Jimco Software Reviews - Sonic DVDit 5.2 (continued)
Images, Buttons, and Frames
DVDit comes with a small selection of themes (browsable via a tabbed dialog shown in figure 3) which include background images, buttons, frames, etc. We'd like to see more templates, but all is not lost! Most of the DVD authoring packages we've used in the past use a proprietary binary format for their themes. That means that you can't create your own themes and you also can't make edits to existing theme graphics if they're not to your liking. DVDit uses Photoshop (*.psd) files and standard JPG files for all of its theme elements. That means that if you own any product that will edit Photoshop files (and many graphics programs will), you can create your own themes.
Figure 3 - Images, Buttons, and Themes... and more!
DVDit can do one better than that! The documentation contains directions on how you can create your own button objects in any graphics application capable of handling the Photoshop file format. Using layers in the graphics application, you can easily define different states for the buttons in your DVD menu. This is a great feautre and one that is sorely needed in more DVD authoring packages.
Speaking of buttons and the like, inserting them on your menu and setting their properties is a snap. Simply drag them from the tabbed dialog shown in figure 3 and drop them in the menu preview. In figure 4, we have dragged some buttons and a background and have added some text to our menu.
Figure 4 - Authoring a Menu
At the bottom of the Author screen is another tabbed dialog with options for the menu and its objects. In figure 4, the Menu tab is selected and you can see some of the many settings available to you. This is where you'll need that coffee because we just don't feel that this review would do DVDit justice without going through these settings to show you just how much you can do with this great application.