Using image as highlight in Encore DVD 1.5

[JestersTear]

Hi everyone!

I am having problems with my menu in Adobe Encore DVD 1.5.
I use Photoshop CS2 to create menus and, up until today, was thoroughly pleased with using the naming conventions to import the menus directly. I had only worked with vector buttons and layer effects for highlights, though.

Today, however, I tried to use an image as a button, and a second image as a highlight, and everything went haywire. It's a wedding DVD with only two chapters, and I wanted to use sepia versions of the photographs as buttons, and full-colour versions for highlights, but the highlights won't work in Encore DVD.

This is how it was supposed to work:




This is my layers palette in Photoshop, where you can see the naming convention is followed:




And this is what actually happens:




Can anyone let me know what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

[GeorgeW]

Highlights can't be full-color pictures, so I think that's part of the problem...

Also, your button-2 doesn't have an eyeball for the highlight, so I think that is causing it to turn white when selected...

Regards,
George

[guns1inger]

The highlight is restricted to 4 colours max, including the transparent colour. To do what you want to do, you have to used what is called a switched menu. I don't use encore, so I can't give specifics, but the basic idea is pretty simple. The only link I know of that explains it is for DVD La Pro. Hopefully you can work out how to translate it for Encore.

http://mediachance.com/dvdlab/tutorial/switchmenu.html

[GeorgeW]

As gunslinger says, "Switched Menus" will give you the effect you want. However, keep in mind with "Switched Menus" that there can be a delay between menus as you navigate the menu buttons -- that is because the DVD Player must process some VM Commands and locate the address for the new menu ("Switched Menu") as you move to a button that auto-activates away from the current menu. The delay time will vary from player to player -- some won't be noticeable, some will be very noticeable...

There's another method to give the illusion of going from "sepia" to full color. Well, not exactly, but it might be close enough...

A button has 3 states -- Normal / Selected / Activated

The idea is to change the NORMAL state to be a "sepia" color with opacity set accordingly so that the picture can show through, but it looks like it has less color. Then modify the SELECTED state to be completely transparent (meaning when you navigate to that button, the original full-color picture is showing). Set the ACTIVATED state to whatever color you want...

Let us know if either of these work (Switched Menus or modifying the color states of the buttons).

Regards,
George