DVD Menu - Planning

Before building the menu in Encore it is important to plan things out before you begin. To do this I made 2 new documents to help explain to myself and the examiner what I am trying to create, a Storyboard and a flow chart.

For the storyboard, I had 6 panels showing the screen size, (PAL Widescreen 1270x576), the order of the panels interms of playback chronology and the Duration of the shot or sequence so I and the client knows what I, as the creator is looking to create in terms of visuals, animations and movie files. This is a technique more regularly attatched to the film making process but it applies and is helpfull here for breaking down the animation and flow of the media.

The flow chart is something more regularaly applied to the process of designing an interface, which is in the end, what we are creating for the DVD. It is a user interface. So what does the flow chart represent? Well, it shows every item, asset, timeline, menu etc that makes up your full menu. Then, you can draw lines from item to item in the specific order with links and end actions. This way you know how everything will run and where thinks have to be linked when you actually build the menu on Encore. It acts like a map for the programmer and saves you having to contantly "Check Project" and you alwsys know your next move.

With these steps completed, and the animationsn and media created, it is time to start the Encore build....