Comments

bStro wrote on 1/18/2008, 6:15 PM
There's not a lot out there for DVD Architect -- most of the tutorial writers cover Vegas. There's a guy by the name of Ed Troxel that puts out a regular Vegas newsletter, and he sometimes includes tips and tricks for DVD Architect. You can download those at his website.

Every now and then, there will be something at Vasst.com. You'll need a login id if you don't already have one.

As far as masking goes, I still like the DVDA 2.0 New Features document (PDF) that Sony put out years ago. So many people want Sony to improve DVDA's theme capabilities and PSD support, but frankly I find custom highlight masks so much simpler and efficient.

Other than that, I think the online help covers things pretty well. In order to do "other cool menu stuff," you just need to be creative and use DVDA's tool set imaginatively. Reading through previous forum threads is a great way to get ideas. Some helpful keywords to search for include: highlight, mask, loop point, fade, script.

Rob
MPM wrote on 1/19/2008, 11:18 AM
FWIW I think it's a bit harder for DVDA vs Vegas when it comes to tuts... With Vegas the sky's almost the limit, while with DVDA you're limited 1st by the DVD specs, 2nd by the portion of the specs players actually implement, & 3rd, by the features (often tricks really) that DVDA will allow.

Other than the sources Rob's posted, IMHO it's very useful to learn about DVDs themselves -- sort of "How they do it" for the different features commonly seen on commercial DVDs. Taking that approach you're usually safe when it comes to both specs and players. Once you know how something's done, with the help of the docs and browsing/searching this forum, it's usually not too hard to find if it's possible in DVDA & how.

For the basics:
IMHO going about it the way I just described is pretty helpful when it comes to menu backgrounds and button highlights too. I think the 2 most important concepts are 1) for the menu background you're creating a video, whether you do it outside of DVDA or not. And 2) Button Highlights are composed of 3 different types of shapes, with everything else normally transparent. These shapes can go by a few names, but generally you have fill, outline, and blend -- they're stored in the DVD -- and the player can fill each of them with a solid color.

The rest is more-or-less how you want to create and/or import everything into DVDA. Button Frames, along with Button & Frame Masks and such are just tools and methods -- not something integral to DVDs -- to help you create that background video. Shapes for Button Highlights can actually be created several ways, and imported into DVDA using different sorts of mapping: i.e. this color = fill shapes, or the type of shape depends on transparency etc... Knowing that, you can follow the Sony Docs &/or posts in this forum, & figure out what methods will work best for you.