I despair of menu creation

Fenman

Senior Contributor Location: Cambridge, UK Joined: Nov 24, 2011 04:44 Messages: 731 Offline

Solved by

Aug 01, 2014 15:52

Up to now I've only used PD9 for SD video and have produced to a disk file and then used a third-party disk authoring program to create the final disk. Now I want to start producing Blu-Ray disks which that program does not support so I have been forced to try the Create Disk functions built in to PD9.

I'm probably getting set in my ways but I find the whole process quite impenetrable. I'm struggling to try to configure a custom menu as I don't want to use any of the pre-configured templates but the options to do so seem to be so limited as to be unusable. I have tried reading the relevant section of the PD manual but find this just as confusing as the actual program.

I suppose I've been spoilt as my old program works very much like a drawing editor, allowing me to place images, text and various shaped objects and allowing me to choose which of these act as buttons, which order they operate in, link each button to a specific video or chapter within a video, add extra menu pages as required with links to switch between pages and much more. In other words it gives total control of the look and feel of a production.

I'm starting with a very simple setup, just one project video with 18 chapter points defined. What I would like is a root menu page with a background picture of my choosing (I managed to get that far but then stalled), a button that will play the entire video and possibly a second page that will allow selection of a specific chapter. In fact the second page isn't vital as long as I can skip chapters in the player.

I don't want menu music or a menu video or any of that frippery, just something simple and basic, but it seems that is something PD will not give me and I'm just fuming with frustration at the moment. I should be delighted if someone knows how I can achieve this simple structure but I suspect that it just is not possible.
Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64

borgus1

Senior Contributor Joined: Feb 27, 2013 00:33 Messages: 1318 Offline

Aug 01, 2014 21:39

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a video worth?

Check out these sources...

http://www.youtube.com/user/PDtoots/videos

http://tinyurl.com/ockfb4k

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Aug 01. 2014 21:39

Fenman

Senior Contributor Location: Cambridge, UK Joined: Nov 24, 2011 04:44 Messages: 731 Offline

Aug 04, 2014 07:32

Hi borgus1, thanks for your reply and apologies for my delay in responding but I wanted to wait until I'd tried out the tips in the toots.

I have managed to make some progress but although I have a usable menu as I suspected the PD menu designer is so clunky and restrictive that I can't really produce the layout I want. It may have to suffice for now but I shall be investigating what third-party software I can find. To give you an example of the kind of thing I typically do see the attached screenshot. Notice the arrow. This is one of a set of transparent objects that get highlighted as they are selected. These are linked to the start of a video, or can be linked to chapter points within one, or can link to another menu page. I could alternatively dispense with the objects and link the text items instead or produce and link framed thumbnails. A video can have lots of chapter points that are not visible in the menu but can be used for skipping in the player. I don't see any way to do this in PD.

When I got to the Burn stage I found that I couldn't burn to a folder, see the second attachment. When I uncheck the Burn to disc the Create a folder stays greyed out. Any thoughts on this? It would be useful to burn to folder so I can play the project on the PC.


Filename	Burn_menu.jpg	Download
Description	Final output window
Filesize	48 Kbytes
Downloaded:	79 time(s)


Filename	Menu_example.jpg	Download
Description	Menu example
Filesize	177 Kbytes
Downloaded:	74 time(s)

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Aug 04. 2014 07:35

Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64