Creating DVD Menu Templates

One of Studio's coolest features is its menu template function. You can create menu templates that Studio automatically populates when you add videos to the Timeline. Through your work in the previous section, "Working with Multiple Objects," the template is almost complete.

A complete template has three components: buttons for linking content, Next buttons, and Previous buttons. These allow Studio to automatically create menus and controls for navigating. Text and cute backgrounds are nice but not required. Our template-in-progress already contains the buttons for linking content; you will now see how to add the Next and Previous buttons.

See Chapter 12 for more on DVD menus.

To use existing Next and Previous buttons in your template

1.	Browse the Buttons Album until you find suitable buttons with the words next or previous in the name (Figure 10.90). Figure 10.90. To complete the template menu, you need Next and Previous buttons.
2.	Drag the buttons to the desired locations (Figure 10.91). Figure 10.91. Drag the Next and Previous buttons to the desired locations.

To create your own Next and Previous buttons

1.	Create the desired text or object.
2.	Open the drop-down menu at the top of the Buttons Album and choose Next Button (Figure 10.92). Figure 10.92. You also could use any object as a Next or Previous button and simply assign it the appropriate value.
3.	Repeat Steps 1 and 2 to create the Previous button.

To save a menu as a template

1.	From the File menu, choose File > Save Menu As. Studio opens the Save Menu As dialog box.
2.	Name the file and save it in the Program Files > Pinnacle > Studio 10 > Menus > My Menus folder (Figure 10.93). Figure 10.93. Save the template. Studio should default to this menu location; you should need to hunt for it only if you've saved menus before in another location.