DVD-Lab Motion Menus and Menu Transitions?

[vcddude]

Hello all,

housepig will probably be able to answer this one straight-away.

I purchased DVD-Lab and really like the flexibility it offers.
Unfortunately I have uncovered what appear to be some pretty
serious bugs. Basically I have found that I cannot use
Menu Transitions with Motion Menus. When I render the Motion
Menus and then create the Menu Transitions, the links in the
Motion Menus get changed (e.g. if the "-->" button originally linked to
"Scene Selection Menu 1" it might get changed to link to "Menu 1") thus
breaking the menu flow. You can manually fix the links, but then this
requires you to regenerate the Menu Transitions which breaks the
links, etc. I found this problem when using the 6 selection scene
selection menu that colorizes the rendered thumbnails various colors.
I see this same bug in both 1.3B3 and 1.3B4.

Has anyone out there had success with Menu Transitions used with
Motion Menus in DVD-Lab? Or am I doing something wrong?

Even with these bugs this proggy rocks!

Thanks,
vcddude

[maa]

Even with these bugs this proggy rocks!

Sure does,

I last did some complicated menus with transitions in Ver 1.1 and that all worked fine - I can't remember if I had to re-link or not but it turned out just how I wanted it....

[housepig]

housepig will probably be able to answer this one straight-away.

you got me beat, guy.

I'm not crazy about the built-in transitions, so when I have transitions between menus, I create them in my video editing program and drop them in between my menus.

I'll give your way a try later and see if I have any problems with it, but I've never tried, so you have me stumped!

sorry.

[vcddude]

housepig (where did that name come from ? ) :

Yeah, I'm actually not that crazy about using transitions because it
slows down the navigation experience, but it drives me crazy that
I can't get it to work. Then again, maybe I would use them
more if I could get them to work.

Your response has piqued my curiosity: how do you create your
menu transitions and drop them into DVD-Lab? I have Vegas Video
4 and TMPGEnc and would be interested in playing with that approach.
I am fairly proficient with both of those.

I also discovered that DVD-Lab has some other bugs where
just creating a Motion Menu breaks the menu links -- fortunately you
can get around those bugs by manually re-linking.

Thanks,
vcddude

[housepig]

housepig (where did that name come from ? ) :

do a search for "housepig" & "korea" - I've explained it a couple of times, can't find the posts right now...

Your response has piqued my curiosity: how do you create your
menu transitions and drop them into DVD-Lab? I have Vegas Video
4 and TMPGEnc and would be interested in playing with that approach.
I am fairly proficient with both of those.

here's an example - I had a live concert I transferred to disc. on the main menu were links to play the whole thing, or to go to a song menu to select a particular song.

exported the main menu and the song menu as image files, and imported them into Vegas. I started with the main menu, stretched it out to 5 seconds, put the song menu in the same track and stretched it to 5 seconds. Then I added a blur, getting progressively more blurry to the end of the first menu. I then added a blur at the beginning of the second menu, starting completely blurred and ending in focus.

I rendered this to an mpeg, and added a buttonless motion menu in between the main menu and the song menu. So you'd select the Song Menu, and it would appear to go out of focus, and then come back to focus on the song menu.

I then reversed the process for the transition back to the main menu from the song menu.

hope that makes sense - let me know if it's unclear.

[vcddude]

hahaha, i did the search on housepig and the story behind the name
is pretty funny!

Thanks for the info housepig. Yes, I understand MOST of what you
said; the only part that was not clear was

added a buttonless motion menu in between the main menu and the song menu.

How did you "add a buttonless motion menu"? and how does this "transit menu" know how to automatically go to the song menu?

Sorry if I am being dense man...

vcddude

[housepig]

okay, adding a buttonless motion menu is just that - it's a menu with an mpeg dropped on it, with no buttons (you'll get a warning that you have no buttons on this menu, ignore it).

once it plays through, it will go to the next thing you connect it to - in the connections window, you would draw a connection from menu #1 to the transition-motion-menu, then a connection from that to menu #2.

(if I remember correctly, the reason for using a motion menu rather than just a raw mpeg file is that DVD Lab doesn't like going from one menu, to a movie, to another menu - but you can go from a static menu to a motion menu to a static menu with no problem).

[vcddude]

Oh yes, now I see! Add a new (blank) menu by right-clicking and
selecting add menu, drag the transition menu MPG into the asset pool and onto the new menu, and then draw the new connections in the connections view-- I will try it out!

Thanks!
vcddude