Section 21.5. The DVD Mapand Autoplay


21.5. The DVD Mapand Autoplay

As you can see, menus and submenus can build up with alarming rapidity. At times your projects may grow out of control; pretty soon, you feel like Hansel and Gretel with not enough bread crumbs.

iDVD's Map pretty much eliminates these navigation problems. It's a living, interactive diagram whose icons represent your DVD's menus, videos , and slideshows and reveal how they're connected. As your menu and button layouts grow more complex, you can use the map screen to help you keep track of your menu structure.

Figure 21-9. In iDVD 5, the size slider lets you view the map either with large, slide-like icons (back) or with little tiny ones that reveal more of your DVD's structure without scrolling. Here, the right-most folder hides a series of submenus just as detailed as the ones shown in the left branch of the treebut it's been hidden by collapsing the flippy triangle.


To view the map, click the Map button at the bottom of the main iDVD window. The element you were working on appears with colored highlighting (Figure 21-9).

  • Scroll it by dragging in any blank space.

  • Click one of the view buttons to flip the display between horizontal- and vertical-tree layouts.

  • The scale slider lets you adjust the amount of map detail you can see at once. Working a big, complex project? Move the slider all the way to the left to view more elements at once. Working on a small project? The bigger the tiles, the more project details you'll see.

  • Each menu tile now includes a flippy triangle . Click it to expand or collapse that limb of the menu tree (Figure 21-9, right).

  • Open a menu or slideshow by double-clicking its icon in the Map.

  • Click the Map button again or click Return to return to the menu screen you were working on.

21.5.1. Editing in the Map

Now, in previous versions of iDVD, the Map window provided a visual treat, but you couldn't really do anything there. But in iDVD 5, the map is interactive; you can actually do DVD design and editing work all on this single screen.

For example:

  • It's easy to delete a bunch of menus or other elements all at once. Just Shift-click the ones you want to target for extermination (Shift-click a second time if you select an icon by mistake), and then press the Delete key.

  • Similarly, you can quickly and conveniently apply new themes to the menu screens of your DVD without ever leaving the map. To do so, open the Customize drawer , click the Themes button, select the desired menu icons on the map, and then click the new theme's name .

  • You can even add new menu screens and slideshows on the Map screen. Click the icon of the menu screen where you want to put the button that will link to the new menu or slideshow, and then choose Project New Folder (for a submenu) or Project New Slideshow. (At that point, you can then specify which movies or which photos you want on those new entities by dragging them in from the Customize drawer's Media panel.)

  • Remember the transitions (cross-dissolve effects) that let you ease from one menu screen to another? You can apply or change these transition styles en masse using the Map, too. Just Shift-click to choose the menu icons you want to transition out of, open the Customize panel, click the Settings button, and then use the Transition pop-up menu to choose the style you want for all of them at once.

21.5.2. Autoplay

The DVDs described so far in this book behave like commercial Hollywood DVDs in almost every respect except one: they don't play a certain video clip automatically when the disc is inserted, before the menu screen appears. You knowa bright red FBI warning, previews of coming attractions, or maybe just a quick snippet of the movie on the DVD.

iDVD 5 makes creating this kind of "pre-movie" extremely easy. In Map view, the first tile (at the top or the left, depending on the view you've chosen ) is technically called the Project tile (see Figure 21-10), but you can think of it as the Autoplay tile. Whatever you drag onto this tile will play automatically when the DVD is inserted, before your viewers even touch their remote controls.

These are the kinds of things you can put there:

  • A video clip . In the Customize drawer, click the Media button, and then choose Movies from the pop-up menu. iDVD displays all the movies in your Home -Movies folder (and any other folders youve listed here); drag the one you want directly onto the Project tile to install it there.

  • A still image . In the Customize drawer, again, click the Media button, but this time choose Photos from the pop-up menu. iDVD shows your complete iPhoto collection, including all of your albums. To use one of these images as a startup screen for your DVD project, just drag it onto the Project tile. (You can add audio to it, too, just as you'd add audio to a slideshowby dragging in an audio file from the Audio section of the Media pane.)

    Figure 21-10. If you decide to add or replace your Autoplay material, just drag new stuff right onto it. Or, to eliminate the Autoplay segment, drag it right off the Project tile. It disappears in a little puff of Mac OS X cartoon smoke.



  • Tip: If you tinker with the graphics tools in a program like Photoshop or AppleWorks, you could come up with a decent replica of the standard FBI warning that appears as the Autoplay of a commercial DVD. You could precisely duplicate the wording and typographical lookor you could take the opportunity to do a hilarious spoof of the usual warning.
  • A slideshow . Once you've got the Photos list open in the Customize drawer as described above, you can also drag an entire iPhoto album onto the project icon. Alternatively, you can click and -click just the photos you want in the Customize panel, and then drag them en masse onto the project icon. In fact, you can even drag photosas a group or in a folderright out of the Finder and onto this icon.

To control how long your still image remains on the screen, or how quickly your Autoplay slideshow plays, double-click your Project tile. You arrive at the AutoPlay slideshow editor, a screen like the one shown in Figure 21-10, where you can adjust the timing, transition, and even the audio that plays behind the picture(s).


Tip: It's possible to create a DVD that never even gets to the menu screena DVD consisting only of Autoplay material. You could design a project that way for the benefit of, for example, technophobic DVD novices whose pupils dilate just contemplating using a remote control. They can just insert your Autoplay-only DVD and sit back on the couch as the movie plays automatically.

21.5.3. Looping

If you highlight the button for a movie, slideshow, or Autoplay tileeither in Map view or on a menu screenand then choose Advanced Loop Movie (or Loop Slide Show), you unleash another raft of possibilities. You can make a DVD that repeats the highlighted material (a slideshow or movie) over and over again and, in fact, never gets back to the menu screen.


Tip: In the Map, a small circle appears in the lower-right corner of any element you've set up for looping.

That would be a great way to create a DVD containing a self-running, self-repeating slideshow of digital photos that plays on a TV at a party or wedding reception . You could also use it to create a self-looping kiosk display at a trade show.

In any case, the DVD will loop endlesslyor at least until it occurs to someone in your audience to press the Menu or Title button on the remote, which displays your main menu. At this point, the Menu button redisplays the previous menu screen; the Title button causes a return to the main menu.




iLife 05. The Missing Manual
iLife 05: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 0596100361
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 314
Authors: David Pogue

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