Motion Menu's ?

[dark jedi]

Hi guys,
just curious if I was to give a try at motion menu's what would I need,what is recommended,and is there a starter tutorial on how to make a simple one first,just to get started.
thanks for any and all input.
DJ

 

[boon23]

now that surely requires some practice.
for a very basic motion menu you need:
a video sequence you would like to use for your menu in m2v format.

DVD LAB PRO
or
TMPG DVD AUTHOR
or
ADOBE ENCORE
or whatever other authoring tool that supports motion menus

for an advanced motion menu you need:
a video sequence you would like to use for your menu in m2v format.
or multiple scenes or an edit specifically made for your menu

and

DVD LAB PRO
or
DVD LAB PRO and a video editor like Ulead Media Stuido Pro

(there are of course other ways but that is what I know how it works)

1. A very basic motion menu with DVD Lab Pro:
insert the video sequence as menu
put some text on it. Beware that the text is invisible if not set differently.
done.

This can be improved by using lines (transparent or not).

To have DVD LAB parts of your menu in motion use the render motion option in the menu section of DVD-Lab pro. With this you can use animated fonts and animated buttons.

2. An advanced menu is created in your editing software.
Use text or lines or symbols to create fitting buttons in DVD Lab pro.

This is avery very basic guide, indeed.

 

[dark jedi]

thanks boon I will look into this program now Ulead Media Stuido Pro,I am sure i will have a ton of questions,but i think it is time to step up and learn a little more.

it appears that version 7.3 is better than 8,does 8 have alot of bugs?

 

[T-HOPE]

thanks boon I will look into this program now Ulead Media Stuido Pro,I am sure i will have a ton of questions,but i think it is time to step up and learn a little more.

it appears that version 7.3 is better than 8,does 8 have alot of bugs?

Just one word of warning

 

[RADiX]

Heres the breakdown of the twilight zone menu I did for the PAL version - not trying to scare you off DJ but just want to show what can be done and what tools etc..



Took the full HD intro to TZ and converted it into 720x576 Huffyuv via an avisynth IVTC and virtualdubmod.

First I loaded Avi into combustion 4 for a bit of repainting... The first bit of the menu where the title 'lines' in - had part of the blue/yellow clock passing by so had to paint out the clock for about 20 frames. if you freeze frame the menu through that part you'll see some errors like stars that appear then disappear in a few frames where I painted and cloned. - its only 1 or 2 frames though so it would pass by almost invisibly to most people.
Then I saved this as HUffyuv again and loaded it into Vegas 6.
Ran through the intro and found a nice backplate of just stars and took a frame grab. set this as the main loops background. found a frame with the full move title and took a frame grab then loaded this into photoshop to do some soft erasing round the logo, this made me a nice little logo then loaded this back into vegas as a pst.
so at this point I have a fake movie by just having the backplane picture and the movie title picture with a soft mask applied.
Then I attached the repainted movie to the beginning of this fake movie and animated the movie title picture to go up into the corner. I then added another PSD with the PLAY MOVIE and CHAPTERS set out to fade in noting the frame number at which this completes the fade in - this is important for when encoding it so I can set an I reference frame at that frame so DVD lab pro can make a nice loop.

So now I have the main title 'line' in from the actual intro from the film then into the fake and the PSD animated up into the corner. Created a mask in vegas so I can have some movie clips running behind it.
loaded the whole TZ movie 720x576 encode into Vegas and went through fairly roughly finding clips that would show just enough of each section but not enough to spoil anything for the viewer. laid these clips out behind the mask so they just appear as you see in the final menu.
I then got all the sections such as the door, the window smash etc and had 4 layers of them using multiply masks to effectively knock out the black and turn it clear and give the actual door and others more volume to appear like they were in front of the background clips.
The end of the menu was the rest of the title animation from the movie taken from the point of where I took the logo capture and then faded out at the end.

Its a similar process with the chapters which were just a static image of the TV and a photoshopped mask so I could put the clips behind it. I added some tint, noise and raised the gamma to make it look more like it was 'really there'

thats pretty much it really. I spent the next couple of nights tweaking it all, adding the audio assets and rendered it out through CCE making sure to add reference frames where I wanted DVDlab pro to have the menu looping.

Hope that gives you an insight

 

[boon23]

...and this is what many agree to be the best of menus we all saw on a fanmade DVD.