dvd lab pro LINKS HELP BAD

[Welzman]

Hello
I'm literally going nuts here

I am trying to create a menu- Please don't direct me to the help file as this is not working- which is why I am posting here- and I need you to spell it out to me.

The problem is:
When I create my Menus- and play them on my laptop- Each menu item when selected apears a different color which s what I want---

BUT when you burn it to DVD and play in a normal DVD player-the links do not highlight and are all the same color. which makes it very hard to navigate around the dvd.

The Menus are VTS whatever that means if this helps.

I have typed a word- then added a border and creaed a link on the border and made the border invisible until selected- it doesn't work

I have tried an assortment of other ways including rendering when it wasn't even needed

so I need you to type what I have to do word for word.

Thank you,

Dave

I have tried rendering

[mikiem]

Your player might not recognize all the different colors? AFAIK there's one layer with few colors same as subs -- in fact if you open the ifo in ifoedit that's how you'll see the highlight layer refered to.

If I remember correctly, do your text, set color, do the border, set color, group the two, set the link, set the button behavior (normally invisible?), make sure it's part of the same color group, then check the 3 colors in the color dialog. Also going by memory (which may not be 100% ) the highlight colors are tints, so having different colors for the object, but the same color tint, should get you the appearance of different colors.

Haven't used it for quite a while, so wouldn't be surprised if something there is off -- but I think the general flow is close.

[Shadowmistress]

I think I understand what you're after but you can't go about it the way you describe. Without going into *too* much detail (cause there's alot to explain) I'll just state the following.

You can't make an object invisible until selected. The setting "invisible select" actually means that when you select the button, it appears as all the rest of the buttons and only the selection mask is invisible, not the button itself.

To achieve what you're after you'd need to change the border color to match the background (only works with solid colors, no pictures or patterns I'm afraid), then make the button visible normal. So if you have a black border sitting on a black background it will appear invisible even though it's not, and when you highlight it the highlighting mask will make it stand out from the background.

The reason it works on your computer is because your cursor is smarter than your dvd player.

[Welzman]

Oh OK- thats good because I use a black background.

is it the same for motion menus- Because the first menu I have is a motion one.

when I create the links- it works- but the rest of the menus I have do not (they just have a standard background) very strange.

I'll check it out

Thankls and thanks mikiem as well for your help

Dave

[Shadowmistress]

It's not the same for motion menus - that's a completely different animal.

For each motion menu you want, you have to drop the clip into the background of each menu, meaning you take up more data space even if you're repeating the clip amongst switched menus. If you have 5 menus all with the same background clip, they cannot share the motion clip as background, they must have their own clip and take up the data space even if it's the same clip.

Remember that with motion menus, every time you switch menu on your dvd player the clip will start from the beginning. There's no way to have it play continuously between switches.

Oh yeah, and the black borders will show up then so the invisible trick won't work. My suggestion is to drop the border and make the text iteself a link.

[Welzman]

do you have to render each motion meu

[Shadowmistress]

That depends. It's been a while so I'm going off memory here.

The only time you have to render is when you have a graphic on top of another graphic. That is to say if you have a .bmp as a button over a motion menu or a motion button over a motion menu. If you have just text or shapes or preset buttons, I don't believe you have to. But test it cause I'm not sure.

Even if you do need to render the first menu, you won't need to render the rest *if they have exactly the same pics in the same places*. What you do is render the first one, then take the newly made clip and import it so you can just drop that into the rest of the menus as background.

If they all have different .bmp's with motion background, you have to render them all.

[Welzman]

cool- I'm not a big fan of rendering-It takes forever

I seem to be getting Links to highlight now on my DVD BUT

I have this problem

The first menu is a motion menu which links into (lets call them menu A & B) and then onto the rest of the DVD.

The first menu is motion and links work fine (without rendering it)

Menu's A & B however do not highlight- They only have normal backgrounds- I am at a loss as to why- when the first menu works but menu A & B do not highlight

[Shadowmistress]

Did you go into A & B and change all the buttons back to invisible normal again? Check the color and transparency of the mask. Make sure you're using the right slider for the right button group.

[Welzman]

they work right on my Laptop but not the dvd player

I realise the laptop has more features but I'll check out my transperancies etc that you mentioned

I need some sleep

[mikiem]

don't know if this'll help or not...

I think what's happening is because your stand-alone player just doesn't understand or support your menu setup as it is now, or maybe something where it just can't show it, where the TV is just incapable. Bunch of guessing really, but...

Might try plugging your laptop into your TV and playing DVD *IF* your highlight colors are subtle or borders thin to see if TV can show it.

Might also try saving a 2nd copy of your project in DVD Lab Pro, then adding a couple second dummy video or two, just to play with menu stuff -- should take very little to render. Then try eliminating stuff, change background color, just process of elimination really starting with very simple menues working towards what you have now, to pinpoint just where it breaks. Could create a layout using just a progression of menues for that matter, each one adding a feature, & burned to RW, might help.

[Welzman]

actually I have about 5 different saved projects

[Shadowmistress]

This just occurred to me. Your navigation links might be broken. Go into the A & B menu one by one and click on the little colored arrows at the top next to "autoroute". These will show you what goes where when you press the direction buttons on your remote. If all your links are broken then you simply can't select any button from your dvd.

Is that the problem? Does your dvd player play anything even if you don't know which button is highlighted? Or does it just not move onto the next button? If the case is the latter, it's the navigation links.

[Welzman]

the links actually work but they are simply not highlighed.

Because there are about 7 items on each of the A & B menus- this can be tough as nothing gets highlighted.

When playing on the DVD you can movee the up and down buttons to move from link to link BUT (I know where it will be because I designed it) but no one else would.

I just won't be using any motion menus which is a bit of a waste considering the cost of the product but anyway thats life

[Shadowmistress]

You can still use motion menus, you just can't have an invisible border around each button. But if you're ok with having a visible border that changes color, or having no border at all while the text changes color when selected, then I don't see the problem.

On your menus A & B get rid of the borders/links. Once the border is gone the text will still be there. Right click on the text and link that to where you want it to go.

I think the borders have confused you.