Video Editing Question

[rhayman]

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum. and sorry if this has been answerd before, i did searces but couldent find anyhing.

i was wondering what the best program is to use for making motion menu's. I use adobe after effects for making chapter selection menu's but i cant really do anything else in it. i find it so difficult to use i have to use ulead video studio just to put text on to the menu's i make in after effects.

Are there any better programs out there for this.
if After effects is the best does anyone know any sites with guides on it on how to do things, such as how to put text onto a composition.

Thanks

[killingspree]

If you want real 'professional' menus you will have to go for either DVDMaestro or Sonic Scenarist NT. Both of them are industry standard. E.g. iirc the Matrix DVD was authored in Scenarist.
Those programs come at a heavy price though. Sonic sells scenarist for around 30 grand... (sorry, no kidding)

steVe

[manono]

Hi-

I use Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video 3.0. It handles inserting the text easily, and there are tons of tutorials on the web for it.

[rhayman]

thanks for the input, im going to try adobe premier and if i dont like that i will probably try sonic foundary video

[ultimatebilly]

@killingspree:
These are only authoring solutions, there are absolutely no help in creating menus or other assets, they can only be used to put the stuff together you created with other programs...

@rhayman:
Don't buy Scenarist if you're not sure that you need it
;)

I use After Effects too, but since I have no DVD-burner of my own yet, I don't use it very frequently for that purpose...
I remember a few people complaining about the bad text-art abilities of After Effects (although I never tried it myself with text), I think the Boris FX plugins are supposed to be very good, they add a very advanced text-art functionality to After Effects IIRC...
If your text is not supposed to be moving, then why don't you create it in Photoshop or something similar and import it into After Effects later on?
I think if you don't like vegas you should try to learn After Effects better, they are supposed to be the two best compositing systems for the consumer-market, I think (well, maybe I should put avid in the list).
I think After Effects is pretty straightforward, once you get used to the idea that everything is keyframe-animated...
The help-menu is very useful too...

[killingspree]

Originally posted by ultimatebilly
@killingspree:
These are only authoring solutions, there are absolutely no help in creating menus or other assets, they can only be used to put the stuff together you created with other programs...

oh... uups... see what comes out when you were going out the day befor and only slept 3 hours. :)

thanks for pointing out.

steVe

[ultimatebilly]

Going out on holy sunday? Shame on you! ;)