Very advanced Menu Authoring

[diablos_blade]

I am trying to author a menu along the lines of what you see today on commercial products but keep running into the same brick wall.

What application(s) out there can take multiple video feeds and output one video feed that has picture within picture, but also allow you to still have highlightable buttons.

I have a huge range of software that has cost me a small fortune and all of it seems to come close but not close enough or i am not using it right.

The kind of menu i am talking about for example

simple e.a The Matrix
intermediate e.a Blade 2 , SW:Ep 2 AotC
advanced e.a The Animatrix

I have listed what software i have (that i can remember):
Pinnacle Studio 8.5,Edition 5. Ulead MediaStudio 7 (inc DVD Movie Factory 2), DVD Maestro, Ulead DVD Workshop, Ulead 3d Cool 2, 3DS Max 5,(freeware/shareware :tmpgenc(and dvd author ),dvd2avi,virtualdub,besweet)

any and all tips welcome.

[thingimijig]

not sure what your looking for!, is it motion picture menus ?

if so, maestro can do this.

motion menus, still menus, multi pgc, multi vts, highlightable buttons.

thingimijig.

[tim6661234]

You'll need something like Adobe Premier to do Picture in Picture and maybe one of the MPEG Cards that come with Premier would be best such as the Matrox X.10 / X.100.

That's assuming you've got the video streams prepared. As so creating graphics I don't know.

Maestro, as I'm sure you know, will let you put it all together as a DVD title but you don't design your menus in it any more than you would expect to edit your video in it.

Hope this helps!

[diablos_blade]

tim6661234: Video streams are all prepared and you say Premier is what im looking for the create picture in picture. Cool , i'll look into that.

[mkelley]

Actually, the Adobe product that most fits your needs is After Effects.

AE is a kind of super compositer program that allows you to take your video streams in and do all kind of "gee-whiz" sort of bells and whistles (whereas Premiere is more of an editor, although there is overlap between the two of them -- most people working in video using Adobe have both). Nearly all of the kinds of things that are done in music videos nowadays can be easily accomplished in AE.

Adobe themselves recommend AE for use with their premiere authoring product, Encore, to create motion menus. I suspect it's exactly the sort of thing you need.

[housepig]

you might also try Vegas Video 4.

After Effects is an astounding program, but I find that I have done much better work much faster in Vegas.

I just did an intro menu where I had 12 small videos, 6 scrolling right to left, 6 below them scrolling left to right, I had the whole project put together from the source files, and rendered, in about 15 minutes.

(I should note this was the first time I attempted something like this, so that 15 minutes included 2 minutes of looking at the manual re: picture in picture)

By contrast, I can remember sitting down with AfterEffects, book in hand, source video in the other, and tearing my hair out for an hour before abandoning the project.

But they will both do it, and do it well - it comes down (like so many things) to personal preference.

[mkelley]

By contrast, I can remember sitting down with AfterEffects, book in hand, source video in the other, and tearing my hair out for an hour before abandoning the project.
.

LOL. Yeah, if you don't "get" Adobe products, they can certainly have that effect on you. I've taught a lot of Photoshop classes where my students have all had that vague, "where the heck ARE we?" look on their faces during the workshops (but of course the master instructor put them right :>)

I have heard lots of good things about Vegas Video, but being kind of an Adobe person I've never thought of even looking at it. Does it have the same kind of motion masking and motion tools that AE Pro features? One of the things that's terrific (and expensive) about AE pro is the very advanced stuff you can do (like the James Bond movie intros that used to be done by the late great Maurice Binder) with it -- but I hesitate to plunk down the extra $1K (the price difference between the "normal" and the Pro version) if there is some other product that can offer the same thing.

[lechtin]

Diablos_blade,

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're trying to do and if is more an editing thing or a DVD authoring thing, but here goes:

Editing: like the other guys say, Premiere (with or without after effects) or Vegas Video would probably be tha way to go if anything can do it, they can.

DVD authoring: if DVD workshop is not powerful enough, you may try DVD architect from Sonic Foundry or Sonic ReelDVD or Scenarist (the latter is very dificult to use from what I heard, but it's used by professionals)

You can get demo versions from Adobe from their web site and a demo of Vegas and DVD architect are available at Sonic Foundry's web site (get the Vegas 4.0+DVD demo)

I don't know of any demo versions for ReelDVD or Scenarist.
Have fun,