Encore provides more detailed views of your project with the Menus and Timelines tabs, which are nested in the Project window by default. You can use these tabs to isolate all the menus (or timelines) in your project, check the settings for their associated buttons (or chapters), and even select multiple items or make global changes in the Properties palette.
The Menus tab lists all the menus in your project, with some of the properties that are useful to review for consistency over the project, including the end action and loop behavior.
When you click one of the menus, the bottom half of the Menus tab displays the buttons defined on that menu. Click the Number column heading to sort the list by that column. Now, you can easily review the list to see if the buttons are defined consistently and are linked to the proper destinations (see Figure 7-12). Again, these project lists are even more helpful if you take the time to enter consistent names for your buttons, menus, and other project elements.
Note
The Menus tab displays columns with information from the Menu Properties palette. To display more of the properties, right-click in the Titles row and choose Columns from the context menu.
To drill down deeper on a specific menu or button, just click to select it, and view its information in the Properties palette.
Next, select more than one menu in the top half of the Menus tab. To help you review your global project design, the bottom half of the tab now displays all the buttons for all the selected menus. Click the column headings to sort the list in different ways. In this way, you can review multiple elements from your project at the same time—for example, if you have several similar buttons to return to the main menu (see Figure 7-13).
Even better, look at the Properties palette. It now displays common properties across all the selected menus, as shown in Figure 7-14. This can be a huge timesaver: you can choose a common background audio or video clip, for example, or a new highlight color set, and apply it in one operation to a group of menus, instead of editing each one individually.
Figure 7-14. Use the Menu Properties palette to change the settings for multiple menus at the same time.
Similarly, select a group of buttons across several menus. The Properties palette again displays the common properties for all the selected buttons (see Figure 7-15). Now, for example, you can change how a common button is linked over all the menus, or ensure that all the buttons in a menu use an override to link back to the menu (with Link Back to Here).
Next, click the Timelines tab to view a list of all the timelines in your project. Again, you can review fields such as End Action and Menu Remote for correctness and consistency across your entire project. Not surprisingly, you can select one or more timelines in the top half of the Timelines tab to list the chapter points that they contain in the bottom half of the tab (see Figure 7-16).
Figure 7-16. Use the Timelines tab to review the properties for all the timelines in your project and list their chapter points.
Again, you can select multiple timelines to make a global change to them in the Properties palette. For example, you can apply a new color set to the subtitles, or change the link for the Menu Remote button (see Figure 7-17).
