Need some help for making a motion menu

[ronobi]

Hi,

I am a newbie in this forum and would like to have some help from you guys. I want to make a motion menu for two small movies where a background video will be used other than two buttons.

At first, the menu plays the background video and after 2 seconds those two buttons (having some image background) come one after one. Default selected button starts to play the preview clip of its content inside of a specefic tv-alike box which is still in the background video (by pressing that default button user enters to see that movie). When user selects the other button, that's preview will be shown in the same box. During all these operations in this menu, I want that the background video should run; because there are some particles at some corner of the background are moving.

I know it might be possible but how - that I am not sure. Do I have to use some movie editor to edit the background video? Or some goood DVD Author is enough? I have access to Ulead DVD Workshop 2, Sonic DVDit! 5 and DVD Lab. And possibilities to use- DVD Architect 2.0.

Every suggestion/advice will be appreciated.

Regards,
Ronobi

[racer-x]

You can do everything that you want, except that when you select the second movie, the background video will have to start over from begining. Other than that, there should be no problem making it work.

You will of cource have to edit the video. You will need a good video editor that supports multi-layers and the ability to key in transparency. You will need to create 2 versions of the background video(for each movie to play in the small TV set). You can use DVD-Lab to make a "Switched" menu using your motion menus.

All this can be done, but will take some hard work to pull it off. It will no doubt be a learning experience for you, Good Luck.

[bugster]

If I understand what you want to correctly, I believe you will have to prepare the menus in a movie editor first. Each stage of the menu will have to be seperate video and become a sperate menu. The whole thing would look something like this:-

Intro video:

At first, the menu plays the background video and after 2 seconds those two buttons (having some image background) come one after one

Once the buttons become visible, you switch to the next video/menu. The start of this would be identical to the last frame of the previous video, but now your buttons become active in this menu and a preview of video 1 is playing in a box. If the user selects button 1, jump to the video. If the user selects button 2, jump to the next menu where a preview of video 2 is now playing in a box. Selecting button 2 again here takes you to video 2. Selecting button 1 takes you back to the previous menu.

Once you have prepared all these videos in your editor of choice, encode them to mpeg video and use within DVD-Lab to author your DVD.

Hope this helps

Damn, racer-x beat me to it

[racer-x]

bugster wrote:

Damn, racer-x beat me to it.

Sorry, I didn't know I was in a race. Your response was much more detailed though.

[guns1inger]

DVD Lab Pro would allow you to keep the buttons in a single clip, so only two clips would be needed.

[ronobi]

Thanx a lot guys for your suggestions!

Well, for me it is bit hard to follow. Anyway, please bear me, if I understood wrong:

So, I need to have two clips each has their own preview in the tv-alike box. Can I make it with Adobe Premiere 1.5? Or any other easy editor?

If I use DVD Lab Pro, buttons stuff I dont need to add in those clips, right?

-Ronobi

[bugster]

So, I need to have two clips each has their own preview in the tv-alike box. Can I make it with Adobe Premiere 1.5? Or any other easy editor?

Yes, you are correct so far

If I use DVD Lab Pro, buttons stuff I dont need to add in those clips, right?

No, you still need those clips. In fact, if you use DVD-Lab or another authoring program you probably need 3 clips (one for the intro).

[ronobi]

Thanx again! Okay, so I need three menus and three clips to get this motion menu works as I want. First menu has the background video and the buttons appearing, second one shows the default buttons preview and the third one shows the last preview. Am I following right?

Do the selecting and linking should be easy (for this case) with dvd authoring program?

Any idea - alternative for Adobe Premiere?

[bugster]

Thanx again! Okay, so I need three menus and three clips to get this motion menu works as I want. First menu has the background video and the buttons appearing, second one shows the default buttons preview and the third one shows the last preview. Am I following right?

Do the selecting and linking should be easy (for this case) with dvd authoring program?

Any idea - alternative for Adobe Premiere?

Sounds about right. Adobe Premiere should be fine for creating the video clips. If you need help with this kind of stuff in Premiere take a look at www.wrigleyvideo.com.
Authoring you can certainly do in DVD-Lab, probably some others too, but thats what I use.

[ronobi]

Thanks a lot for all these advices. I am trying to make as you guys adviced.

Regards,
Ronobi