be also renamed and SW1, SW2 and SW3 is added to them.

You have now fully working menus, but of course they all look the same (like the first one). Now it is up to you how you make them different - in this tutorial we make the difference by simply adding different video-still on each menu, but of course it is up to you.
So that's the last step you have to do. Simply add a video-still to each menu the same way as described in the top part of step 3 - by dragging from Preview.

Conclusion

See how is it done? Each menu links only to one movie and the rest buttons are auto-action to the other menus. If you look at the link description which appear below selected object, on each menu one is red and other two are green.

See the Menus Side by side:

See the connection window for more bird-eye perspective.

Again the color coding of lines is identical to the colors of link description so it will let you spot errors. (Red is link to Movie, Blue is link to menu and green is Auto-Action to either Menu or Movie)

If you did this properly you created a good looking menu.

Note: When you will test this from your harddrive with software player such PowerDVD don't forget you have to click on the "remote" or use keyboard arrows because this simulates what user does with his remote control. By moving the mouse cursor over the buttons will not trigger the auto-action.

A next step

This is of course just the beginning. With the Switched menus you can actually create a quite interesting design. The menus may not differ only in a picture - they may reveal additional buttons for example. The possibilities are limitless. Consider the image below of a sleek not traditional menu. Each text (Menu 1..3) automatically reveal a sub menu with thumbnails - each thumbnail link to a chapter poitnt or a movie.