Let s Do It

Let's Do It!

You don't have to make any decisions about your DVD's aesthetics just yet. Whether you want a motion or still backdrop or whether you want a fancy font for titles are choices that you can make later. Your first task is to figure out in which menu you'll put your movies and slideshows. That's right, your DVD can have more than one menu many more. Now is the time to decide which elements will go in the opening menu and which elements will go in secondary menus.

You can have up to six buttons in each menu screen. If you want all the buttons to go on the opening screen and you have no more than six items, then you're finished with your planning.

Personally, even if I had only six items to show off, I'd arrange them in more than one menu. You'll have a more interesting organization that way. And if you have more than six elements, you have no choice but to go the multiple-menu route. Get out your pen and paper or fire up your planning software and make a simple drawing of the structure of your DVD.

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Of course you don't have to plan if you only have a few items. But the more assets you have, the more you'll benefit from this up-front investment. It takes a lot more effort to rearrange the menus later than to plan ahead of time.


For my project, I have six items four videos and two slideshows on the opening menu. If I had more than six items, I would make one of the six items on the opening menu screen a folder button (to take viewers to a secondary menu). If I had more video clips, they would go inside this folder. Then, if I had more than 12 items, I could add a folder button to the second menu screen, to take viewers to yet another menu. And so on.

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This approach sounds more complicated than it is. Once you've worked with iDVD a few times and seen how it uses folders to hold the secondary menu's content the whole menu/folder metaphor will become second nature to you.




The Little iDVD Book
The Little iDVD Book
ISBN: 0321197747
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 62

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