Making DVDA menus in Photoshop

Steve Mann wrote on 6/8/2011, 6:36 PM
I've been making my menus in Photoshop for a few years, but they are mostly single-menu designs with layers named:
Background-01
button-01-highlightTrans
button-02-highlightTrans
button-03-highlightTrans
etc.

If I do a second menu page layer (Background-02), and some button layers on that menu page, (button-04-highlightTrans, button-05-highlightTrans, etc), DVDA doesn't load the menus as I would like.

DVDA only loads Background-01, and all of the buttons (from both pages) are placed on that menu. It's not a big deal to load the file a second time and change the background media to Background-02, then delete the "wrong" buttons on the pages, but am I doing something wrong or is this the way that DVDA imports PSD menus?

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 6/9/2011, 5:46 AM
Unlike Premiere Elements and Encore, DVD Architect does not use a PSD structure system for its menu pages.

Mostly, that's a good thing, since that's part of the reason DVD Architect is so flexible and has so many options.

But you can't import a layered PSD file into DVD Architect and have the program read each layer as a separate navigation elements. In DVD Architect, you bring in the graphics as separate images and assemble them into a DVD menu in the program.
Steve Mann wrote on 6/9/2011, 9:26 AM
"But you can't import a layered PSD file into DVD Architect and have the program read each layer as a separate navigation elements. "

Uh..

That's exactly what I've been doing for years.... the background is one layer, each button is on it's own layer. I do all the design work in Photoshop and very, very little in DVDA. DVDA imports the layers and makes my menu page, complete with background image and buttons. I still have to fix the broken links and the button navigation in DVDA, but Photoshop is the primary design tool.

My question was, is there a way to make DVDA import a menu with more than one page?
Steve Grisetti wrote on 6/9/2011, 10:33 AM
I'm obviously out of my league on this one, Steve. I'm going to play around with importing PSD myself to learn more about it.

This may be a feature that's available in DVDA Pro. I don't believe it's possible in DVDA Studio -- although, if it is, I'd love to know how!

Meantime, I hope someone who does know more about this can come through with an answer for you.
plekkie wrote on 6/10/2011, 5:27 AM
As far as I know, each menu can only have one background, regardless if you do this in DVDA, Encore, or any other authoring program.

In the Help chapter "Creating Custom Menus and Buttons Using Layered PSD Graphics" there is no mentioning of a second background.

I hope I understood your question correctly.
Steve Mann wrote on 6/10/2011, 5:40 PM
"I hope I understood your question correctly. "

No, I don't think you did. I am not trying to make a menu with more than one background (I can't even get my mind around that, anyway). I am making two or three-page menus. There's a limit of 18 buttons on a menu page, so I build a intro page with four buttons: "Play All", "Act One", "Act Two" and "Audio Options". (In this example, the video is of a stage performance, with each of two acts containing ten or twelve chapter points. Too many for a single menu. The Audio Options menu lets the user select the audio track. DVDA lets me do all this in Photoshop. Each menu page has its own background layer (Backround-01, Backround-02, etc). And each page has its own button layers (Button-01, Button-02, etc).

When I import the menu PSD file, DVDA imports one Background, and all of the buttons.

So the question was, does anyone know how to import multiple menu pages from a single PSD file? There's a couple of workarounds. I can make a separate PSD file for each page, or I can import the PSD file once for each menu page, then change the background image in the drop-down menu and delete the unneeded buttons. For simple menus I use the latter workaround, for the really complex ones, I use the former method.

Steve Grisetti wrote on 6/10/2011, 7:07 PM
How are you presently doing what you're doing, Steve? I can't find a tool for that.

Or is this feature you're describing unique to the Pro version of DVD Architect (since this forum doesn't distinguish between the two)?
Steve Mann wrote on 6/10/2011, 9:32 PM
I am using the Pro version - I don't know if the Studio version is different.
Right-click in the Project Overview window and select "Insert Menu from file ..." Look in the manual for "Creating a Layeres PSD Menu".
plekkie wrote on 6/11/2011, 4:40 AM
If you want to choose for example background layer "background-02", go to Menu page properties --> Background media --> expand "video", and you will see "Layer". Select this box and you can choose your background layer from your .psd file, or the composited layer of all background layers.

Is this what you want to do?
Steve Mann wrote on 6/11/2011, 8:53 AM
This is what I want to stop doing. I want the import of multiple layers (Background-01, Background-02, etc) to each open its own menu page in DVDA. If all I had to do was change the background media, then it would be easy, but all of the buttons get imported on all the menu pages, and that can be a lot more work to clean up.

Right now when I have more complex menus, I am simply making a new PSD file for each menu page. But it would be nice if I could do it all in a single PSD file.