By popular demand: "How to make video streams for animated menus" (TEMPORARY) - Page 2

idbirch2 · 8th March 2003, 02:52

Animated menus (videos for button and videos in background) are a basic feature of Sonic Foundy's DVD architect.

Can't get much easier than this:

1. Choose a thumbnail for the button
2. Tick the box "animate thumnail"
3. Right click background and choose "insert media"
4. Select MPEG stream and whether or not you want the audio aswell

There you go - a menu that has a video as the background and video buttons. Might save some people 9 hours or so.....

katjarella · 10th June 2003, 08:49

why expensive software?

from Germany Doom9 & me

google.translate : Motion Menu

Arky · 10th June 2003, 14:37

Nice thread - I don't suppose you'd be willing to translate it, for the benefit of the English-speaking Doom9 members, would you?

Arky ;o)

maa · 6th August 2003, 12:41

Update - MyDVD supports motion menus and motion buttons from Ver 4.0

BMW9612 · 29th January 2004, 02:49

its true dvd architect makes such motion easy to do, but its almost impossible to prevent it from re-encoding everything you give it, ruining the quality of your menus, movie files, and everything else. encode everything with tmpg, then use DVD-Lab, it supports full motion thumbs and backgrounds and cool switched menus, and instructions are included in the help file for all and some more cool tips at the site (http://dvdlab.net/dvdlab/) The only catch, when you "render motion" it outputs an uncompressed avi with no index, so just open it up in virtualdub to rebuild the index and re-save, then re-encode to m2v with tmpg for a motion menu with moving thumbnails!

Dimmer · 14th March 2004, 22:33

Here’s one more method of creating video for animated menus that doesn't seem to be mentioned around here. If you have some experience with Macromedia Flash, it makes the process very easy and opens a lot of opportunities for you to be creative. I used Flash MX.

1. Prepare you video assets in whatever video editor you like, preferably cut the segments to the same length. Flash accepts AVI, MPEG, QiuckTime, .wmv, .dv, and more.

2. Create a new project in Flash, set project properties to 720x480 and 29.97fps for NTSC or 720x576 and 25fps for PAL.

3. Go to File - Import to Library, open your video file. In Import Video Setting that would pop up, set Quality to 100%, Keyframe interval to 1. Clear the options Synchronize Video and Import Audio. Flash can't handle DVD-quality audio, so you'll have to add it afterwards. Set Number of Video Frames... to 1:1.

4. Now, if you're importing a background video, set Scale to 100%. If you want to create animated buttons, set Scale for example to 20% or whatever size so that all the buttons would fit on the screen.

5. Click OK, and then repeat the procedure for each video clip. Import still images the same way except that there is no options to be set.

6. Bring up the Library window (Ctr+L) if not visible, and drag and drop your material to the main project window. If it prompts you something like "Do you want to insert frames...", check the box "Don't ask again..." and say yes. It will add as many frames to the project as there are in the video being inserted. Important hint: If your video segments have different length, add the longest one first; this will make other shorter clips loop, otherwise they will disappear once finished playing.

7. You can add and use layers similar to Photoshop. Put the background video or image on the bottom layer, the buttons above it, and on the top you can add frames for the buttons if desired.

8. Now is the time when you can use Flash animation capabilities to the fullest, for example create the title of the movie gradually appearing on the screen, have all the elements including video flying around, spinning and changing in size. Or just leave it as is.

9. Go to File - Export Movie, choose AVI as a file format, clear the Compression and Smooth options in the box that would pop up, preserve the original video size and set color depth to 24 bit. Click OK. After a short while, you'll get your video stream as an AVI file. Encode it to MPEG-2 with your favorite encoder, and you're done.

Hope this will be useful to some of you.

10th June 2003, 08:49	#22 \| Link
katjarella woman @ german doom9 Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Germany Posts: 117	Motion Menues with Avisynth why expensive software? from Germany Doom9 & me google.translate : Motion Menu __________________ katjarella by Creyskull Visuell Design Last edited by katjarella; 10th June 2003 at 22:32.

29th January 2004, 02:49	#25 \| Link
BMW9612 Registered User Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: maryland Posts: 17	its true dvd architect makes such motion easy to do, but its almost impossible to prevent it from re-encoding everything you give it, ruining the quality of your menus, movie files, and everything else. encode everything with tmpg, then use DVD-Lab, it supports full motion thumbs and backgrounds and cool switched menus, and instructions are included in the help file for all and some more cool tips at the site (http://dvdlab.net/dvdlab/) The only catch, when you "render motion" it outputs an uncompressed avi with no index, so just open it up in virtualdub to rebuild the index and re-save, then re-encode to m2v with tmpg for a motion menu with moving thumbnails! __________________ "Most thinks work better when I kick 'em..." - Spike Spiegel

14th March 2004, 22:33	#26 \| Link
Dimmer Registered User Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 883	Creating Menus in Macromedia Flash Here’s one more method of creating video for animated menus that doesn't seem to be mentioned around here. If you have some experience with Macromedia Flash, it makes the process very easy and opens a lot of opportunities for you to be creative. I used Flash MX. 1. Prepare you video assets in whatever video editor you like, preferably cut the segments to the same length. Flash accepts AVI, MPEG, QiuckTime, .wmv, .dv, and more. 2. Create a new project in Flash, set project properties to 720x480 and 29.97fps for NTSC or 720x576 and 25fps for PAL. 3. Go to File - Import to Library, open your video file. In Import Video Setting that would pop up, set Quality to 100%, Keyframe interval to 1. Clear the options Synchronize Video and Import Audio. Flash can't handle DVD-quality audio, so you'll have to add it afterwards. Set Number of Video Frames... to 1:1. 4. Now, if you're importing a background video, set Scale to 100%. If you want to create animated buttons, set Scale for example to 20% or whatever size so that all the buttons would fit on the screen. 5. Click OK, and then repeat the procedure for each video clip. Import still images the same way except that there is no options to be set. 6. Bring up the Library window (Ctr+L) if not visible, and drag and drop your material to the main project window. If it prompts you something like "Do you want to insert frames...", check the box "Don't ask again..." and say yes. It will add as many frames to the project as there are in the video being inserted. Important hint: If your video segments have different length, add the longest one first; this will make other shorter clips loop, otherwise they will disappear once finished playing. 7. You can add and use layers similar to Photoshop. Put the background video or image on the bottom layer, the buttons above it, and on the top you can add frames for the buttons if desired. 8. Now is the time when you can use Flash animation capabilities to the fullest, for example create the title of the movie gradually appearing on the screen, have all the elements including video flying around, spinning and changing in size. Or just leave it as is. 9. Go to File - Export Movie, choose AVI as a file format, clear the Compression and Smooth options in the box that would pop up, preserve the original video size and set color depth to 24 bit. Click OK. After a short while, you'll get your video stream as an AVI file. Encode it to MPEG-2 with your favorite encoder, and you're done. Hope this will be useful to some of you.

8th March 2003, 02:52	#21 \| Link
idbirch2 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: UK Posts: 680	Animated menus (videos for button and videos in background) are a basic feature of Sonic Foundy's DVD architect. Can't get much easier than this: 1. Choose a thumbnail for the button 2. Tick the box "animate thumnail" 3. Right click background and choose "insert media" 4. Select MPEG stream and whether or not you want the audio aswell There you go - a menu that has a video as the background and video buttons. Might save some people 9 hours or so.....

10th June 2003, 14:37	#23 \| Link
Arky Moderator Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: UK Posts: 1,479	Nice thread - I don't suppose you'd be willing to translate it, for the benefit of the English-speaking Doom9 members, would you? Arky ;o)

6th August 2003, 12:41	#24 \| Link
maa Registered User Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 896	Update - MyDVD supports motion menus and motion buttons from Ver 4.0