[vet-mm] Creating a DVD Menu

[Greg Neil (Mr)]

Windows 7 has a built-in DVD menu creator, although like many of it's kind, it is template driven and doesn't give you complete control.

Flash is not an appropriate tool for DVD menu creation. DVD players do not understand flash, and I have yet to see a good tool for converting flash to DVD menus.

Encore is one option, however it is not a beginners tool. It does have the advantage of tight integration with Premiere and Photoshop, so if you are invested in Adobe products, it is probably the best option for you. It can also do higher end features like playlists, which most of the lower cost or free options cannot do. It does have some limitations, and used to have a nasty habit of not covering all the allowable resolutions and often re-encoding footage needlessly, but these problems may have been ironed out by now.

There are some freeware options, including DVD Styler and DVDAuthorGUI, which front-end other tools. They rely on you having your assets already created - videos, stills, motion backgrounds, buttons etc, but they can produce decent quality output.

Authoring comes in basically two forms -
 
easy :- all templates and few options for real customisation - Nero/Roxio/iDVD

and

complex :- create all your own assets, do all your own authoring, total freedom - Encore/DVD Architect/DVD Studio/DVD Lab Pro

Some of the template driven authoring tools produce slick looking end product - iDVD, for example - but you can pick it a mile away as they all start to look the same. The complex authoring takes time and planning, but you can create whatever you want.

In your case I would recommend Premiere, Photoshop and Encore.

Cheers,

Greg


Greg Neil

ICT Systems Manager
St Margaret's and Berwick Grammar Schools



-----Original Message-----
From: vet-mm-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Karen Webster
Sent: Thu 09/02/2012 8:10 PM
To: vet-mm at edulists.com.au
Subject: [vet-mm] Creating a DVD Menu
 
Hi everyone

I am teaching 3/4 VET IDM for the first time. I am using the Pixel Ed
resource and was wondering what program you use to create a DVD Menu. The
video can be done in Premiere but can you create the menu using Flash or do
you need Encore?


thanks
Karen Webster
Alexandra SC