4

This setting also defines when the button highlights appear—the viewer cannot navigate
the menu’s buttons until the loop point is reached. Additionally, the Loop Point setting
controls the video used for the menu’s tile in the Graphical tab.
If you are creating your menu background video in an application such as Motion or
Final Cut Pro, you can set a chapter marker named “MenuLoopPoint” to define the loop
point. When you assign a menu’s background by dragging the video to the Menu Editor
and choosing Set Background from the Drop Palette, or dragging the video to the Outline
or Graphical tab, DVD Studio Pro checks to see if a chapter marker named “MenuLoopPoint”
is present. If it is, the Loop Point setting is set to its time. If it is not present, the Loop
Point setting is set to match the Start setting.
Note: When you assign the menu’s background using the Menu Inspector’s Background
pop-up menu, you must manually set the Loop Point setting, even if the video contains
a “MenuLoopPoint” chapter marker.
See Defining the Menu Loop Point for more information on setting the chapter markers.
About Jumping Directly to a Menu’s Loop Point
When you configure a motion menu with a loop point, you may find that, in some cases,
you would prefer to jump directly to the loop point rather than to the start point. This
is especially true if the menu has a long period between the start and loop points.
You can write a simple script that will allow you to jump to the loop point. When you
select Jump as the command in the Script Inspector and choose a menu to jump to, a
Start At Loop Point option becomes available. When selected, this option sets the jump
to skip the start point and jump directly to the loop point. See Start At Loop Point
Checkbox for more information, and Jumping to a Menu’s Loop Point for an example
script.
End Setting
You can use the End setting to set the menu’s ending frame. By default, this is set to the
value entered in the Menu pane in DVD Studio Pro Preferences if the menu has any motion
assets. You can adjust it to be shorter or longer. This is most useful when you do not want
to use the entire video background asset—when used along with the Start setting, you
can choose the specific part of the video to use.
• When using the slider: Its maximum setting matches the length of the menu’s
background video. If the background is a still image, the slider maximum setting matches
the longest of the other menu assets (audio or assets assigned to buttons and drop
zones).
• When using the numeric timecode entry: You are able to choose any length.
295Chapter 13 Creating Menus Using the Standard Method