4

• If you want to include button art beyond the capabilities of what an overlay can provide,
you need to edit these over the video with an application such as Motion or
Final Cut Pro. You can create the button art and associated overlay with your graphics
program, then superimpose the button art over the video with your video editor, and
use the overlay in DVD Studio Pro to set up the buttons.
Note: An alternative is to use shapes to provide buttons over motion video.
• You can set the video to loop once it reaches its end. There will be a short pause in the
playback as the menu moves from the end back to the beginning. This can be minimized
or eliminated by carefully selecting the video to use. For example, a car driving by a
mostly static background can be looped cleanly. If you are creating an animation for
use as the background, be sure to keep looping in mind.
• Don’t create excessively long video for motion menus. The videos can take up a lot of
disc space, and if you use a lot of them, you can have problems building your title. See
Standard SD DVD Video Zone Files for menu size limitations.
• Menus in SD projects can only use full-frame MPEG-2 video as a background. If you use
an MPEG-1, 1/2 D1 MPEG-2, or a cropped D1 MPEG-2 file as the background, it will be
encoded to full D1 MPEG-2 when you build the project. Menus in HD projects can use
either full D1 MPEG-2 video or any of the supported HD video resolutions as the
background.
Defining the Menu Loop Point
When you configure a looping menu, you have the option of setting the loop point (the
point playback jumps to once the end of the menu’s video is reached) to be different
than the menu’s first frame of video. For example, the menu’s video may have an
introduction that plays before the buttons become active—you would not want the
introduction to play each time the menu loops.
In addition to setting the loop point manually in the Menu Inspector, you can add a
chapter marker, named “MenuLoopPoint,” to the background video while you are editing
it in Motion or Final Cut Pro. DVD Studio Pro automatically sets the menu’s loop point to
match this marker when you assign the video to the menu’s background using one of
the dragging methods, such as dragging the video to the Menu Editor and choosing Set
Background from the Drop Palette. See Configuring Motion Menu Settings for more
information.
In Final Cut Pro, you add the chapter marker exactly as you would add a chapter marker
for use in a track. The only requirement is that it be named “MenuLoopPoint.” See Adding
Markers to Your Video for more information. In Motion, you need to select the Menu Loop
Point option when you add the marker to the video. See the Motion documentation for
more information.
107Chapter 6 Preparing Menu Assets