Jimco Software Reviews - DVD Workshop 2.2 (continued)
Menu Step
The Menu step is where you'll create your menu. Menus are made up of backgrounds, menu overlays, buttons, frames, objects, and many other elements. Of course, each of these is optional. Your menu can be as simple as a text-only menu or as complex as you'd like.
As I mentioned earlier, DVD Workshop comes with a generous supply of media for creating menus. Included are backgrounds (both static and motion backgrounds), buttons, frames, text effects, and much more. I'd like to see Ulead switch over to PSD (Adobe Photoshop) format for editing and creating menus in a future version. Most image editing applications support this format (including Ulead's PhotoImpact) and it would make more sense for DVD Workshop to use this format as well. I'm not going to hold my breath for this. Ulead's not likely to create a new market for what they likely consider to be PhotoImpact's competition.
I must say at this point that the above gripe is my only gripe with the menuing system in DVD Workshop. On most DVD projects, I get excited about special effects I've added into my video, but the menu is always an afterthought and usually slapped together just to get the project out the door. Not with DVD Workshop. I found myself tweaking my menu over and over again as I added more special touches here and there. DVD Workshop has a unique ability to capture your creativity and it enables you to transfer that creativity to the screen with ease.
If you don't feel suited to creating your own menu, you can use one of DVD Workshop's many menu templates or you can use the Menu Wizard to create a menu. Whatever method you choose, you have unlimited editing ability for every element of your menu.
Figure 9 shows the interface for the Menu step. The largest part of this interface is the Preview window. Indeed, that's where you'll do most of your work in this step. DVD Workshop allows you to choose from menu templates (shown in figure 10) or create your own menu from scratch. If you choose the latter, there are plenty of ready-made backgrounds and other menu objects to make your task easier.
Figure 9 - The Menu Step
Figure 10 - Menu Templates
Editing the fine details of your menu is accomplished (as in other steps) via the Options panel shown in figure 11. As you can see, there are a slew of options available to you.
Figure 11 - The Three Tabs of the Options Panel
Just about every aspect of your menu is customizable with DVD Workshop. As one would expect from a professional level tool, you are not locked into any specific design. You can move any of your menu objects freely and DVD Workshop provides tools to help in positioning your objects precisely. You can display a grid overlay so that objects can easily be aligned by drag and drop. You can also align objects quickly using the context menu.
DVD Workshop provides full support for motion menus, both in the background and in the buttons themselves. Motion buttons begin playing as soon as the menu is displayed. I'd like to have been able to have a still button until it had focus, but the option isn't available.