Menus the hard way?

[rayjr13]

Maybe I'm slow and I don't know of a prog to make my life easier but I'm a complicated person and I can't live with just an Mpeg still as my menu. I must have motion! hehe But I'm starting to think my mentod is archaic. I started making a 704x480 menu still in Photoshop 5.5 then I got the idea of manipulating it through the filters, like blur, and by moving my layers slightly and saving a as different still. In case you didn't know I think TMPGenc can encode from a .psd file and that was what I planned to do. Make MPeg still from my photoshop files and then join them into a motion mpeg with cut join and then reencode the joined motion mpeg as a NTSC-SVCD (29fps, 480x480 2P-VBR all that stuff) compliant mpeg using TPMGenc, a la flipbook animation style.

I change my photoshop image a little bit an then save to another file so that I have a bunch of what they call cells in animation.

Now be honest is this an ancient idea or is it the only way to really get what I want: a custom motion menu with rippling motion text, flying/spinning thumbnails of my video files I grabbed from elecard, and dissolving/reappearing text? Photoshop was the only program I could think of to do all those thing to an image because of the layers and installed filters like blur, distort, scale, skew, etc., but is the flipbook style encoding sound stupid? is there a program that will encode multiple still images as a motion SVCD mpeg at 29.97 fps?

Also I plan to add a an audio layer to it once the motion has been done. I'll just use Cooledit to record my voice and add some sound effects from different files (i.e. the whizzing by of my thumbnails.) Any suggestions are welcome, as is laughter at me for trying to do too much the hard way.

By the way I'm on frame 51 and I'm almost half way done with my "animation"...

[vitualis]

I really STRONGLY suggest that you get a proggy like Adobe Premiere that has more filters (and you can download third-party ones too) than you can shake a stick at.

For simple stuff, Ulead MediaStudio is pretty good too.

For more high level stuff, Adobe After Effects is a good program.

Even the thought of creating a menu frame-by-frame with Photoshop is painful...

Regards.

[rayjr13]

I have premiere but I hadn't tried to use it for this project because I didn't know how else to control different elements of the same image at the same time. Can Premiere overlay text and...well basically can I manipulate layers simultaneously and independently (like use the ripple on a bit of text without rippling the whole pic at the same time moving smaller images on the page keeping somethings still) in Premiere or are u just suggesting I compile my images with Preimer and frameserve to an encoder like TMPGenc. Eitherway I'll play with premiere to see what I can make it do
I've seen premiere make thing move and do fancy transitions between different images but haow well can it manipulate components of the same image?

thanx

_________________
r@yjr13

Now selling audioly and visually challenged coasters, frisbees, and vanity mirrors.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rayjr13 on 2001-07-23 07:16:47 ]</font>

[vitualis]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-07-23 07:13:58, rayjr13 wrote:
Can Premiere overlay text and...well basically can I manipulate layers simultaneously and independently</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I don't think so. However, you can get around what you want to do with Premiere as long as it's not that complex...

For example, the main menu on the demo VCD was made with Adobe Premiere.

If you want more complex video editing/compositing, you may want to use a more specialised program. I'm don't really have enough experience to recommend anything though.

Regards.

[rayjr13]

coo

When I finish I'll post it somehow so people can laugh at how cool it is

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rayjr13 on 2001-07-23 07:33:18 ]</font>