Building Your DVD Menu

Your first DVD should be a simple one that establishes two things: how the process works, and if any technical problems may stop you from actually burning a DVD.

Technical problems usually occur if you're using a DVD burner that Liquid Edition doesn't recognize. In this case, you need to download an update from the Pinnacle Web site (www.Pinnaclesys.com). Pinnacle releases these patches on a regular basis, and you'll find full instructions on how to install them on the download site.

Tip

• If you do experience a technical problem, it's better that you experience it with a simple DVD project that hasn't taken too much time to build. Experiencing it after you spend several hours building the most awesome menu the world has ever seen is tragic, to say the least.

No Menu DVDs

You can also burn a DVD without a menu if you want to create a promotional demo DVD. In this case, you can ignore the DVD wizard completely and read the "Understanding the Export Dialog Box" section later in this chapter.

DVDs burnt without a menu are produced with a giant blue play button at the start. You can avoid seeing this and create an autoplay DVD by clicking the Autoplay check box in the Options tab of the Export dialog and specify a delay time of 0 (zero) and whether or not you want the DVD to loop (Figure 12.7).

Figure 12.7. Creating an Autoplay DVD with no menu.