I noticed that a few of you had samples of the DVD menus you create for potential clients to watch on your websites. I am absolutely stumped as to how to go about doing this...can anyone tell me the proper technique in capturing the actuall DVD menu and create a video file of it?

Depends on how you want to display it, but you could just do a print screen of the menu and upload the image.
If you need motion, you could use an animated gif, perhaps as just part of the image (divide it up on chunks and have some animated), or you could use flash if you want a lot of interaction.

A real roundabout way would be to capture footage of the DVD menu from the DVD player itself, if you need the motion. Otherwise, just do a screenshot.

If you're using a mac, you could use Snapz Pro X. It captures full motion to a file from any part of or your entire screen. They have a demo, so it's worth a try.

Adobe Encore CS3 can export flash versions of your DVD which would display as a fully functional (motion) menu along with all of the content, or just the menu if you don't want the content. I'm working on this for my own website at present.

Dean.

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Day To Remember Videos
www.daytoremembervideos.com

Dean: Wow! so you can basically have a fully working DVD example online?

What parts of the DVD is turned into vector and what parts are rasterized images?

I would assume that all graphics are rasterized as it can't just magically make them vector. Perhaps text, etc., generated within encore would be vector.

It wouldn't be a full working version either, as that would require the video to be included. Or perhaps you could export that, but I'd think it a bad idea to have that included in flash (for space/bandwidth limits and downloading time).

Here's a link to my first attempt - this was just to test the functionality so don't be too critical with the content! The .flv files are approx 16mb so I would suggest the duration would need to be kept to a reasonable length to keep file sizes down.

http://www.daytoremembervideos.com/demo/dtrflashv2/index.html

Not sure whether to go down this route yet but thought I'd post a link so you can see what I'm taking about.

Hahaha. 16mb on a website? No....
MAAAYBE 1mb, and that's pushing it.

Yep, agreed. 16mb is far too high. However I feel with the website correctly designed and different options for high/low bandwidth users, it is still something worth exploring. There are different export options for quality but the low quality just looks horrendous to me. I'd much rather send out a demonstration DVD than risk customers being put off by low quality footage.

Also resizing the menu causes problems with the rasterised graphics.

I still feel it is good for showing various menu options and how they can be personalised.

Slightly off topic, this is a good website for DVD menus:-

http://www.visions-uk.com

16MB, but it's active download so it's fine. I was able to take quick view thru all the options without any loading delays.

This is very slick, a wonderful way of showing off my completed DVD...