Operation Manual

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Chapter 6: Menus: Beyond the basics
For you more adventurous designers, Adobe Encore CS3 lets you create motion menus, video thumbnail buttons,
three-color button highlighting, and auto-activating buttons. You can also customize button routing and numbering,
as well as create your own styles for menu elements.
Video and audio in menus
About motion menus
A menu can include sound and motion. You can replace the entire background of a menu with a video file, as well
as link it to an audio file. A video can serve as a moving backdrop to a menu or provide all the visual elements of the
menu except for the button highlighting. The video can include, for example, a moving background, scrolling credits,
and even the button images. The menu itself needs only to include a placeholder background and the button subpic-
tures (in button layer sets) that align with the button images in the video.
How long the video background or audio plays and whether it loops depends on the duration and loop settings of
the menu. (See “About menu display time and looping” on page 90.)
If you want a smaller image, consider resizing or masking the video in a video-editing application, such as Adobe
Premiere Pro, or masking a portion of the video with a layer in the menu.
The Library panel contains menu template (EM) files that include video backgrounds.
See also
“Create video thumbnail buttons” on page 87
“About menu templates” on page 92
Add a video background to a menu
❖ Do one of the following:
• SelectthemenuintheProjectpanel.Then,inthePropertiespanel,clicktheMotiontabanddragtheVideopick
whip to the video file in the Project panel.
• Hold down the Alt key (Windows) or Option key (Mac OS) and drag the video file from the Project panel to the
menu in the Menu Viewer.
Note: You select a video asset, not a timeline, in the Project panel to replace the menu background with video.
The first bright (nonblack) frame of the video replaces the menu background. This frame serves as a placeholder in
themenuPSDfileandisdisplayedduringpreviewingaswell,unlessyouchoosetorenderthemotionmenusinthe
Preview panel. (See “About previews” on page 169.) When you build the project, Encore renders the video starting
from the first frame.
You can also set the menu background to the frame at the specified Loop Point timecode. This is especially useful
when you want to align button subpicture layers with button images in the video background. (See “About menu
display time and looping” on page 90.)