DVD Menu Image Buttons With Video Background

[sk8_aholic]

hey all,

I've been working on this project for a really long time, there isn't any real deadline or anything, but I would just like to get it over with incase there is a deadline.

My goal for my dvd is:
When I put the dvd into the drive, I want 2 videos to play one after another then for it to go to the dvd menu where I have a 60 second video background that will loop forever. In this project I want to re-create a similar look to the playstation 3 menus by having the users, photo, video, game and music buttons appearing above the video background which is a video I already made that I mentioned above (the 60 second video that will loop forever). the video in the background is a re-make of the blue ribbon that appears on the background of the ps3.

In Adobe Encore CS4 I set the first play to a "Bunt Studios" video logo I made. I set the end play of that video to another video I made which is a bunt studios entertainment with a short fade in and fade out of the blue ribbon I created to imitate the start up of playstation 3 where it has the blue ribbon and says "sony computer entertainment".

here is my problem:
I started ps3 up and took high quality pictures of my lcd screen for all the buttons. I opened photoshop and put all the images into one project with about 8 layers for all the buttons, I used the magic wand to get rid of everything else but the buttons. In encore I imported the psd file I think, I might have created a menu then right clicked and went to "edit in photoshop". most of the ways I tried didn't show me all the layers in encore, it would only show me the psd file as 1 layer.
This is the part that really frustrates me, when I bring in the buttons onto a menu and then add the 60 second blue ribbon video to the menu by alt + drag then drop it does't show the video, it just shows a black screen or sometimes it does show the first frame of the video, I render the project go to preview and it just plays the first frame of the 60 second video when it gets to the menu.
after a while I somehow got it to have the button layers showing up in encore so I made them into buttons and I also somehow got the video to play in the background with them when I went to preview, but when I put my mouse over one of the buttons in preview the background video loop starts over. It starts over to frame 1 everytime my mouse touches one of the buttons.
I couldn't get it to create a proper flash file that i could upload here to show you,sorry!

[sk8_aholic]

maybe someone could tell me their way of using photoshop, encore and maybe after effects too to make dvd menus with image buttons and video backgrounds.

i just need to know what file type i export out of photoshop to use in encore, and how to use that file ontop of a video background. Also how to set it up so the background video doesnt start over if i move the mouse over a button, or select a different button with the remote when the dvd is in a dvd player
thanks!

[Nitemare]

Wow... that's a lot of questions! I can answer the photoshop one... you need to flatten all of the layers and save it as any image file that your video editor will take. Make the background a unique color so you can key it our later...if PNG is acceptable, that retains Alpha channel info.

Lay the still image of the buttons over your video loop and key out the background color of the still image. This should put all of your buttons over your video loop.

That's all I can help with, I fear. I've never used encore so others will have to take it from here.

[guns1inger]

It has been covered, in part at least, in your original post : https://forum.videohelp.com/topic356422.html

The rest of your problems sound like either poor quality assets, or just Encore being a pain.