Transitions between (motion) menus in Encore DVD

[Xymox]

I am wondering what the easiest procedure is to make transitions between menus in Adobe Encore DVD. Here is my procedure i use to get it working :

A transition is an animation sequence which is played between the selection of a button on a menu and the destination menu.
For instance, pressing a button on the main menu to go to the subtitles menu plays a nice animation which blends the subtitles menu into view.
A good example is the Lord of the Rings DVD's, where every menu is a page from a book and selecting an option there results in the turn over of this page which reveals the destination menu page. The transition between the menus is not as smooth as we would like. This is the cause of the DVD specification. The animation played will hold it's last frame a fraction of a second before the destination menu is displayed and ready to be controlled by the remote control.

Adobe Encore has no functionality to make the transitions between menus. But you can make them in other video editing applications and import them into Encore to produce the needed transition effect.

Say we want a transition between menu A and menu B. Menu B is invoked by pressing a button on Menu A.
The transition in this example is a simple fade effect. So when the button is pressed the menu A fades away while the menu B becomes visible until menu A is completely transformed into menu B.

What do you need to do this ?

First you will need two images. Image 1 is a bitmap of menu A. So everything you see in menu A (the text, buttons, background etc) is saved as a bitmap file. Image 2 is a bitmap of menu B.

Encore has the feature for exporting a menu as PSD file to be edited in Photoshop by the "Edit in Photoshop" function. When you invoke this menu command in Encore, a PSD image will be created in your current projects directory in the location SOURCES\MENUS !
If you have Photoshop installed, Photoshop will be automatically started. If you dont have Photoshop, the file will be created and Encore tries to start an application which can view this file. PaintShop Pro can also read PSD files.

Knowing this, in Encore save menu A and menu B to image files and import them in your paint application. From there you can export them to BMP of JPG files, whatever !

Now you have two images representing menu A and menu B !

With those two images you can create any desired transition between them by using any video editing application (like Pinnacle Studio, After FX, Ulead VideoStudio, Premiere etc)
Make a timeline, import image 1 and image 2 and place a transition effect inbetween (see documentation of your video editing application for this). In this example i place a fade effect. The complete effect will last 2 seconds (but can be any duration).

Now save this animation as uncompressed AVI (or use any other compression when not enough disc space is available). Beware you save it with the correct resolution for PAL or NTSC.

Now you have a 2 second video, a fade effect between menu A and menu B. This animation must be imported into Encore to be used.

- Import the video as asset into Encore.
- make a timeline of this video

Author the transition :

- Link the button on menu A (which would be linked to menu B) to the newly imported video timeline (the transition anim)
- The End Action of the video timeline will be Menu B

And READY is your transition !!!!

Build your DVD and watch it !
On menu A, pressing the button will start the transition animation (you see menu A fade away and see Menu B coming in). When the animation has ended (menu B is completely visible) Menu B is shown.

Beware : there will be a little time between the end of the animation and the showing of the menu, but that's normal !


The description above is for static menus, not motion menu's (moving backgrounds or buttons).

Problem with motion menu's : the background motion of the menu is not allways displayed at frame 1, so saving the menu as PSD file will result in an incorrect background image for the start and ending of the transition.
Adobe Encore displayes the first BRIGHT frame of the background video, so when the first frame is black, it will not show this first frame but some other BRIGHT one.

Solution :

- Build your menus, make all motions video's and buttons.
- RENDER the motion menus (in the menu File)

When rendered, there will be a MPEG file in your current projects directory in the location SOURCES\MENUS.

Use VirtualDubMod and load this MPEG file

Then :

- Set range from 0 to 1 (also a range of 1 frame)
- Set video on full processing mode
- Save image sequence

After this you will have a bitmap file which is the first frame of the motion menu and this is really the correct one (the background will be frame 1 and the buttons show the corect motion video frames).

Use this image in de procedure i described above to build your transition effects.


Any comments on this ?
Please respond !

[rallynavvie]

Uh, or you could just drop the transition video file into a timeline, link the exit button to this timeline, then link the end action of the timeline to the next menu?

[Xymox]

Uh, or you could just drop the transition video file into a timeline, link the exit button to this timeline, then link the end action of the timeline to the next menu?

Author the transition :

- Link the button on menu A (which would be linked to menu B) to the newly imported video timeline (the transition anim)
- The End Action of the video timeline will be Menu B

Did'nt i said it here ?