What are your favorite dvd menus?

[awai]

I want to go rent a bunch of DVDs and study the menus on them. Graphical layout. Navigation. That sort of thing.

Which DVDs have had menu designs you felt were particularly good?

[Capmaster]

The Matrix Trilogy. I usually don't give a flying fig about the menus but those were very nice.

[andyp1]

Which DVDs have had menu designs you felt were particularly good?

Mine !!!

[awai]

Great. I'll be over later to rent them from you.

[adam]

The Indiana Jones Triology is nice. Its basically a montage of images but they transition between them using a different object as a wipe for each disk. Like for Temple of doom a mine car sweeps by and wipes the image onto the new one. The cool part is that it makes a seamless transition into the other menu's this way. When you select the Chapter Selection menu, for example, the jump isn't obvious. It looks like its all just part of the same clip since its just done through another similar wipe.

As much as I hate the movie, Cabin Fever is a good example of a company putting effort into the menu's. Creepy and weird and filled with tons of easter eggs that show nudity...pretty much sums up the movie too.

Memento (non-special edition)- You have to watch the movie first to appreciate it, but the menu's basically mess with you. The character in the movie has no long term memory, so every so many minutes he forgets what he's doing. The menu's change everytime you return to a previous one, so Play movie will be the first item in the list once, and then it will be on the bottom. Really cool idea.

I guess Shrek is pretty good. They certainly put effort into it.

Star Wars Ep. I and II are really great. Complex stuff and alot of eye candy. Ep. II has 3 entire sets of menu's and it randomly selects one when you play the disk. Ep. I might too, I forget but I don't think any other commercial DVD has bothered to do this.

X-Men (not the 5.1) actually has very poor menu's in my opinion, but its got the greatest easter egg of all time. If you select a hidden button it shows an outtake where several of the X-men run into a room like they are responding to some action. Behind them runs in a guy wearing a horribly cheap looking spider man outfit and he just plays along like he's in the scene. You have to see it but its hilarious.

There's actually some committee that gives out awards for the best DVD menu's each year. If you can find that I think that would pretty much give you all need to know. I think Ep. I and Ep. II both won top honors in the years they were released.

[awai]

Wow, thanks. I had no idea they had dvd menu awards. I took a look around the net and here's what I found for menu design winners:

DVD Exclusive Awards 2003: Finding Nemo
DVD Exclusive Awards 2002: Monsters, Inc.
DVD Exclusive Awards 2001: Star Wars: Ep I
DVD Premiere Awards 2003: Who Framed Roger Rabbit
eMedia Discus Awards 2002: Tomb Raider
eMedia Discus Awards 2001: Men in Black: Special Edition

[northcat_8]

In addition to those already suggested....

Bruce Almighty had a nice menu...actually the menu was pretty basic but the illusion of him writing the words was a neat idea.

National security or Friday after next (can't remember) had decent menus.

[dvdashot]

I like how Weird Al fixes the menu in UHF.

[guns1inger]

The original Spy Kids had a pretty good menu, but Star Wars Episode II has got to be the most sophisticated I've seen to date.

[Matteo693]

The menu on the "I Drink Your Blood" DVD is hilarious! Very cool.

Also "Lust For A Vampire" DVD... The menu buttons are crucifixes which turn upside down when you click on 'em. Heh.

[lordsmurf]

Mine.

I see menus maybe a minute at most. All they do is annoy me and get in way of the important stuff: the video content.

Mine are attractive but minimalist.

I think BRUCE ALMIGHTY had a nice one.

[BodaZoffa]

3 that come to mind that impressed me lately were these:

Matrix Revolutions
Kill Bill
School of Rock

Boda

[petar]

Star Wars Ep. I and II are really great. Complex stuff and alot of eye candy. Ep. II has 3 entire sets of menu's and it randomly selects one when you play the disk.

Best menus ever. That they bothered to put more than one set that plays randomly makes it far more attractive to watch the menus. Doesn't matter how good a menu is, after a while you do get bored of it.

Also the transitions are very well done and short. Long transitions, no matter how good they are, piss people off.

To me a reference on how menus should be done. Either you do them like this or don't bother with motion menus and transitions. What a user wants is simplicity. If you can combine simplicity with eye catchy effects - perfect. If not, stick to simplicity.

[tgpo]

I think the best menus are the ones you hardly ever see.

If I can skip the menu and go straight to the movie, I love that. I hate menus that force you to watch a video opening before going to the menu. If I wanted to see a clip from the movie, I'd watch the movie. I like the plain and simple static picture menus. They are quick and easy and get the job done.

[Isengard]

The Planet of the Apes, Stars Wars I and the Matrix trilogy.

[Yuran]

Jason X and X-Men 2!

[freestyler]

scarface anniversary edition has a sweet menu

[jeex]

the unrated version of the van wilder dvd has a nice menu.. if you know what i mean.

[wayl0n]

I thought the menu to "Elf" was pretty clever....looked like a pop-up book opening, with the characters from the movie as 2d popup's. Going to try doing this on home movies by taking pitures with green screen, and keying the background out, then animating the picture so that they rotate up, pivoting at the feet.

[alstatr]

Gladiator had a pretty sweet menu with a flash of light and then a new picture all tuned the music.

Band of Brothers had good menus for all the DVDs tons of information and really cool pictures from the 1940s during the war.

Elf had a really cool and creative menu too but I hate the stupid infiniflim concept. They should have just put the special features on a menu instead of making you watch a special version of the movie and then selecting the link that pops up to go the special features. If anyone knows what I am talking about I'm sure they would agree it is kind of a good idea but not practical.

[tim6661234]

Any you can get to without sitting through a bunch of ads.

[spiderman2k1]

When DVD first came out T2 was very nice menu Star Wars was good and Matrix. But for the most part I do not like menus only for episode DVDs like TV shows.

[jimmalenko]

Menus are overrated IMO.

[lordsmurf]

Mine

[jimmalenko]

Mine

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=887619#887619

Good to see things haven't changed in 8 months LS ...