Maestro button question

[mrsam]

I am making menus with video backgrounds that bring the menu and buttons into focus as the vid palys. The problem I am having is the the first defined button always shows before the background is drawn (looks weird for it to be there from the begining). Is there a way to at least not have a selected button when a menu comes up or even better to set a time delay so the button highlights after the menu is completely displayed?

[Slug123]

Now I am only a junior at this and have only being playing with DVDmaestro for a week now but I know the answer to this one...

I had a similar problem backing up the animated menu from the scorpion king where the menu appeared about 17 seconds in on the intro movie, what you need to do is on the menu page where you select still or loop there is a slide bar to the right move this slide bar to the right until a thumbnail of the movie where the your menu appears (possibly could be more accurate using time instead of thumbnail)... then when you compile and run the movie the menu overlay does not appear until that part.

Probably not very well explained and I am sure some of the more senior members can possibly bulk it out with the right buzzwords etc but hopefully this will help.

Slug

[slk001]

Slug is correct on the "how to". You can set the time in approximately 0.5 second intervals. However, what you are planning on doing can be irritating to the end user (even you, after a while). A good rule of thumb, is that the fade-in should be short - maybe 2 seconds or less.

I originally did what you are planning - faded in the menu background (2 secs), then the buttons (another 2 secs). After a while, this was beginning to really PO me (having to "wait" for the buttons), so I just re-did everything so that both the BG and the buttons faded in together (in 2 secs). I also set the slider to zero. Yes, the selected button subpicture will show early, but it is not really objectionable. You can set the actions so that no button is selected when a menu starts (use the CONNECTIONS window).

[Slug123]

On a related subject if say in the case of the scorpion king film where the menu did fade in at 17 seconds how could you get the animated film to get to the end and then loop but from the 17 second point so you wouldn'y again have to wait the 17 seconds for the menu to re-fade in... can you set a chapter point at 17 seconds and then EndAction loop back to film chapter point?

I agree that the fade in is a pain, certainly on my own projects having played around with it I will not use fade in menu's.

Slug

[slk001]

You can't set chapter points in menus. The "slider" actually sets the point where LOOP jumps back to. I think that not having buttons until the "loop point" is just an unfortunate consequence (but it may have been by design).

By themselves, fade-in's and fade-out's appear more pleasing than the abrupt transistions without them. A 1 to 1.5 second fade-out/in is not really all that noticeable. My audio, although in sync, does not fade-in, but it does fade-out. Even if the menu appears as a "still", I will still use the fades (which makes them really motion menues).

[mrsam]

Thanks for the help guys. Just look at that control and it works great. If we all stay at this long enough we may just learn how to do this stuff right ;-))