Comments

Cooldraft wrote on 7/4/2004, 5:48 AM
Bump: I would like to know if this is possiblle. Sounds nice.
bStro wrote on 7/4/2004, 8:57 AM
If you give me an example of a DVD that does what you're looking for, and describe exactly what happens, I'll look into finding a way to emulate it in DVDA.

Otherwise, my guess is that, no, it can't be done. :)

Rob
Cooldraft wrote on 7/6/2004, 9:58 AM
The thumbnail is static when it is not highlighted, but comes to life when it is selected.
bStro wrote on 7/6/2004, 10:23 AM
I've never seen this done on a DVD. I've only seen DVDs where the thumbnails are static all the time or animated all the time. Can you name a DVD (television, movie, whatever) that acts as you describe?

Rob
bStro wrote on 7/6/2004, 10:56 AM
[addendum]

The trouble I see with what you want to do is that all of the graphical elements of a menu -- the buttons, the frames, the background, the text, the thumbnails -- are part of a single, rendered, video object. They are all "hard coded" to that object, just as any video object (ie, the movie) on your DVD. You can't "change" what's in that object by navigating to a different item. All navigating around your menu does is change what portion is highlighted, and highlighting doesn't get much more complicated than displaying up to four (in DVDA, anyhow -- not sure about DVDs in general) distinct colors.

Now, I know there are people on this forum that know more about the DVD specs than I do; I really wish they would chime in and explain this better. <g>

Rob
richard-courtney wrote on 7/6/2004, 3:50 PM
If I understand your project.....
You would need another program such as MENUEDIT.

Lets say you have three buttons.
Make one menu with the first button animated.
Create two more menus but with the other buttons animated.
Make sure the default button on each menu is the animated button!
Make sure the remote's direction buttons move you off of the animated button!

MENU A -
Button 1 is animated and points you to MOVIE A
Button 2 points you to MENU B
Button 3 points you to MENU C

MENU B -
Button 1 points you to MENU A
Button 2 is animated and points you to MOVIE B
Button 3 points you to MENU C

MENU C -
Button 1 points you to MENU A
Button 2 points you to MENU B
Button 3 is animated and points you to MOVIE C

Build the project as normal. Test the buttons.
At this point the non animated buttons must be selected to switch to the
other menu.

Then using the MENUEDIT program make the buttons that point to other menus
auto execute when it gets focus.
ro_max wrote on 7/6/2004, 9:01 PM
Sony,

How about putting autoexec buttons in DVD 2.0b?
bStro wrote on 7/7/2004, 10:22 AM
Okay, I found a way to "hide" a thumbnail when it's not selected. <g>

By default, the selected / active buttons are highlighted. The inactive buttons are not highlighted. This is normal to me, and I forgot that you can change this. I knew you could change what colors are used for highlighting, but it didn't occur to me to do a complete 180 and use highlighting to indicate what's NOT in use.

So, what you do is change the Properties for your menu. Change "Selected button color" to "None (all transparent)". Change "Inactive Button color" to "Color set 4." Change "Activated Button color" to whatever you want -- this is just the temporary color applied to a button while you're pressing "enter" to go follow the link.

Then edit Color set 4 (Color sets are also in the Properties window) to reflect the colors you want to use to "hide" the thumbnail. Most likely you'll want it black, but maybe you'll want it a color that matches your menu background. Make sure that it's set at full opacity (click the arrow next to the color bar and change the "A" value to 255.

If you haven't already done so, set all your thumbnails to animated and set the start time where you want. This method does not stop any thumbnails from playing, necessarily, but it will hide the ones that are not currently selected.

[Edit: Note that since each animated thumbnail is playing at all times, each one will be at the same "time frame" of its respective clip when you select it. So if all your thumbnails are 30 second clips and you're at the :20 mark when you move from one button to the next, the button you move to will seem to "begin" playing at the :20 mark.]

Rob