your opinion on creating masks for dvd menu video

[anubis13]

I've been working on making a custom intro video for a dvd.

first i start with a regular bit of viedo about 15 secs long,there are some graphics that "float" in the foreground and some action in the background. my goal is to modify the "floating" graphics while leaving the background untouched.
i captured a frame here below,



poped it into Photoshop and cut out the graphics, used clone stamp to erase the unwanted writing and created a transparent mask like this



then i used vegas 5 to superimpose the mask on top of the original video, which gave me this



added some of my own text and imptorted the final product seen here




into dvd architect 2. for authoring

now i'm sure someone around here has done things like this, so is there a better way to do this?

i usually use these tools.
Vegas5.0
DVD Architect 2
photoshop 7.0
Illustrator 11
Canopus ADVC-100
Canopus Procoder 2.0

[adam]

What's wrong with this method? Seems pretty concise to me.

1) Create the transparant overlay layer.
2) Import it into any software that lets you work with videos in layers.
3) Output your edited video
4) Author.

I do this same thing but I use Adobe After Effects. You could also do it with Avisynth for free or you could even use Virtualdub's subtitle filter.

[anubis13]

which step of the process do you use after effects for?

oh bythe way the method is ok but i'm always looking for a better, more efficient way of doing things

[adam]

I use after effects to create the mask. Its a very intuitive program for that. Just drag and drop as many stills and video assets on top of each other as you want, then blend them however you want.