One last DVD-Lab question about jpg objects

[BMW9612]

Ok, this is my last (i hope) small problem with my compendium-of-dvd-knowledge-project that some of you may have read about elsewhere :p. anyhoo, in dvd lab, i have a cool jpg of this line of dripping blood that i want to make appear and disappear underneath words on the menu as they are selected, etc, just like the normal standard underline that the help file tells you how to use. it should be easy: import, drag, say invisible normal, hotbox around the jpg and the link, done, right? ha. whenever you use the hotbox to use such disappearing underlines, you're forced to use a limited-selection color map, and my cool dripping blood becomes just a red (default) rectangle, and the transparancy of the color map only makes it a more see through (or totally invisible) rectangle. All traces of the cool blood image are gone. I've tried each and every transparancy blend/mode/effect in the color propertes to no avail, and even tried exporting the jpg from RealDraw Pro as a transparent PNG. Right now, my only solution is to take advantage of the fact that my motion background happens to be letterbox, and i can put my menu links below the video and use black "invisible selected" rectangles to cover up my lines of blood once they've been embedded into the background. I noticed even the sample objects that they give you to use are transparent png's, but when used with the hotbox for the ol' disappearing act when selecting different links, they too are subject to the terrible looking color map :(. If anyone knows a way around this - to import objects to behave like links (via hotbox) with "invisible normal" without having to use the color map on them (which looks fine on text, but not at all with objects) please help!

p.s. sorry for the long post, i swear i think this is the last problem i can find with dvd-lab, i'm pretty sure it does EVERYTHING else, one way or another ;)

[BMW9612]

as long as people are looking at that, i'll throw another question out there that probably has no answer (or an answer of no ;))...Is there a way to play a continuous background song with switched menus in DVD-Lab, such that the same song plays without restarting while you are navigating switched menus. Thanks.

[CryptKeeper]

i've tried this program and i have yet to get any subpictures to work properly

i import the subpicture and for some reason its imported wrong

stretched vertically of some sort

so beats me right now how to get that working

as for the continuous audio from menu to menu
will try to see if it can be done with dvd-lab

which this program IMO isnt too great for many things

[maa]

I know exactly what you're trying to do with the buttons.
Just don't think its possible withion the DVD Spec.
All extras like buttons or images that you add to a still or moving background are merged to that background in the mpeg picture stream.

The highlighting is done by sub pictures that are 4 bit RLE - thats DVDStandard.
The menu swap trick is a workaround but you hit another spec limitation - the audio.
Audio is woven into the picture stream and stored in a PGC.
Swapping menus also swaps the PGC and thus the audio.

Have a look at the highlighting on Lord of the Rings - look close on your computer monitor and you'll see its the same 4 bit crap everyone else uses.

[BMW9612]

darn. I'll have to take advantage of my letterbox background and merge the bloodline gif underneath all the buttons, in the black part below the background, and put invisible selected black rectangles over top of them. I had just hoped I could do it without a letterbox background. I also tried using adobe photoshop to cut out just the red part of the gif (its red blood on a black background) and with some changing of the transparancy effects, i actually got it to be visible through the color map rectangle that gets layed over top of it, but the blood was just a different shade of the same color from the color map. if that doesn't make sense, don't worry about it, it basically didn't work. thanks for the info (again ;)) and i'm pretty sure i'm finally out of questions. thanks again.

[CryptKeeper]

yeah the color will be what the map uses
but why not make a subpicture with the bloodline in it

this way you can select the image in the subpicture as the hotspot
and it will show it outlined properly when previewing as well as
when creating the final output.