How do you make a nice, custom menu for your DVD's

jadams38 wrote on 10/30/2012, 8:47 PM

Help! I must be missing something, because everytime I try to make a nice DVD menu with Magix Movie Edit Pro 16, I am stuck with about a dozen templates (that are not even that exciting.) I have explored and explored, and have found only VERY basic stuff I can change, like the button picture and the text size, etc. If I try adding a video to the menu or music to the menu, the thing freezes up, so I've learned not to explore that area unless I want a lot of frustration.

I want to make a really cool menu, maybe with a slide show in the background or a nice, still, custom background with a slide show on the button. I honestly made more professional looking menus back when I was using Windows Movie Maker, which is sad.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Jeanine

Comments

john-auvil wrote on 10/31/2012, 9:26 AM

This idea of "cool" and "nice" are pretty subjective, so I hope what I have to say falls into those categories.

Have you tried creating a slideshow as a project and using that as the intro video for the menu? - This is what I do, I am not sure if that is what you are after though...

I usually take a few photos and make a collage then save that as <project name_intro> into a folder I have in my Video folder called... Intro videos.

If just pressing the video button freezes your system, then there is a deeper issue. I am not sure how the Windows Movie Maker works, the time I tried it, I couldn't figure out how to edit anything, so it was quickly forgotten. Below is something I just created for this, showing what I mean by collage. I am not sure if this is "cool" or "nice", but it's not static.

I used Movie Edit Pro 16 Plus for the collage, but used Movie Edit Pro 2013 Plus to capture the screen.

gandjcarr wrote on 10/31/2012, 10:23 AM

@john-auvil is that your golden lab? Nice looking dog

George

john-auvil wrote on 10/31/2012, 11:37 AM

Yes, that is Sherry, the 14 year old wonder of the world.

gandjcarr wrote on 10/31/2012, 12:42 PM

@john-auvil, a 14 year old golden lab is amazing. Most big dogs don't live anywhere near that long. I have a 16 year old Cairn Terrier (a small 14 pound dog) and she is way past her average life expectancy. Count you blessings my friend you are very fortunate.

George

johnebaker wrote on 10/31/2012, 5:22 PM

The biggest problem I have found in getting a good menu modification is that some of the menu templates are notorously tempremental about being changed.

The most reliable one I have used so far in all versions of MEP from 15 18 and 2013 is the Red Smoke template which has a relatively simple structure whcih can be changed in the Edit in arranger option shown here

Here is an example of my current project (this one is done in MEP 2013, but the principles are the same in MEP 16) - which has 7 seperate movies on one disc. The video was created seperately from 8 clips to give the correct runtime and then imported into the arranger as shown below then the blue bars added and positioned, I kept the sound track as is because it fits in with the sound tracks in some of the movies.

Note the following as these have caused problems-

Item 1 in the image is the menu loop marker - this you can move or remove if you want the menu loop from the start instead of after a few seconds as this one does. Under no circumstances add any other markers - you should have only the one shown at most. I found this locked up my DVD and BD players require them switchd off and on to get them working again

Item 2 in the image - on tracks 15 and 16 are the menu masks - again do not touch these or delete them in the arranger.

Here is an example of the finished menu

HTH

John

jadams38 wrote on 11/1/2012, 8:50 PM

Thank you both for your input. I did find some new downloads in the Help menu from the Burn page. I downloaded them and am about to go to work looking for the red smoke template.

I had not thought of making a separate project as a slide show for the menu. That is a good idea--both "nice" and "cool"--thanks so much!

Jeanine