Transitions

If there is no transition specified, iDVD will simply jump to the menu or movie that you click on. While this works in a pinch, we can enhance the viewing experience by choosing a built in transition.

Get your project loaded in iDVD and select a button from your menu. Bring up the info window. At the bottom is an area for setting transitions. iDVD ‘08 comes with twelve transitions to pick from. Simply choose one from the top pop-up menu. My favorites are Dissolve, to go between two menus, and Fade Through Black, to go between a menu and a movie.

Once you’ve selected your transition, the bottom pop-up menu will display further options for customizing your transition. These controls allow you to change the direction of effects such as Flip, Push, and Wipe. The best way to choose one of these is to use iDVD’s test mode to try out different settings until you find something that you like.

Easter Eggs

Professional DVDs often contain hidden features, generally known as “Easter eggs.” For my latest movie, I couldn’t stand not being able to do them any more. So I set out to create an Easter egg on my DVD.

Drag your Easter egg movie into iDVD to add it to the project. You should do this on the menu that you want the egg to appear on. You may have to tweak the new button so that it matches the others. It’s pretty visible right now, isn’t it? Let’s fix that. Select the title of the egg by clicking it twice (pause between clicks or you’ll play the movie).

This next part requires that you have Apple’s great Character Palette application open. It’s kind of hidden, so I’ll tell you how to find it. Open System Preferences and get to the International preference pane. Click the tab labeled “Input Menu.” At the bottom of the preference pane is a little check box for enabling the input menu. After you click this, a little flag will show up in your menu bar. Now go back to the top of the preference pane and enable the check box for Character Palette.

With the Character Palette enabled, you can close System Preferences. Click the flag that appeared in your menu bar and select the Character Palette item. You now have a palette of all the characters that your computer is capable of producing. Just browse through them and find something that you like. Make sure your Easter egg’s name is still selected, then go back to Character Palette and click the “Insert” button. This types the character in the egg’s name. You might have to edit the font size to make your Easter egg large enough. We now have a cute little symbol for the Easter egg icon.

It’s looking good, but the egg is still visible. We want it to be hidden until somebody navigates to it. To hide the Easter egg, first move it to the place where you want it to be. Most professional DVDs hide their eggs in places off to the side of the menu items.

Click the button to bring up the info menu. First, uncheck the box that enables the button’s drop shadow. Next, click the color swatch to bring up the color picker. If you click the magnifying glass on the color picker, you will get a color select tool. Use this tool to pick the color of the background that your egg will go on. This sets the Easter egg’s text color to the background color, effectively hiding it. When someone navigates to it, however, iDVD will highlight it with a different color, which will show the Easter egg.

Other Little Tweaks

Speaking of highlight color, you can change that quite easily. Make sure nothing is selected, and then bring up the info menu. Under the “Buttons” section of the menu is a highlight color option. Set this color just like button color. I’d choose something bright, like yellow or orange. Note that this is global highlight color, so it’s the same for all buttons.

Depending on the theme, iDVD will either highlight the text, or add a bullet next to the highlighted button. If you’re like me, you probably want to change this. Just select a button (or all the buttons), and then click on “Buttons” at the bottom of the iDVD menu. This changes the side menu to display button editing options. Select “Bullets” from the pop-up menu at the top, bringing up a long list of bullet types to choose from. Choose one you like, or choose the “no” symbol to turn off bullets altogether. This only affects selected buttons.

And there you have it. There’s still plenty that you can tweak on your menu, but I’ll leave that up to you to find, or up to future articles.

Moving the Menu to iDVD

Open up your Final Cut project (unless you left it open all week) and get back to the sequence we built in part one. In order to get the intro separate from the menu background, position the playhead at the marker you added to mark the spot where the intro ends. Press the o key to set the end point, and then go up to the file menu and choose Export:QuickTime Movie. Name it “Intro” and export it with the default settings.

The intro is exported, so now click inside your sequence window and hit Option-x to clear the in/out points. Now set your in point at the marker, and your out point at the end of the sequence. Run another export like the one above. Call this movie “Menu” and save it where you’ll find it.

Launch your iDVD project. Now go find your menu file out in the wilderness of your computer. Drag this file into the project area of iDVD while holding down the Command key (labeled with an apple on all but the newest Mac keyboards). This brings up a menu asking if you want to add the movie or replace the background. Choose Replace background and iDVD will put your movie into the background.

Let’s add the intro now. Click the button to the left of the loop button. This brings up a DVD map. Find the box that tells you to “Drag content here to automatically play when the disc is inserted.” It’s pretty simple. Drag your intro movie here. This makes your intro movie play automatically when your DVD is inserted into a player.

Customize Scene Selection

When you click the button for scene selection, iDVD will take you to a menu that either looks like the theme we’ve modified, or looks exactly like your fancy custom menu. Neither is good. iDVD builds scene selection menus with six scenes to a menu, and as far as I know, there’s no way to change this. Unfortunately, this means that you have to have considerable space on your menu to fit six buttons on, especially if you want a preview movie.

Here’s how I fix this. Create a menu that looks like your first one, but this time, leave the top or bottom two thirds empty. Also, add a colored area to the remaining third. It’s probably a good idea to have no motion elements at all. Because of this, you can make this menu in Photoshop, or just export a still frame from Final Cut.

Get to your scene selection menu and click the info button. You should see a whole lot of options. Up at the top are three boxes. The middle one is the menu. Drag your scene selection menu into it. A little farther down should be a section for audio. Again, there’s a box. Drag your first menu movie into the box, and iDVD will use the audio from the movie as the background music.

The buttons are probably all out of order, probably quite like the picture of mine. Let’s fix it. Select any button and drag it to a new position. Do this to the rest of the buttons until you have them all arranged nicely in order.

Click and drag to select all of the buttons. The info window should change to show that you are now editing all buttons. Start by choosing a smaller font size. You may also want to change the font entirely, or maybe change the button color. Then head over to the right side of the main iDVD window.

On the lower right, there is a set of three buttons. We’re interested in the middle one, labeled “Buttons.” Once you click that button, you will be in the button editing mode. Select “Frames” from the menu at the top, and then pick one that you like. The frame is probably still too big, so go back to the info window, find the slider for size, and scale the buttons down until you like what you see. Repeat these steps for all the rest of the scene selection menus.

Well, look at that. I’m out of space again! Next week, I’ll break down Easter eggs and more button customization options. In the meantime, you might want to use iDVD’s preview mode to view your amazing custom DVD. Oh, and here’s how mine ended up after customization.

First, a list of materials. You’re going to need the following:

• iDVD. I use iDVD ‘08, and I’m not sure how these tips will work in previous versions or in other DVD authoring software.
• Video editing software. You could do this in iMovie, but for best results, you’ll want something that can work in layers, like Final Cut Express.
• Photoshop. Or a similar image editing application.

Choose a Theme to Modify

Okay, here we go. Fire up iDVD and click the button for themes. Go to the popup menu at the top to the theme list and pick Old Themes. If you don’t have the old themes, don’t worry. iDVD ‘08 includes all of the old themes for previous versions on the install DVD. Simply insert the disc and follow the instructions for installing the themes.

Why do I want old themes instead of the flashy new ones? The new themes all have drop zones, which cannot be deleted. Because of this, we’ll choose an old theme that has no drop zones, then make our own DVD background. Pick something like “A Day to Remember” or “Holiday Cheer” from the old themes collection.

Create Your Menu Background

We’ll leave iDVD now and launch Final Cut. This is where we will be creating our fancy menu background. As far as this step goes, you’re on your own. I don’t know what you want your DVD menu to look like, so I can’t tell you how to make it. What I can do is tell you how I built my DVD menu, which will give you some general guidelines.

I wanted to add an intro to my DVD, like the ones that you see on pro DVDs all the time. You know, where little bits of the movie swoosh around on the screen, culminating in the DVD menu. This is actually easier to create than it looks, but it involves some extra work with the background music.

You’ll need to pick some music that has a pause in it and add a marker at the pause. This marks the end of your intro. The rest of the music will loop on the DVD menu. Now build your DVD menu, using keyframing effects to make stuff swoosh around on the screen. For my DVD I decided that I would just fade through some important lines in the movie, and then swoosh in a logo and menu.

Many menus on professional DVDs will have a little video in one corner that shows memorable moments from the film. To create this, find the clips you would like to use, and then add them to your menu project.

In Final Cut, double click one of the clips. This brings it up in your viewer. Now go to the motion tab in the viewer. This brings up a whole set of controls that allow you to scale, rotate, and position your clip. Play with these settings until the clip is where you want it on the screen, and then write down what you did, so that you can apply the same effects to the rest of the clips. I scaled mine down 30%, and then dragged the clip to the position I wanted to get the center point coordinates for the rest of the clips.

Keep in mind that you need to leave room for the navigation buttons. I added a translucent bar with a sword behind it to the bottom of the screen. This effectively created an area where I could put the buttons.

Well, I hate to leave you in suspense, but this article is getting rather long, so I’ll just leave you with that for now. Have fun creating your menu, and tune in next week for the exciting conclusion!

Pre-Production

Comic Life, by Plasq. Price: $24.95.
You just can’t beat the fun of storyboarding with comic book creation software. The sound effects are a nice touch. If you draw like I do (that means taking pictures of Lego scenes), you need Comic Life to create nice speech bubbles and organized picture layouts, so the storyboard actually makes sense.

Editing

Final Cut Express, by Apple, Inc. Price: $299.
This is the big one. All of the editing that takes place in post-production is done here. I just love the vast amount of features in Apple’s mid-range editing software. There’s just so much that you can do with it! If that wasn’t good enough, Final Cut Express also includes LiveType (see below) and Soundtrack, for doing titling and scoring. Sure, you could spend $1299 and get Final Cut Pro, but unless you need a few high-end features (mostly for broadcasting), I think you’re better off with Express.

LiveType, by Apple, Inc. Price: $299, bundled with Final Cut Express.
Titles say a lot about the budget of your film. If you can make them look professional, people automatically think you spent a lot of cash on the movie. LiveType gives you a flexible, open-ended way to create professional titles, without being difficult to use.

Sound Editing

GarageBand, by Apple, Inc. Price: $79, part of iLife.
As far as I’m concerned, GarageBand is the music editing application to beat all. Its amazingly easy-to-use interface, combined with lots of hidden power, makes it a filmmaker’s dream. And you can’t beat the price, especially since iLife contains five more great applications!

Audacity, Open Source. Price: Free!
Being free, Audacity could create the wrong impression. “Free?! What good is it?” However, Audacity performs amazingly with its wide variety of filters, and the ability, in some cases, to even save bad audio.

Special Effects

Blender, Open Source. Price: Free!
Another free one, Blender provides the functionality of high-end 3-D software, while still maintaining open source. If I were to list all the features, we’d be here all week. The interface takes some getting used to, but once over that small hurdle, streamlined 3-D animation and graphics are at your disposal.

DVD Authoring

iDVD, by Apple, Inc. Price: $79, part of iLife.
If you already need GarageBand, iDVD comes in the same package. Although it has a few quirks, iDVD is wonderful for creating, well, DVDs (no brainer).

Well, now it’s your turn. I’d love to hear about your favorite filmmaking software! Just leave a comment on this post.