Hello there, and welcome to this video! Let's see how to make a complete
DVD interface with Pinnacle Studio 20!
Leave a comment inside the video description to improve our future video
guides for Pinnacle Studio.
Pinnacle Studio is able to create interactive DVD menus, complete with
buttons used to browse inside a DVD or a Disc Content. You can create and
edit DVD menus by using the Author tab on top.
Let's suppose to have a project complete. When you switch to the Author
mode, Pinnacle asks you convert your Movie (or Video Project) to a Disc
Project.
A Disc Project is a Video Project that includes DVD menus and all their
objects. Respect to the Edit workspace, you still have the A/V Tracks,
where your project is placed, but also an additional track on top, called
Menu List, visible when the DVDMenu icon is enabled more on the left.
Let's see how to create a working DVD menu for the actual project.
A DVD interface is composed by several pages called Menus, used to browse
through the video content inside the DVD. And each Menu contains objects
which can be text, backgrounds, geometrical shapes, and also special
objects called buttons, used to connect a DVD Menu with another Menu, or
with a chapter of your video project.
From the Navigation panel, if you go to Content and then to Disc Menus,
you can see several ready Menu templates available inside Pinnacle Studio.
For each single template, you have two kinds of menus: one used to
Introduce the DVD content, in order to playback all or choose any chapter;
the other to select which chapter to playback. You can check the appearance
of each Menu by checking the Preview under Source mode.
To import a Menu onto your project, just drag and drop it on the Menu List
track.
The Preview under the Author tab still shows the Timeline mode, used to
playback your DVD video content, but also the new Menu mode, used to
simulate the Menu and its objects as it should work when playing the DVD.
When you click on the play button below, you open the Disc Simulator,
where you can interact with all the objects and the buttons inside the Menu,
by using the DVD Simulation in the lower right corner to simulate a remote
control. At first, the imported Menus may have buttons completely hidden,
since these do not link to any Menu or Chapter. By default, only the Play
movie button works correctly. Let's see how to make these buttons work.
To edit a Menu, select it from the timeline, and then switch the Preview
to the Menu mode. This will right show its buttons, which are linked
nowhere at first, as their red color suggests. For example, the Scene
selection button should be linked to the Menu that brings to all the video
chapters. If you click on its down arrow, you can choose the Menu to link
to it from the direct list. If you choose Menu 2, this button will show M2,
and get the same color of such Menu. When you simulate the interface, and
click on Scene Selection, this will bring to Menu 2.
On the timeline, the Menu 2 thumbnail won't have any red icon after getting
at least one link, indicating that such Menu is no more isolated. If you
have non-connected Menus, you can delete them by right-clicking on these.
Buttons can link a Menu with another Menu, but also with parts of the video
project called Chapters. For example, the Play movie button links to the
the beginning of your video project. But, when you switch to Menu 2, you
still miss links to Chapters inside your video project. The list inside the
buttons include Menus only. To insert links on the video project, you have
to work with the project timeline below.
Right below the Preview, you have several buttons used for Chapters.
Select the interested Menu, and choose the right button from the list on
the right, by using the left and the right arrows, or by clicking on it
directly on the Menu on the Preview. Then, just place the playhead at the
beginning of the video, and click on Create Link. This creates a Chapter
link, called C1, indicated by a simple marker right below the Menu List
track, and with the same color of the Menu that contains it. This appears
also inside the button on the Preview.
When you simulate the DVD interface, and click on a Chapter, you will
playback your project right from that point, exactly where the Chapter
link is placed.
Also, the Chapter link comes with another marker at the end of the video,
called Return. When you reach this point, the DVD interface brings you back
to the latest Menu page, indicated on the marker itself.
Keep in mind that, when you select another Menu, all the Chapter links
related to the previous Menu are disabled.
When links are established, the raw numbers are substituted by video
thumbnails, picked where the marker is placed. But, if you want to change
this thumbnail, place the playhead correctly, and then click on Set
thumbnail.
All these markers indicate the fixed instants of time to follow. You can
click and drag these to move them in time. To delete a Chapter link, just
click on its marker, and go to Remove Chapter on top.
Let's see how to edit the appearance of your Menus. Starting from a ready
template, you may want to edit the Chapter names, or add the missing
buttons on Main, Prev and Next.
When you double-click on a Menu, the Disc Editor opens, composed by a
timeline below, that shows all the objects contained inside the Menu, the
Navigation panel on the left, and several properties and settings on the
right.
As you can see below, all buttons are indicated by green rows, and are
composed by several objects, such as text and geometrical shapes. To edit
a Chapter name, just click on its piece of text, and type in. To edit a
button, just click on its thumbnail, and open the Button Settings on the
right. Through the first bar, choose the kind of button, between Normal,
Previous to link to the previous Menu page, Next for the following one,
and Not a button to remove any link. More below, choose the button color,
when it is Selected, and when it is Enabled. Choose Set As Default to make
such button selected when entering the Menu, and Still Thumbnail to use
a fixed thumbnail that does not move.
Even more, you can use the Text Settings and the Look Settings sections
to edit the text appearance, choose a different filling color, or add
effects such as outlines and shadow.
To know more about how to edit and apply these effects, check out the
dedicated video in this guide.
More below, the Background Settings is used to fix any background or
soundtrack inside the whole Menu. To add a picture, or a video on the
background, you can drag and drop a file on the thumbnail shown. To add
a soundtrack, just drag and drop a sound file on the Audio Drop Zone. Make
sure that there is no audio on the video you use for the background.
Also, this kind of Menu shows the ready buttons for Main, Prev and Next,
but these are not ready to receive links yet. To make them active, just
select them from the Preview, and choose Normal as button type. When you go
to OK below, you will apply all your modifications, and the button becomes
active as you can see from the Preview in Menu mode.
Once both the DVD interface and the video are ready, go to Export right
above the Preview. The Studio Exporter will open on the Disc section.
Set Type and Preset under Settings, simulate and playback your DVD content
on the Preview, and check all space and device information below.
At the very bottom, you have several options. Choose Create Image to render
the whole DVD content as an image; or choose Burn Disk to render your whole
DVD project on your disk, ready for a playback.
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