DVD Studio Pro 4 Help Please

[nickane]

This program is close to giving me an embolism. I detested iDVD and now I find that although I have more options with Studio Pro 4, it makes doing something very basic immensely difficult. I am operating in Basic mode as my needs are simple and I fear any of the other setups will only annoy/confuse me further.

My menu background is by default a grey colour which I cannot change for the life of me. All I wanted for my menu was the Livetype video I used for my opening credits to come up. It has a black background but the Grey tint of the menu canvas makes it look washed out when it plays. Perhaps using a Livetype title sequence is not a good idea, as it is not referred to in the manual but its all FCS and it loads it fine so I wouldn't have thought it would be a problem except that the default background is clearly interfering with it.

Ideally, I would also like the button (I have only one, "Play again": the DVD starts with the main feature and segues into the menu only at the end) to only appear at the end of the menu sequence, when it becomes still at the last frame but there is no delay feature that can be attached to a button in basic mode as far as I can see.

All I need to know is how to make the menu lose its grey hue and play my titles with the same contrast levels they have in Livetype, and, if possible, make the button appear 6 seconds later, and my DVD will finally be finished, but if I keep trying to figure it out for myself I'm gonna wind up with a face full of Apple keyboard.

Thanks in advance, Nick.

 

[nickane]

I have since managed to solve my initial problem two ways: first by rendering out an mpeg of the livetype file thru FCP and then later noticing that the menu tab in the preferences pane (which I'm sure I must have looked at countless times) was where the dark grey colour was set.

Anyhow, if someone could still explain how to make buttons come in slightly later it would be much appreciated, as it seems that it could only be the transitions tab for my one button, but that doesn't offer fade in, and none of the other settings come out in the simulator the way they do in the preview anyway.

 

[Sdashiki]

when a menu is called, the buttons are called.

if the menu has an intro (loop points) then the buttons wont be active until the loop point begins.

if you have a 6 second intro to the menu (animated menu) the buttons shouldnt be appearing or active until the loop point is reached.

try it out.

 

[Keebler]

i certainly don't mean this to sound like a smart aleck, but follow the tutorials that came with it. they really help iron out the basics....some of which you need help with.

SP is a great program. far superior to idvd. have patience and it will all turn out.

good luck.

 

[nickane]

Cheers for that, sorted it now. I was sort of expecting some RTFM-type responses, as i didn't really explain myself very well. I'm a rotoscoper editing my showreel, and having finally finished it in FCP (which I'd used a little before, but not a lot), I had to get to grips with LiveType just so my name would come up on-screen. I wasted 2 weeks just rendering out clips I'd worked on in After FX at 1080/24p to PAL SD (my advice - NEVER adjust the frame rate, just razorblade out the duplicate frames once you put it in FCP). I've also been trying to learn AFX to a standard where I can key/composite etc. I didn't expect the DVD would take me more than a day, but by the time I posted here I'd skimmed some 300 pages of the manual, and it was almost 48 hours since I'd finished my final edit. Thanks to the help I got here I was able to spend the rest of the day on Shake tutorials before Sdashiki told me the keywords I needed to search for to find my way to p. 365, where Advanced Menu features - the last chapter on menus - explains how to do what I needed to do (despite admitting in its introduction that its nearly a ubiquitous feature of DVD menus). My searches kept leading me to "first play" but obviously i wanted my showreel to play first, and have the menu with my contact details come up afterwards.

So, to cut a lot story short, sorry for being lazy, but I'm broke and unemployed and this DVD will mean my livelihood. Thanks again for all your help,

Nick