Menu ??s for the Forum experts

rbowser

Contributor Joined: Aug 08, 2011 16:48 Messages: 515 Offline

Solved by

Jan 10, 2015 12:09

I wanted to develop a more elaborate DVD menu than usual because of the very special nature of my current project. Results are promising, but there are a number of persistent problems preventing complete success.

This menu has been built from scratch, and I've made dozens of attempts to get what I want. This is using Power Director 11:

1) I want motion on my background image. Over and over, when I run the preview, there's no motion. Sometimes there is, usually there isn't. Is there some trick for making the motion stick?

2) I'm using 6 thumbnails since I have many chapters. I thought the small numbers at the upper left of the thumbnails wouldn't be in the final version, but they show up even in a final test burned to disc. The program templates don't have those numbers, and my old custom templates don't have them. The numbers are redundant, so not needed, and mess up the design. Is there a way to get rid of them?

3) Using the red square outline highlight for the thumbnails works fine on the computer when I run a preview. But when burned to disc, the top row of 3 thumbnails have their highlights moved up on the screen, so the bottom of the highlight is about half way up the thumbnails.

4) Similarly, the first screen's buttons for Play and Scenes have their highlights moved up a bit, with the result of a messy looking blur in the hard DVD copies I've burned. They work fine on the computer, but not in the final copy.

5) The navigation buttons often come out without any highlighting, so it's impossible to choose them in hard copy tests.

6) The program seems confused when I've already tried one version of the menu, and replace it with a new version. Vestiges of details from the previous versions persist - for instance, I took out the shadow on some text, but when attempting to try out the new menu, the preview is still showing the old detail I took out, like the text shadow. Is there a way to purge the old menu template so I can start fresh?

I don't know if this is causing any problems, but this is the first time I've made a short 20 second video to appear at the start of the menu. That's working fine, with the transition to the static screen with the background and titles playing smoothly - except that the motion on the final background doesn't stick as mentioned above.

Hope at least some of these issues can be cleared up.

rbowser

rbowser

Contributor Joined: Aug 08, 2011 16:48 Messages: 515 Offline

Jan 10, 2015 23:36

I must be on version 50 of the menu, trying to correct these things. Probably the most annoying problem is how motion on the background sticks to a template only about 5% of the time. Over and over, I'm making a new version of the template, just so I can get one where the motion consistently works.

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Jan 12, 2015 13:17

Your pc may be way underpowered if you have all these problems. A DxDiag.text from your pc would be helpful for others to see and then advise on what you need to do. See below for your 6 problems that you brought up on what you can do..
1. Try SD dv-avi, mpeg-2, or wmv for your video background. HD video might overwhelm your pc as to cause no motion.
2. On the Create Disc/Menu Preferences, uncheck the Add thumbnail index located near the left bottom of the screen and Preview your menu. Leave it unchecked when you create your DVD to not have those thumnail numbers show.
3. Click on the word PowerDirector located on the top right of the screen and tell us the version number displayed.
4. You may have the same problem in this link: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/42008.page
5. Same as item 3 answer above.
6. Try Save As instead of Save and choose a different filename each time.

Let us know if if any of these suggestions help. Need more info from you.

rbowser

Contributor Joined: Aug 08, 2011 16:48 Messages: 515 Offline

Jan 12, 2015 15:30

Tomasc, thank you so much for the replies. To cut to the chase:

--It's not my computer that's underpowered, but my DVD player! It's about 5 years old, and after running more tests, discovered it doesn't display menus properly.

The same misaligned highlights as talked about on the thread you posted only happen when playing a test disc on my old player. I've now tested it on 2 newer machines, and all the highlights work properly. The navigation highlights which don't show up at all on my player display on newer machines, and the thumbnail highlights are aligned correctly. That's all there is to that!-- It was crazy making, though, since the menu looked perfectly fine on the computer--when previewing in PD, and when playing a burned disc with any media player.

THANKS for the info on getting rid of the unneeded thumbnail numbers. That had alluded me.

The main issue that remains is the lack of motion. Whenever I re-open one of my menu templates, it's been re-set to "no motion." I'm trying to use motion on a still image - a jpeg, which is certainly the most common image format. Don't know what's going on there. I've basically moved on and given up on trying to get motion.

I'm always saving new versions of the menu with Save As - But I can see that PD gets confused when I try to use a newer, edited template. I've had the shadow removed from the title for many menu versions now, but the shadow persists. I'll also live with that.

But I'm happy - I just can't use my DVD player for reliable testing!

Thanks again.

rbowser

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Jan 12, 2015 22:09

Thanks for clarifying for what you want to do. Here is an example of what can be done with a still pic used in a motion menu. Here both the still background pic and titling can have motion. This is the root menu in one of my previous projects. See the attached video.

That 5 year old DVD player may have a menu setting for 16x9 or widescreen output instead of 4x3 or letterbox that may solve that problem. Try it and let us know if that fixes it.

Don't give up yet. Review what you do. Lot of us are happy and successful in creating personal menus for each of our projects.

Filename	Motion Pic Motion Title menu.wmv	Download
Description	Motion pic and titling in menus
Filesize	537 Kbytes
Downloaded:	274 time(s)

rbowser

Contributor Joined: Aug 08, 2011 16:48 Messages: 515 Offline

Jan 14, 2015 11:29

Tomasc, that was really good of you to post the clip. Thanks! That's exactly what I'm doing, adding some motion to a still image on the root menu that comes up after my intro video. Looks nice when it works!

I keep burning tests as I zero in on finishing this project, always burning to folder, and then burning to disc if I want to test things on a DVD player. Two tests back, the motion worked in the burned copy - But in the latest test, the motion didn't work. Absolutely no changes were done to the menu for those two versions, I was honing some moments in the video itself, that's why I was burning another test. So, it's still hit and miss when it comes to the menu motion, and it's mostly miss. In both instances, in those last two tests, in the preview of the menu, the motion was working - but the burned results are often not what's shown in the preview.

As for my DVD player, I've checked, and there is no menu setting for changing the aspect from 4:3 to 16:9. So none of my tests play correctly on that old machine - I check things on a neighbor's new machine, and things work correctly on that. I'm convinced that my menu highlights are actually working right, even though they don't on my home machine. The highlights display correctly on my computer monitor, just as on the neighbor's DVD/BluRay player, so I'm content with that.

This is a 1 1/2 hour video, and it takes about 3 1/2 hours to burn to folder, so naturally I don't want to do yet more testing. The video itself looks fine, the menu functions, it's only the motion which isn't sticking - But it's not worth going through yet more tests which take so long, just to get that motion working. This last test of the video is the best, I think it will be my final master copy - unfortunately, it's one without motion, but that's a very tiny point in relation to the whole video. So - there it is!

Thanks again.

rbowser