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biggles wrote on 2/13/2008, 2:16 PM
I am using DVDA Pro 4.5 and am trying to set up a transition from a first play clip to my first menu.

I have created the first play clip in Vegas and my first menu in DVDA.

My technique (with earlier versions of DVDA) has been to preview the menu in 'Best' resolution, copy the screen to the clipboard and then paste this back into the Vegas clip, then render the clip.

I've just tried that and it refused to work.

I then tried pasting into PhotoShop but that didn't work either - the 'Paste' option is greyed out both in Pghotoshop and in Vegas..

Now an I doing something wrong, is my PC and/or software having a hissy fit or does this option not work like that anymore? Or is this a bug in DVDA?

The DVDA help file seems unhelpful on this topic.

Wayne

Comments

MPM wrote on 2/13/2008, 2:55 PM
FWIW I think maybe a more common workflow would be to create your menu outside of DVDA, perhaps in P/Shop or similar, Import that into Vegas, and render the mpg2 that'll be your intro and menu background. As an alternative, Vegas itself can do a fantastic job with text -- sometimes nicer than Photoshop -- so you might be able to create your menu there.

The advantage of using Vegas is that it's pretty easy in my experience to throw the aspects off when you copy/paste or capture stills. Depending on if & how you create your highlight masks, it can throw things off in some players.

I have found it fairly accurate to render an incomplete DVD to hdd, then import the menu video into Vegas; you can take a snapshot in PowerDVD & import that, but I prefer using video -- exporting a frame from the preview window to file in Vegas, I've seen a difference between snapshots of a DVD video file vs. a still on the timeline.
bStro wrote on 2/13/2008, 4:00 PM
the 'Paste' option is greyed out both in Pghotoshop and in Vegas..

Photoshop: Did you create a new file to paste into? Photoshop isn't going to let you paste unless you have a document open to paste into.

Vegas: The Paste function in Vegas is for pasting events. You can't paste some random item (in this case, an image) from the clipboard onto the timeline. This has always been true.

Rob
biggles wrote on 2/13/2008, 7:48 PM
Thanks guys - I think you have both jogged different parts of my memory - have to look at making more detailed notes when I tackle a project!

Wayne
biggles wrote on 2/13/2008, 8:11 PM
OK I think I've nailed the work flow and hopefully can describe it in a way that others can follow! And my apologies if this has been covered before in this forum.

(1)Create front menu screen in DVDA.
(2)Preview DVD with Preview Quality set to 'Best'
(3)Copy to Clipboard
(4)Open a new document in Photoshop size, 786X576 (I work in PAL-land, so don't know what it would be for NTSC). Save this as a jpeg.
(5)Create First Play clip in Vegas and add the saved jpeg as the last event, fading in to it. Make sure that the 'Maintain Aspect Ratio' option IS ticked in the properties
(6)Render this clip.
(7)Now add this rendered clip as the Introductory Media to your DVDA project.

You should find that the Introductory media plays and then fades seamlessly to your menu screen.

Note you need to make sure that if you make any changes to your menu screen, you redo all the steps.

I hope this is clear and that it helps someone else.

Wayne

*poor grammar edited out!
bStro wrote on 2/13/2008, 8:46 PM
You should see find that the Introductory media plays and then fades seamlessly to your menu screen.

Just so you know, this will be seamless when you preview in DVDA, but most likely will not be seamless on your DVD player. The intro media and the menu are separate VOBs on the disc, and pretty much all DVD players will lag anywhere from a fraction of a second to a couple seconds (it varies) as it switches from one to the other.

Another method (and one that will be seamless) is to create your intro media and menu background all as one file in Vegas. Then set this file as the background media for your menu. Then move the loop point (green flag at the far left of the menu's timeline) to the point at which your menu should begin.

Rob
biggles wrote on 2/13/2008, 10:16 PM
Aha - thanks for that tip Rob!
MPM wrote on 2/14/2008, 7:15 AM
Wayne, totally FWIW...

When you create a menu in DVDA you're just using different tools than you'll find in Vegas or Photoshop, but the result's the same -- a video file. The finished DVD will store invisible rectangles where the buttons are, and what you can think of as a mostly transparent overlay with the button highlight shapes. As Rob pointed out, there are advantages to using one, continuous video file with your intro & menu.

If you create your menu background, including any button images, in say Photoshop (or similar) &/or Vegas, you can easily render this file to import into DVDA. The difference from your method is that you can skip creating the menu background video in DVDA entirely. This saves a bit of time, can improve quality (thru potentially better tools, not relying on the clipboard, & not having potential aspect ratio problems), and gives you more flexibility. Once the combined video is imported into DVDA, you place empty buttons with highlights either created from imported mask files or made in DVDA based on those invisible button rectangles.

And using Vegas you can create menu backgrounds that rival anything you've ever seen on a retail DVD. You might do things like pick up free motion graphics online to overlay on the Vegas timeline, or use a free or inexpensive 3 D program to create a video you'll overlay -- the latter works well to create super easy animated text you can further set to a path in Vegas. The only tip would be to remember that when DVDA adds anything to a menu other than those invisible button coordinates, & that includes the menu title (even when it's invisible), DVDA will encode the background to mpg2. Therefore you want to work in a higher quality AVI format (DV or mjpeg etc.) so that DVDA isn't re-encoding your mpg2.