DVD architect animated highlight mask

[Baldwin Li]

Hi folks,

does anyone know of a way you can have animated highlight masks in DVDA menus?

this is what i want: the menu starts up with a few seconds of video, then the buttons fade in (Play, Chapter Select, etc.) and only after theyve faded in does the highlight mask show up to show which button is selected. Unfortunately the Highlight Mask doesn't seem to support any movie files only stills, unlike the thumbnail and frame masks which do support them. So, when the Menu loads up the highlight mask shows up from the start...

The only way I can think of doing this is with an intro movie file which moves to the menu afterwards but this will cause a slight jump in the audio and picture as the menu loads i would have thought.

this seems to be quite a common way commercial DVDs author their menus but i cant seem to replicate it. any thoughts welcome, and if anyone has achieved this with another DVD authoring package i'd be interested which one and how they did it!

Cheers,

Baldwin

[George Wing]

For the menu, under the GENERAL tab, try changing the LOOP POINT to be after the buttons fade in.

Regards,
George

[David Hadden]

Originally Posted by George Wing

For the menu, under the GENERAL tab, try changing the LOOP POINT to be after the buttons fade in.

Regards,
George

George is exactly right, that's how you do it. Just move the loop point on the menu video to after the image is able to loop seamlessly, and then it should go just fine.

I might suggest you pick up the Volume 6 of Vegas Training from VASST ( was certainly helpful to me since I was unaware of much of the stuff to get DVD's looking a little nicer since I do mostly direct File delivery and Tape Delivery ).

Dave

[Baldwin Li]

many thanks george and david - here's to professional-looking DVD menus!

baldwin