Transitions from moving backgrounds

gwyador wrote on 12/17/2004, 3:05 PM
Hi... I was hoping someone out there had an idea how to do menu "transitions" smoothly from moving backgrounds... here is an example for clarity... I have a dvd menu with an animated background and a single button on it, when the viewer clicks the button I would like one of two things to happen(either is acceptable) one would be that the menu video stops on the frame of the background that was showing when the button was clicked and fades to a pre video... video or two, the video button gives a click sound and than finishes playing one last time and than fades to a pre video video... does anyone have an idea how to do this with DVDA-2? in all cases I have tried... the minute the button is clicked it jumps abruptly to the prevideo video, I sure would like to make it seamless as if a transition were applied somehow!! I look forward to suggestions!! Bryan.

Comments

ScottW wrote on 12/17/2004, 4:36 PM
Depending on the player you cannot assure a seamless transition with DVDA 2.0, it's simply lacking some features that would let you get close.

However, most of the time these things are done thru video and audio trickery and so working within the constraints of DVDA.....

For DVDA, your can do this in a couple of ways - the easiest is to not have your link take you directly to the preview material. Instead the link should take you to a short clip that looks just like your menu (including the motion) and you fade to black and then the end action of that clip takes you to the preview. By doing this you can also include your audio "click" (or whatever) at the beginning of your transition clip.

In fact, I would probably create the entire menu including buttons in Vegas and that would become the background; then in DVDA I'd just put my transition clip as an empty text box over my button so that I could have the highlight masks and link directly to the clip. By doing it this way, it's pretty easy to create your transition clip.

You also need to be careful in the design of your audio and video - too much motion and it's going to be very noticable when you jump to the transition clip - so motion should be subtle rather than gross. Another trick is to use motion that appears to be random over a longer period of time - I think one Hollywood DVD I recently looked at actually had a menu that was 3+ minutes long in material, but they were creating a look that was random, so when you clicked on a button and the transition clip started with something else going on, it was visually accepted.

Do spend some time taking a look at how various hollywood flicks get authored to DVD - you'll start to see some of the tricks that are used to make these transitions.

--Scott