DVD Menu - Building the DVD Menu

With flowcharts, storyboards, templates, animations and Menus designed and created, you now have all the materials for building the final menu. This is a quite a long complicated task, as, with nearly 60 different interactive items to control and link, it is easy to forget about some things and leave loose ends behind.

It is a case of building up from the ground. Starting by creating a new folder with the PAL, DVD settings, I have the blank slate for the project. To start, I thought I would put the main menu in first to act as a branching off point. However, it is also important to try and do things in a sequence to stop confusion so I also included my opening animation and set it as my first play. This means that it is the first thing that will happen on autoplay. By the end of the project I will have a Film Logo as first play, but for the purposes of testing I used the opening animation.

From the main menu I linked each button to a menu, for Scene Seletion, Setup and Extras. Then menu by menu I moved through the process of linking pages to each other. Often, half way through the process of page linking I discovered variosu problems with menus, such as overlapping buttons, buttons that wouldnt render (which was caused by over complicated button designs, e.g many colours, complex images, layer styles and effects). Luckily, Encore encorporates an "Edit Menu in Photoshop" button which lets you open up Photoshop, make the various changes without having to re-import the PSD. You simply save and it's changed in Encore. It is important to contantly test so you know when you need to Edit the PSDs. I find it's always better if you find a problem earlier on. I check both manually and by using the "Check Project" tool which diagnoses issues and faults in the menu.



The Encore Workspace



With Menus created, I have to transition between menus. To do this I linked every Main Menu button to my "closing" animation, which was copied 4 times, one for all four options. These individual .mov files were then linked onto the next Menu which inturn had their own options. I chose not to have sub-menu transitions as they tend to slow the process down andover complicate the build. At that level of the menu, the viewer just wants to get to there desired option, whereas before, the transition helped build tention and atmosphere.


Then it is a matter of repeating previous stages such as button design and creation using the Photoshop Codecs and applying to Encore, linking pages using the Properties Menu. As I didn't actually have a film to link to I created a "Work in Progress" Page to link to. I also seperated these into Scenes to show I understood the technique of creating them and linking them, without having the practical materials to complete this.

Lastly I chose and edited Audio. For this I used free samples ripped from the internet of "Descrete Electric Whining", "Amplified Gunshot" and the Music Track "Havoc B" by Enter Shikari. Some of these clips needed volume and cutting and other general editing. Sadly, Encore has limited editing options for audio clips so I searched the college computers for appropriate software. I found "Nero 9 SoundTrax" in the Nero Media Package and used the "Clip Editor" on my imported Audio Files. Here I changed some lengths and changed the Volume Bend, which lets the user define the volume of the piece at whatever given point. I then exported it as an MP3 and added to the project. Either adding the MP3 to the timeline (for movie clips), or setting the track as the audio selection in the "Motion" Menu (for Menu editing).

The final step is extensive testing, making sure all you links work and in your set sequence with no glitches. This is a time consuimg but vital exercise and decreases the margin of error. At the time of writing I am only having 1 Audio issue on an animation but the rest seems to be working. Soon I will have to start testing on Third Parties.