DVD Authoring

Adjusting Image, Text, and Menu Characteristics

DVDit! lets you do much more to text and button elements than moving them around the menu and changing their size and shape. You can adjust the color, saturation, and brightness for individual menu elements or the menu as a whole. Also, you can give text and buttons drop shadows using an intuitive and customizable tool.

Task: Change the Characteristics of Menus, Backgrounds, Buttons, and Text

The button at the top of the Button palette is called "GlassGreen." Don't let that stop you from turning it into "GlassRed." Follow these steps to change the characteristics of anything that appears in a menu:

1. Select a menu and place some text and two buttons on it. Select all three items by Ctrl-clicking them in turn.

2. Select Effects, Adjust Color from the main menu. This opens the Color Adjustment dialog box

3. Open the Color Adjustment dialog box's drop-down menu. You have three selections: Current Menu Background, Selected Menu Items, and Current Menu. Select each one in turn and note how the display in the Color Adjustment screen changes. This is a very nifty tool. You can adjust any selected menu item(s), only the background, or the entire menu—background, text, buttons, and all.

4. Make a selection and move the sliders. Turns out the GlassGreen button can be any color you want. If you check the Save Settings box, you can apply the same settings on other menus or menu items.

5. Cancel out of the Color Adjustment dialog box. Select only the text by clicking it and then select Effects, Text Properties. This opens the Text Properties dialog box

6. The Text Properties dialog box lets you make the usual text changes, including font typeface, size, and bold/italic/underlined. It does have two interesting functions:

   • The Script drop-down menu lets you change the lettering from Western to five other alphabets.

   • The Color area actually controls the color and brightness. The top slider changes the text color, and the bottom slider changes the brightness.

7. You can change the drop shadow characteristics for menu items by selecting buttons and/or text and then selecting Effects, Drop Shadow to open the Drop Shadow dialog box

8. The Drop Shadow dialog box is an intuitive and fun toy. Using simple sliders you can adjust the shadow's characteristics down to its color, blur, direction from the object, and opacity. Selecting Apply To: Items in Current Menu means any changes will affect all items equally, giving your menu buttons a more consistent and realistic look

Adding Videos and Stills and Changing Their Properties

This is the exciting part of DVD production. You have various types of media in hand and are ready to pull them all together to draw your videos, photos, narration, and music into a cohesive whole.

Task: Take a Dry Run

Before you start adding videos and other media to your project, give one of your videos a dry run. This will give you a feel for how to manipulate videos within the authoring software. Follow these steps:

1. Open DVDit! to a new project.

2. Click the media button at the bottom of the Theme column.

3. Right-click a thumbnail image and select Play. if you've selected a video, it'll play in the large playback window. A still image will display for five seconds, and an audio file will run with no animation

4. To stop any playback, right-click the thumbnail again and select Stop.

   You also can use the large playback window controls to manipulate media. However, these controls are rudimentary at best. DVDit! does not have controls that "fast forward," "rewind," or automatically return the cursor to the beginning. Also, you can't "scrub" or search through a video—watching the images flash by as you slide the cursor. Instead, if you're looking for a particular scene, you need to move the cursor to an approximate location in the clip and release the mouse button. Then take a look at what pops on the screen and adjust your location accordingly.

   
   

5. You can use your video's timecode as a means to move to a specific scene. The timecode window is below the silver Movie/Menu button at the lower-right corner of the video playback window. Clicking the Play button will start the video at that point.

Changing Movie, Image, and Menu Properties

Finally, you may need to make some small but critical adjustments to one, some, or all your movies and menus. At issue is, what happens when the movie ends or if a viewer presses Next or Menu on the remote control?

You'll use the Movie Properties and Menu Properties dialog boxes to tell the DVD what to do. It's a tedious and time-consuming but necessary process.

Changing Movie, Image, and Menu Properties Finally, you may need to make some small but critical adjustments to one, some, or all your movies and menus. At issue is, what happens when the movie ends or if a viewer presses Next or Menu on the remote control? You'll use the Movie Properties and Menu Properties dialog boxes to tell the DVD what to do. It's a tedious and time-consuming but necessary process. Unfortunately, DVDit! LE has limited this feature to only the First Play object: Movie or Menu. I have included instructions for versions of DVDit! that allow you to make changes to all movies (videos and still images) and menus just in case you do upgrade to one of the retail versions of DVDit! Changing Movie and Image Properties If you are using the version of DVDit! LE bundled with Premiere and your First Play item is a menu, then go to the "Changing Menu Properties" section later in this hour. If your First Play item is a movie (video clip or still image), then continue reading here. Select your First Play movie by right-clicking it in its placeholder window (not the First Play placeholder but rather the placeholder of the movie itself). That opens the Movie Properties dialog box,Here are some points to keep in mind: If your "movie" is a still image, you can change the default duration from five seconds to whatever time you want, or you can select Infinite to display that image until the viewer presses a remote control button. If your movie is a video, selecting Infinite means the video will play to its conclusion and display the last frame until the viewer presses a remote control button.