HomePage 6 of 9: Main Menu Creation - Continued
Step 4B: Main Menu Creation - Continued
Showing the following screenshot again here as this page refers to this screenshot again.
Go back to editing the "Main Menu". We can now test the menu by pressing the "Simulation" button (the play button at the top, 1 in the menu editor interface screenshot above). This opens up a DVD player control window that you can use to see how the menu works. If you have the "Follow Links" icon selected next to the "Simulation" button, then pressing the "Enter" key in the player control window will go to whatever object that it links to (eg. it will open the "Main Movie" movie editor window if you have highlighted "Play Movie" and pressed "Enter"). Note that the highlights are kind of an ugly shade of purple at the moment. We can change this. Stop the simulation (use the red square button next to the "Simulation" button). Select the "Play Button" package, and go to the "Properties" area on the right hand properties panel (8, in the menu editor interface screenshot above), and click on the "Map" tab. You can have up to 3 different highlight mappings on the same menu page, select "1" as the highlight group for this button - note that the colour slider at the bottom has 1, 2 and 3 as well, each corresponding to a different group. There are 3 "Color Map" settings, one for when the button is not highlighted (Normal), one for when it is highlighted (Selected) and another when it is clicked on (Activated). For "Normal", I left the "1" slider at the left most (no highlights). For "Selected", I used a light shade of green (you can click on the coloured square to change the colour to use, based on the palette selection you made way back in Step 2) by adjusting the "1" slider. For "Activated", I used the left most setting again (no highlights). Repeat for the "Chapters" button, but I used a different shade of colour by using a different highlight group (see screenshot below). Use the "Simulation" mode to test the highlights if you wish.
Notice how pressing up/down in the simulation gets you to the next selectable button? This is called routing, and you can actually change it. The routing settings are in the top tool bar (3, in the menu editor interface screenshot above). Currently, "Auto-Routing" should be enabled, which automatically produces the routes based on the position of the objects. To the left of the "Auto-Routing" checkbox is a drop down menu of options, select the "Show All" option. This will display all the routing information in the menu editor, either as red, green, blue or yellow arrows (indicating up, down, left and right). If you disable "Auto-Routing", then you can use the controls to the right of it to manually add in routes. For this example, I'm going to make it so that pressing the up, left or right buttons when the "Play Movie" button is highlighted will select the "Chapters" button as well. Simple use the "Draw Left Link" and "Draw Right Link" function to draw lines from the "Play Movie" button to the "Chapters" button. For the Chapters button, I'm going to make the left and bottom buttons link to "Play Movie", but the right button will do something else which I will show you later on (Easter Egg Time!).
We will now make an Easter Egg for the purpose of demonstrating how to and a few other neat tricks that DVD-lab Pro has. You know how we had an intro video? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to play this intro video without having to restart the DVD? I will now make a hidden button on the main menu that when clicked on, will go and play the intro video, thus showing you how to make hidden buttons that show up only when highlighted, and also how to make your own buttons from geometric shapes, plus group hotspots.
Select the "Rectangle" tool from the left tool bar (4, in the menu editor interface screenshot above), and draw a rectangle in the bottom right corner. Then using the text tool, I add the black text "DLP" (for DVD-lab Pro), no drop shadow and no transparency, and place the text above the grey rectangle.
Now use the "Group Hotspot" tool on the left tool bar to draw a hotspot around the "DLP" button (make sure both the rectangle and text objects are within the borders of this hotspot). Right click on the newly drawn hotspot and link it to the intro video ("Intro Movie", in my project).
A group hotspot basically allows the user to select/highlight more than one object at a time, but with each object within the hotspot still having their own "highlight" properties. What we will do is to make it so that the rectangle only shows up when it is highlighted, so normally, the text "DLP" will be the only thing visible. Select the rectangle, but this may be hard because the hotspot is over it - you can make it easy by clicking on the "Lyrs" (layers) tab on the right hand properties panel (8, in the menu editor interface screenshot above), and select it from there. Now click on the "Link" tab (again within the right hand properties panel) and change the "Button visibility" setting to "Invisible Normal" to make it show up only when highlighted. Notice that it has now disappeared from the menu editor area.
You can adjust the "Map" settings to change the highlight as we did previously with the "Play Movie" and "Chapters" buttons. We will also need to add a route to this hidden button. As mentioned previously, I will make it so that pressing the right button on the DVD player/remote will get to this "Easter Egg", so draw the link as required. Make sure you link from the Easter Egg button back to the regular buttons, as you wouldn't want to be stuck there by accident.
Now run the simulation again, and there is now a secret button that's accessible only when you press "right" when the "Chapters" button is already highlighted.
Before we finish off this menu, click on the "PBC" panel on the right hand properties panel (8, in the menu editor interface screenshot above). Here, we specify some properties of the menu. The "Duration" is how long the menu will be shown before it will be looped again (or the "Force Activate Btn" setting comes into effect. Since I added a background music track to this menu, the "Duration" is set to "a/v", which is the length of the audio file. The "Hi-lite Default Btn" is the same as the "Set as First Button", and the number here corresponds to the button number (the numbers shown in the yellow box near the buttons, in this example, 1 is the "Play Movie" button). The "Force Activate Btn" will force the clicking/activation of any of the buttons after the "Duration" runs out. For my project, I will change it to 1 (the "Play Movie" button), since I want the movie to automatically start after the menu background audio has finished playing.
And that's the main menu finished and done with. Have a look at the "Connections" window again and have a look at the new links that have been added.
