Here's the scoop, directly from Sony:

Auto Actions

If you want the button to animate when you select it you are out of luck. If as you say, the button is an animated or still image and you just want to have a highlight around this button when selected, you can do this.

Guys, I'm 99.8% sure he's just asking how to have his buttons highlighted with an outlined box rather than a filled in rectangle (the default in DVDA). Nothing to do with auto-actions or making things animate. :)

Like so: See how the Scenes button is highlighted.

tdsilk: That type of highlighting isn't a point-n-click option in DVD Architect like rectangle and underline highlighting are. What you can do, though, is make a custom highlight mask (as explained in the DVDA 2 New Features document (that's a PDF file, by the way, not a web page). The section on custom highlight masks starts on page 51. Masks are simple images (usually black and white, but you can use other/more colors if you're feeling creative) that tell DVDA what to show and what not to show -- in this case, where to show color in your highlighting and where not to show color.

In DVDA, custom highlight masks come in two varieties: a small mask that you apply to each button you want to use it for; or (my favorite) a full-size mask that you apply to the entire menu. The new features document probably explains it better than I could, but here are the files I used to for the menu I linked to up above:

This is the menu background. I made it, including the text, entirely within my image editor. There's no need to get DVDA involved there, especially since its text tool isn't all that great.

This is the highlight mask. It's just a black background (what you don't want to show up in the hiighlight) and white boxes (the highlighting part, which you do want to show up. Notice that all the boxes are show here. You only need one mask with all of the highlighting pieces. DVDA will assign each box according to where you place your actual buttons.

With this method, you're not just limited to boxes, though. You can do something more creative.

There are different approaches, though, and which you use depends on the details of your project. What kind of buttons yoiu're using -- thumbnails or text? created in DVDA, Vegas, or an image editor?

Rob

Rob, this is exactly what I'm looking for. Do you have any info on where I can find easy to understand tutorials on creating themes? The problem I have is understanding the whole zip file concept on XP. If not, I will try a separate post for this.

Btw, I was using image thumbnails that have a section of the movie animated in the button. When the button is highlighted I want to place the colored border around it.

Thanks much!

The easiest thing to do (after you've read the theme specs, which I link to in the other thread) is to copy one of the included themes (the THM file under _themes) to another directory. Rename the file with a ZIP extension and then double-click it. Windows XP will open it automatically so long as it has a ZIP extension. Extra the files to yet another directory, edit the files, add your own files, etc. When you're done, right-click on the directory and choose Send To -> Compressed file. That will give you a new ZIP with your new them files. Rename this file with a THM extension and drop it into the _themes directory.

Sorry, I don't know of any Themes tutorials for DVDA. Perhaps I'll do one after the new version comes out, though I suspect (would hope) that Sony makes it simpler to make themes, because the current way is not very popular with users.

Btw, I was using image thumbnails that have a section of the movie animated in the button. When the button is highlighted I want to place the colored border around it.

Still doable with custom highlight masks. Set up your menu the way you want with all your animated thumbnails. Then go to Preview, set the quality to Best, and take a screenshot (little copy button at the top right). Paste that screenshot into your imaging program and create your custom highlight mask based on that. EDIT: Argh. This method comes with a problem... Your button (the box itself, not necessarily the image) has to cover the area mask area you want to use. This is easy with an empty button -- you just resize it. But with thumbnails, resizing the button also resizes the thumbnail image. If you resize the button enough to cover the masked area, then the image also overlaps with the highlight, which I imagine you don't want. The simplest solution I can think of is to also create / use a thumbnail mask so that the outer edges of the thumbnail are transparent.

Rob

Or maybe render your thumbnails with boarders around them that match/blend into the menu background?

Can't you set media items that are not necessarilly buttons? Could he set a bunch of media thumbnails but have the actual buttons be transparent boxes which could then be dragged over the background media?

Yeah I guess that works. Set your motion clips as plain media clips on the menu then add your files and make the buttons text only with no text, these can be dragged over your clips sitting on the menu. Then you just have to make a mask like bstro said.