Finished?

Hey! I finally finished my DVD menu. Everything is completely finished now. Guess I should go write that evaluation! (Btw I hid an easter egg somewhere :) :) )

Lesson X

Today I have learnt or "relearnt" about the use of Jpeg, Raster and Vector images (among others) when it comes to graphic image making and dvd menu design. Usually I take these for granted and often forget about them even though i use them all the time, but as i have discovered it is important to know what most of these things mean, and how they impact on graphic image making. Now you may be wondering why I havent actually said what these things do- HEY LOOK OVER THERE!!! (runs off into the distance)

DVD Menu Work 12 - Rollover Image Problems

 A new problem has arisen, this time involving my rollover images. I wanted to put a wizards head next to the highlighted button, but for whatever reason Encore won't allow a fully coloured image to be used as a rollover effect. So instead I have decided to use a simple highlight on the buttons instead. At this stage I am just nit picking so it doesnt really matter anyways.

Above: The buttons I'm going to use for my Menu.

DVD Menu Work 11 - AVI does work after all ¬_¬'

I just discovered that it actually was possible to use AVI files in encore after all. I don't know why i was told otherwise but it seems to have worked. I have started to link up all my menus and after tinkering with the aspect ratios I managed to make the menu look presentable. All that remains is for me to link up each screen and work some bugs out, but overall things seem to be going great.

DVD Menu Work 10 - Overlaying Buttons onto footage

I finally managed to overlay the buttons over a video clip! This means if i can import my finished movie file into encore i should be able to peice together my animated menu.

DVD Menu Work 9 - Problems importing into Encore

I'm having trouble importing the video clips into encore and overlaying the menu buttons. The main problem is that my video files apparently need to be in “.mov” format, which is annoying because I can’t seem to play these files on my computer. I'm following the tutorials but to no avail! I will continue to tinker until i have exhausted all possibilities.

DVD Menu Work 8 - Animating in Adobe Premier

I have decided to animate my menu in adobe premiere instead of photoshop because i feel there is more control over what the animation can do. I will then import the animation into encore and there I plan to overlay the menu buttons on top of the video clip. If everything goes correctly I should be able to make the video clips mesh together.

In the pictures below I have documented the process of creating the animations in Adobe Premier:

Premier is great for creating animations because it gives you complete control over almost every aspect of the animation. There are multiple layers to use so it doesn't get confusing when trying to animate something really ambitious, and the timeline ensures that you can make the clips last as long as you want. 

I found this a lot better to use than Photoshops animation feature which is far worse because there is only one layer and things can get confusing when trying to animate more than one object. However it does have the advantage of not requiring me to add the menu buttons latter on in encore.

MUSIC


Another bonus of animating in Premier, is that I can also couple the music with the video clip so I don't have to add it later in Encore! Problem Solved before it was even a problem!


As you can see here, Premier gives you complete control over the animating process and once you know how to use it, it becomes relatively simple to create some great animations:

I am aware that if I didn't have Premier installed on my laptop, then creating an animation of this quality probably wouldn't have been possible for me but seeing as I did, I felt I may as well use it.
The only problem that remains now, is importing the video files into encore and overlaying the menu buttons on top of the video clips. If that goes well I should have a great looking DVD menu!