I've been around VideoHelp.com for some time now (actually harking back to the days when it was VCDHelp.com), but this is the first guide I've written. Please give me some feedback. Thanks!

I've been a fan and loyal user of DVDAuthorGUI for a few years now. The one thing that has limited my creativity in creating menus with this tool is the lack of an easy way to create 16-color BMP files for use as buttons with this program.

BMP files do not inherently support transparency. DVDAuthorGUI works around this by assigning the color #010101 to be the transparent color. I had been frustrated by not having a free way to create a 16-color BMP file where I could include color #010101. So I started doing some research on how to modify a normal 16-color BMP file so that it would include color #010101. Fortunately, someone has described the format of the BMP file in sufficient detail for me to come up with a solution to this problem.

Tools needed: Microsoft Paint (bundled with Windows), XVI32 (available from http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi32/xvi32.htm), knowledge of hexadecimal (base 16) numbers. This document assumes you know how to create a 16-color BMP using Microsoft Paint, and how to save it.

1. Create your highlight button in Microsoft Paint. As your first task you should create a black background. Then continue to create the rest of your button.

2. Save your highlight button as a 16-color .BMP file.

3. Start XVI32. Click File->Open to open the BMP file you just saved in step 2.

4. According to http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/windows/364/bmpffrmt.html the color palette for a BMP file begins at byte 55 of the file. This offset begins with 1 and XVI32 begins with offset 0, so we'll need to go to byte 54. Decimal 54 in Hexadecimal notation is 36, so we need to go to hexadecimal byte 36 in the file. This will be the fourth byte in the row beginning with offset 33. Modify hexadecimal bytes 36, 37, and 38 to contain 01, 01, and 01.

5. Click File->Save to save the changed file.

6. Repeat steps 1-5 for the select button (be sure to save the select button in a different file from the highlight button to avoid overwriting it).

That's all there is to it - you can now create your own buttons for DVDAuthorGUI using only free tools!

-CogoSWSDS