Interactive DVD menus!!!

[punker096]

Hello everyone, where can I find guides or tutorials for making interactive DVD menus. Professionally!!! Either on VCDhelp.com or any other website? Also what programs would you use to do such a thing?

Thanks in advance.

[Tommyknocker]

What do you mean by "interactive"? Anyway, here is the menu section.

[punker096]

By interactive I mean, full motion menus were you can navigate to selection scenes, playe the movie, turn on subtitles, change langauge, special features, etc.

Just like any other DVD.

Any idea what programs I'd have to use, or where i can fidn tutorials for things like that?

[Tommyknocker]

Did you go to the link I highlighted?

[punker096]

I did, however if there is anythign else anyone can give me that would be great.

Thanks again.

[chazzie]

It would seem as you're not familiar with the makings of a DVD. I strongly suggest you get any of the programs in the link given above and fiddle with it. As far as I know, if you want to make a "professional DVD", you are stuck with Scenarist or DVDMaestro, that is if you got an extra $20.000 - $40.000 to spare. Personally I use Scenarist that I bought used for a cheap penny, in witch you can make it all, including regional coding, CSS (if you buy a $10.000 license), multiple angles, 8 different audio tracks, 32 different subtitles, 99 titles per DVD, Single/Dual layer DVD's etc. It also includes an AC3 encoder.

Cheers
Chazzie

[punker096]

Thank you.

You just helped me out more then I needed.

Thanks again.

[VMiyoshi]

Weird, I just wonder why everyone on here talks about Scenarist or DVDMaestro. I never even seen those programs, in regards to making "professtional" DVD's. I use Impresstions DVD-Pro, which supports every thing under the sun, at one time it was a $1000 programs, I don't know how much it runs for now. You can build your menu's in photoshop, or DVD Menu Studio. Your Question was about motion Menu, I really don't know any easy way of doing one. I Personally just do nice looking Stills, and I'm going to wait for Adobe Encore, in hopes Adobe makes it easy to make them.

[chazzie]

Weird, I just wonder why everyone on here talks about Scenarist or DVDMaestro. I never even seen those programs, in regards to making "professtional" DVD's. I use Impresstions DVD-Pro, which supports every thing under the sun, at one time it was a $1000 programs, I don't know how much it runs for now. You can build your menu's in photoshop, or DVD Menu Studio. Your Question was about motion Menu, I really don't know any easy way of doing one. I Personally just do nice looking Stills, and I'm going to wait for Adobe Encore, in hopes Adobe makes it easy to make them.

Simply because many Hollywood studios use those programs, they are the optimal in DVD authoring. I'm not certain I know what program you're refering to, but if it has all the features Scenarist have, then it's great. I paid less then $1000 anyways for my used Scenarist, so for me Scenarist works.

Chazzie

[Morheus]

How about a guide for using DVD Workshop? It supposedly allows for motion menus but I can't figure it out ... even Ulead's website doesn't help.


later
Morheus

[chazzie]

How about a guide for using DVD Workshop? It supposedly allows for motion menus but I can't figure it out ... even Ulead's website doesn't help.


later
Morheus

Motion menus is just an MPEG file in the background. With or without audio

[metageek]

Well, if you can use linux, then you have DVDAuthor. Even though it is not completely finished, it already allows for making menus (I think even moving menus, as someone said they are done with mpg movies rather than mpeg stills).

Oh, and it is FREE

[EwanG]

Well, if you can use linux, then you have DVDAuthor.

Excuse me, but where can I find this software? I'm getting ready to make a switch to Linux on at least a few of my machines, and it would be nice to have a DVD authoring program.

Any other software you (or anyone else) would recommend for someone who is moving to Linux for Video editing and DVD authoring?

[Vejita-sama]

Adobe Encore is looking really nice. I haven't actually been able to use it (yet) but the online tutorials/clips are sweet. It appears to be able to do anything that Maestro or scenarist can do, but (only) costs $550. I'm most likely going to get it for X-mas.

Remember that the DVD authoring program doesn't really 'create' the motion menus. You have to do that yourself, normally in a 3rd program like premeire, dvd menu studio, photoshop, etc. A DVD menu is nothing more than another MPEG2 file with a subpicture to define the buttons.

What the authoring program does is define the buttons, next/prev, last play, skip, easter eggs, etc. That is is defines the file structure. If (when?) DVD Lab supports subtitles, multiple VTS, and multiple audio streams then it would be (IMHO) as good as encore or the others.

[VMiyoshi]

I got my hands on a Full Version of Encore now, it's sweet! I'm still learning it, I know how to make easy motion menu's with it. But it's not the hollwood look I'm looking for, I still believe it could make menu's like that, at least it should support it if I have to use Adobe After FX 6.0.
It's not the Store bought version, it's just a copy a friend of mine burned for me so I can learn it before I get the real copy which will ship along with Premiere Pro with my Matrox RT.X 100 Extre (This with be my second one!)

[fravel]

punker096,
DVDlab is a nice application that can do a lot of things including motion menus. It's only $79 in introductory price (regular: $99) and it has a downloadable trial version. Look in the tools section for it or clik on the link in this post.

[metageek]

Excuse me, but where can I find this software? I'm getting ready to make a switch to Linux on at least a few of my machines, and it would be nice to have a DVD authoring program.

DVDAuthor can be downloaded from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvdauthor/

there is also a forum about the software at
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=13261