Lessons > lesson05 > 05_Swiss_start (or the My_Projects > Swiss_DVD project file you created in Lesson 4)
Media
Media > Swiss > Swiss_Assets
Time
This lesson takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Goals
Understand the concept of chapter index menus
Create a chapter index menu
Understand special buttons such as _PREV_, _UP_, and _NEXT_
Select and change multiple buttons
Apply button styles
Use a chapter index menu
Chapter index menus provide a way to jump directly to any chapter marker in a video track. Most professional DVDs include a chapter index menu to allow the viewer to navigate through a long movie or to easily locate a specific scene. Using a track with chapter markers already in place (as you did in Lesson 3) and a chapter index menu template, you can quickly assemble a chapter index menu in DVD Studio Pro.
There are several good reasons to use menu templates. For one, templates give your disc a consistent look and feel. They also simplify the menu creation process. In this exercise, you will customize your own SwissIndex chapter index menu template and create all the connections automatically.
Rather than creating a template from scratch, in this lesson you’ll customize one of the default templates included in DVD Studio Pro 4. The goal is to customize the chapter index menu in a way that works well with the previously designed SwissMainMenu.
In order to achieve this, you’ll change the font, buttons, and title, and add suitable background music. Once you are satisfied with your customized chapter index menu, you’ll save the template in the Palette. At that point, you will be in a position to instantly create and link this chapter index menu to your SwissMainMenu.
Toward the end of the lesson, you’ll explore some of the most useful techniques for assembling menus. The lesson culminates with an exercise in creating a template for a chapter index menu, enabling you to speed up the menu creation process.
We’ll start by applying one of DVD Studio Pro’s prebuilt index menus to our ChapterIndexMenu. Then we’ll alter the prebuilt menu in order to customize it to our needs.
The first step is to select one of the templates provided with DVD Studio Pro.
If you did not create a Swiss_DVD project file in Lesson 4, use the 05_Swiss_start file you will find on the DVD provided with this book.
In the next steps, you will customize a button so that you can use it as a style for the other buttons in your chapter index menu. You’ll set various properties for the button, including the background, font, position, and overlay colors.
The white background will be replaced by the nice blue Swiss photo.
The format of the text should change to the SwissMenu text style.
Button styles are an easy way to save the properties of your buttons. Once you save a button style in the Palette, you can quickly apply the style to other buttons. This technique saves time and keeps your menu designs consistent.
This will move the button text into a better position.
If you closed the Font window, use Command-T again to activate it.
The Project option saves this button style for this project file only. If we were to work with another project, this particular style would not show up in the Palette. However, anytime we open this project file, the SwissIndexButton style will show up in the Palette.
Now that you’ve saved one button style, you can use it to set up the rest of the buttons for your chapter index menu.
A great feature of DVD Studio Pro’s chapter index menu is its capability to automatically set up the navigation to the previous chapter index menu (if one exists), the next chapter index menu (again, if it’s necessary), and back to the main menu. To achieve this, you need to name the buttons in a specific way. The previous menu button needs to be named _PREV_, the button name for the main menu is _UP_, and the next menu button must be named _NEXT_. Because you have applied a pre-existing chapter index menu, the buttons are already properly named.
Note that these names are for the buttons themselves, not the text that may be in the button. The navigation buttons in your menu names are named back, main, and next, respectively.
All of the buttons in your menu have now been customized easily and consistently.
You’re ready to complete the template. First, though, you’ll add a shape as a drop zone to put more emphasis on the title and the back, main, and next buttons. Shapes are like little islands of graphical content that you can move around and reposition over a standard menu background. Shapes can be used as either drop zones or buttons. A drop zone shape is used to blend new graphical content with a pre-existing menu background.
The menu is now complete, with a custom background, custom buttons, a custom drop zone and a custom soundtrack that plays while the menu is onscreen. Now let’s create a template for it!
Since this menu is now available in the Palette, you can delete it from your project.
Congratulations! You have now customized the SwissChapterIndex menu, which you can use to create the chapter index of your DVD.
Remember, chapter index menus provide a way to jump directly to any chapter marker in a video track. Using the SwissMovie track with chapter markers already in place and your newly created chapter index menu template, you can quickly assemble your customized Swiss chapter index menu and link it up to your main menu.
Do not drag your original movie file from the Assets tab. Since the movie has already been added to a track, dragging directly from the Assets tab will duplicate the media in your project, and more important, the markers won’t be available. Instead, drag the track from the Outline tab, which references the media and chapter markers that are already part of your project.
When you click OK, all of the chapter markers from your track turn into buttons in the new chapter index menus that are created. The names of your markers are automatically added to all the buttons, which link to the corresponding markers in the track. Also, the navigation to the main, previous, and next menus is automatically set up.
Because there are ten chapter markers in your track but only six buttons in your template, two new menus are created: Menu 1 and Menu 2. Menu 1 contains buttons for the first six chapter markers, and Menu 2 has the remaining four. Best of all, every button in each of these two new menus is automatically targeted for you.
Because the buttons in this chapter index menu have a lot of motion, you probably will experience a delay in the playback of the menu (especially if you have a slower machine). Once you finally build the Swiss project, however, all actions will be a lot faster.
Because only four buttons were needed for the second index menu (Menu 2), the other remaining template buttons were automatically deleted, allowing the user to see more of the pretty background image!
1. True or false: You can apply button styles to only one button at a time.
2. In a chapter menu, what does the _PREV_ button do?
3. True or false: DVD Studio Pro will only create chapter menus from previously saved templates.
4. How does DVD Studio Pro name new chapter menu buttons?
1. False. If you select multiple buttons, you can add the same style to all the selected buttons at one time.
2. If more than one chapter menu is created, the _PREV_ button links back to the previous chapter menu.
3. True. You must create a menu template before DVD Studio Pro will automatically create a chapter menu for you.
4. When DVD Studio Pro creates a chapter menu, it automatically gives each button the same name as the chapter marker of the chapter it represents.
Keyboard Shortcuts