The Buttons section
Since buttons are the magic ingredient that turns titles into interactive menus, this section of the Classic Title Editor Album is available only when the menu or title being edited is on the main video track, the only track on which menus can be placed.
Broadly speaking, a button is an area of the screen with which the user can interact in some way. Buttons are classified according to the action they produce when the user activates them, and not by their appearance, which generally should be chosen to give a strong clue to their behavior, but is not required to. The four types of button are:
· Normal: Clicking the button causes playback to jump to a chapter (that is, ordinary video) or another menu. The link between the button and its target is created in the Clip properties tool, not in the Classic Title Editor.
· Thumbnail: This special form of the normal button type displays a thumbnail frame (or a moving thumbnail preview) from the part of the movie to which it links.
· Previous: This button appears on the second and later pages of multi-page menus (menus with more links from normal or thumbnail buttons than will fit on one page). It links to the previous menu page.
· Next: This button appears on all but the last page of multi-page menus; it links to the following page.
The button art supplied with Studio includes several examples of each type. Each button is an image file in Targa (tga) format. Examination of the files in an art program like Adobe PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro will show that the transparent portion of the button image, and the special area for the display of thumbnails (where applicable), are defined by an alpha channel included with the image.
As usual, a folder button lets you select the disk directory from which the displayed images are obtained.
To use a supplied button, simply drag it from the Album into the Edit Window, where it becomes a button object – essentially an identical twin of the picture object.
The default action of the supplied buttons is determined by their file names, but a new action can be assigned to the currently-selected button object from the dropdown list in the Buttons section of the Classic Title Editor Album. The first choice on this list, “Not a button”, removes the action from the object – now it is merely a graphic. The other choices correspond to the button types listed above.
Tip: Remember, it’s not the button’s appearance that determines its behavior, but the button type you select from the menu.
DVD menus (but not VCD and S‑VCD menus), give visual feedback by highlighting the current button as the user scrolls around the menu. Special active highlighting distinguishes a button that is in the process of being actuated, just before the action is performed. (You can preview this highlighting effect in the Player, and interact with the menu using either the mouse or the Player’s DVD controls.)
The Classic Title Editor lets you assign the color that will be used for each type of highlight, and a style option that governs how the highlights will be drawn. The controls for these settings are located below the button-type list.
Click the Active and Selected color swatches to set the highlight colors that work best with your menu. It may help to make your menus clearer if you use consistent highlighting colors for all the menus on a disc.
The three highlight style options, from left to right, are:
· Box: The highlighting is drawn as a rectangle enclosing the button.
· Follow shape: The highlighting covers the visible area of the button, whatever its shape.
· Underline: The button is underlined.
These highlight options can be applied to any type of button made from any type of object, not just the button images brought in from the Album. Clear the Highlight style checkbox if you want to disable button highlighting while working in the Classic Title Editor.