Theme Creation

DavidPJ wrote on 6/14/2004, 7:56 AM
It's time for me to author another DVD, and I'm frustrated with the thought of the same old Sony supplied DVD themes. And I only do this for a hobby.

What are people doing to create interesting themes? Are most people going the route of photoshop and creating their own? I hate to think that DVDA will never have more predefined themes. Even Sony's Screenblast Movie product includes 40 themes.

Is there a good software program that easily creates themes?
Thanks.

Comments

bStro wrote on 6/14/2004, 8:08 AM
Usually what I do is supply my own background and use text links only. If you've got some good fonts and color them creatively, who needs pre-defined themes? Actually, I think this would be more true for those using DVDA professionally than those doing this for a hobby. If someone were putting together a project for a client or their own film, they certainly wouldn't use a canned look from a corporation. :)

That said, I do toy around with creating themes. I generally make them up in Paint Shop Pro, with different elements (title, buttons, background, etc) on different layers and then save them to individual files.

Is there a good software program that easily creates themes?

There's only one that I'm aware of: http://www.briancbarnes.homestead.com

Rob
DavidPJ wrote on 6/14/2004, 8:18 AM
Thanks bStro. What kinds of source material do you use for your own background? Do you just grab a frame from the project video?

I know canned themes can sometimes look cheesy. I've actually liked some of the Sony supplied themes. But overall, I think good themes although canned can give a project a more polished finish.

I have the briancarnes theme program but haven't used it. I opened it up, looked around a bit, and closed it. Weren't there rumors that the program wasn't compatible with DVDA2?
bStro wrote on 6/14/2004, 8:33 AM
DavidPJ wrote:

What kinds of source material do you use for your own background? Do you just grab a frame from the project video?

Sometimes. My wife really likes the DVDs I made for one of her TV programs. When the program airs on television, the end of the opening sequence usually disolves into the episode. So I put the opening sequence (up to by not including the disolve) into a file and use that as a First play video. Then I took a screen cap of the last frame of that (it's the main character's face on the right, the program title on the left) and used that as the menu background. Then the video file for each episode starts with the exace same frame.

So: You put the DVD into the player, and the opening sequence/credits run. They end, the title and guy's face appear on the screen, music ends, screen freezes and the buttons show up. Choose an episode, and the buttons disappear, and the background disolves into the start of the video.

Sometimes I use backgrounds I find online, sometimes I use pictures that I've taken, and sometimes I create them from scratch in Paint Shop Pro.

Weren't there rumors that the program wasn't compatible with DVDA2?

I may be wrong, but I think he's updated it. Might want to check the site and see if the version number is different from what you've got.

Rob
bcbarnes wrote on 6/17/2004, 6:49 PM
It isn't compatible with DVDA2 ... yet ...

I have all the information I need, now all I need is some time - a 2 yr old can rob you of that pretty fast...

Brian.
ghosty6 wrote on 6/17/2004, 10:04 PM
It works for me in DVDA2, I created new themes and edited existing ones and it worked. version 2.4
bcbarnes wrote on 6/19/2004, 12:49 AM
>>It works for me in DVDA2, I created new themes and edited existing ones >>and it worked. version 2.4

It will work but you can't use the new features available in the DVDA 2.0 theme spec., and if any theme you try to open does use these features, the open will fail.
Cunhambebe wrote on 6/19/2004, 11:00 PM
Try Photoshop. You can do almost eveything with it. Read this, pls:

Computer images and video images both consist of pixels but they aren't quite the same. Computer pixels are square whereas video pixels are rectangular. A standard frame of video, in North America, consists of 720 x 480 rectangular pixels, but because the pixels in a Photoshop document are square, if you created artwork at 720 x 480 pixels, it won't look the same when it plays on a video monitor - it'll look slightly squashed.
To get around this problem, work with Photoshop documents that are 720 x 540 pixels with a resolution of 72 dpi. (All video graphics are 72 dpi.) This will give you a work-in-progress document that looks the same way it'll look on a video monitor. When you're done using Photoshop and ready to move your still graphics into a DVD authoring application, you can resize the artwork to 720 x 480.
:)