What am I doing wrong do you think?

Trying to change the text on the first page.

If you edit an existing Menu in Modify Menu, you will notice that the first page has.
Three items:
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3

Those are place holders. Item 1 get replaced with the Play button, Item 2 gets replaced with the Scenes button. and Item 3 is Subtitles if any.

You should leave the text items on the first page alone. You can change the background image, but that is about all you can change safely on the first page.

You can move the position of those three items on the create disk page, simply by dragging with the mouse, not in Modify menu.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Carl, you are such a constant source of info and patient response - I want you to know I really admire you for that.

This is the first time I've seen an explanation of what "items 1 through 3" actually were on the menu templates. I couldn't make heads nor tails of them.

And a light bulb goes on from reading your response - I only wanted a poster image on the front page, along with navigation buttons. Following advice on another thread, I made all the text items totally transparent, since I didn't want the title (it's in the poster) and I didn't get what the "items" were." That explains why I didn't see anything but the poster when I applied the custom menu to my project--

Or does it--? Why, when using the custom template dialogue, does it have all the tabs and options for adding navigation buttons when they don't actually seem to work? Just like on the chapter menus, I chose a navigation button style, moved them to where I want - it was logical for me to think they'd then be there and available when I chose that custom template for the project. See what I mean?

So you're saying that all that dialogue for adding buttons on the first screen should be ignored I guess? It's the "items" that I should be working with - I can't apply buttons to those items?

Your answer helps in some degree, but I still don't understand what all the choices are listed for on that first page, if they don't actually show up - !

--side note--From Day One of using PD, this convoluted menu process has been the weirdest part of the program for me. I learned video editing on a different program where making a menu was extremely straight forward. You just chose the elements you wanted, and added them--and there was no mystery about what the outcome would be.

rbowser

Quote:

What am I doing wrong do you think?

Trying to change the text on the first page.

If you edit an existing Menu in Modify Menu, you will notice that the first page has.
Three items:
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3

Those are place holders. Item 1 get replaced with the Play button, Item 2 gets replaced with the Scenes button. and Item 3 is Subtitles if any.

You should leave the text items on the first page alone. You can change the background image, but that is about all you can change safely on the first page.

You can move the position of those three items on the create disk page, simply by dragging with the mouse, not in Modify menu.

--side note--From Day One of using PD, this convoluted menu process has been the weirdest part of the program for me. I learned video editing on a different program where making a menu was extremely straight forward. You just chose the elements you wanted, and added them--and there was no mystery about what the outcome would be.

Join the club!

The Menu System in Powerdirector is messed up. But you learn to live with it or use No Menu.
I wish for a TEXT only menu system, get rid of the thumbnails.

PD Menu is limited in how many items you can put on the scenes pages depending on the content. DVD=6 Max, BD (Bluray)=4 Max.

Lord help if you overlap items, you may never figure out what the error message means.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Yes - And now that I've just watched a foreign film tonight, it makes me wonder if part of the issue with this menu perplexity in PD is because Cyberlink isn't an English or U.S. company, and we've been given something which hasn't been quite translated for us well. Maybe "item 1-3," for instance, should have been labeled something else for us to more intuitively understand.

It does still seem like a basic programming error - or I have to experiment more to figure out what is intended, - but the way you're given these choices for menu buttons on the first screen of a menu,--but it turns out you can't really directly work with Them, you're supposed to be working with the "items"--when there's no way of seeing that the two things are related. Once the items were transparent - that erased my buttons, even though they were plainly visible in the thumbnail of the custom menu I designed.

I'd been making menus that worked well enough previous to today, but my problem tonight was when I chose to make the title and items transparent--I just wanted to get rid of them, or at least the Title, since it was in my graphic. That was my mistake.

But some time ago I'd discovered the limit to how many chapters can be on a screen, and I can live with that. I'd also wrestled for hours when I accidentally had some items overlapping - the warning dialogue for that was of no help at all, no clues what I was supposed to do to correct it. I just kept making the font smaller, and moving text farther and farther away from the thumbnails-- until the results looked crappy, but at least PD would accept the results.

Very odd, messy menu system. How I wish for a simple, straight-forward menu making system where you just plop text where you want it, have it linked to chapters - and get on with it.

Thanks for the added feedback, Carl.

rbowser

Quote:

Join the club!

The Menu System in Powerdirector is messed up. But you learn to live with it or use No Menu.
I wish for a TEXT only menu system, get rid of the thumbnails.

PD Menu is limited in how many items you can put on the scenes pages depending on the content. DVD=6 Max, BD (Bluray)=4 Max.

Lord help if you overlap items, you may never figure out what the error message means.

oK--well here's another one. I'm trying to edit another template - I try to add more buttons, more chapters to the chapter menu - I add them, but when I click the "set button layout," the added buttons disappear, and I'm only given the option of how to layout ONE chapter item.

Last time I did this, it displayed how many chapters I actually had on the page--this time, there's only one - so I try to drag the chapter thumbnails around by hand, and that can kind of work, but it gets messy.

Argh!

rbowser

I for one, pretty much gave up on trying to customize PD menus.

I either use one of the default menus or get one I like from Director's Zone.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can edit a PD menu, within limits. The effort is not worth the hassle.

If the default template has three items on the chapter page, it just adds another chapter page if you have four or more chapters.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Quote: I for one, pretty much gave up on trying to customize PD menus.

I either use one of the default menus or get one I like from Director's Zone.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can edit a PD menu, within limits. The effort is not worth the hassle....

Good advice, Carl, because I agree that it's not worth the frustration.

Getting a menu from DZ and editing itis mostly what I've been doing. So far those have been a compromise to me, because of the "flashing lights and dancing girls" style of those templates - I end up taking as much out as I know how to, but still end up with menus I don't care for. SO, thought I'd try from scratch again. Oh well!

rbowser