When you first insert a DVD disc in a DVD player, there is a default initial action, called the first play, which is performed to begin your interaction with the disc. To the DVD player, the first play is just a link to where to start playing the DVD, and therefore must be defined by the DVD author. (Our first and only menu in Chapter 1 was the first play for our sample disc.) For personal DVDs, you can just jump directly to the main menu, or even simply start playing the movie content.

For Hollywood movies, the first play is typically more involved: the DVD shows the FBI warning, an optional statement that duplication is prohibited, movie trailer previews and other promotional material, and eventually ends up at the main DVD menu. As a matter of convention, this first play material is shown only when the disc is inserted. After that, you go back to the main menu to navigate the disc.

Encore DVD and other authoring tools let you select any video clip or menu as the first play.

The first play on our example disc, Planet Earth: North America, simply starts at the main menu, which has links to access the content of the disc, as shown in Figure 2-17. The main menu of a movie disc typically includes a menu with options to play the movie, show a chapter or scene index menu with a list of the scenes in the movie, use a Special Features menu to select audio tracks and subtitles, and access other fun stuff such as previews and trailers. However, these are just common conventions; the menu content and navigational structure, like the graphical design, is totally up to the DVD author. Some movie DVDs just launch right into the movie itself.

Figure 2-17. Main menu of the Planet Earth DVD.

If no menu is shown, go ahead and right-click, and select DVD Features → Title Menu. With Windows Media Player, you can move the mouse cursor up over the menu buttons to highlight the different options. Each DVD has a unique way of showing that a button has been selected (i.e., when the mouse moves over it and the cursor changes from an arrow to a hand) and activated (i.e., when the mouse button is actually pressed, which in turn pressed the DVD menu button). On the Planet Earth discs, a light green horizontal bar appears over the button text to graphically indicate button selection—your DVD may be different. Use the cursor arrows on the keyboard to simulate the button navigation arrows on a DVD remote control: Up and Down, Left and Right. When looking at other discs, notice how the highlight wraps (or does not wrap) when you press Down at the bottom button, or press Right at the end of the first row of a set of buttons. This is called button routing.

The graphical effect used to highlight the menu items is totally under the control of the DVD author. The DVD specification just provides a mechanism to define a graphical overlay for highlighting. Note also that the button routing also must be specified when the disc is authored; in Encore DVD you can manually define the routing between the buttons, or have Encore route them automatically based on their geometric layout.

DVD menus have three logical components: The background image (or video), the interactive buttons, and the button highlights to indicate when a button is selected.

Although DVD menus look like they have buttons and text floating on top of the background, all of these graphical elements are actually combined into a single final image (or video), which is then authored into the DVD. For example, the Planet Earth main menu is composed of three video clips: the two different windows of space video, plus the scrolling line of text. Motion menus also can contain multiple video clips for buttons. Again, all of these elements—video, text, and graphics—are composited together into a single video clip that is stored on the DVD.

When authoring DVDs with sophisticated menu designs, you can composite all the menu elements in an image or video editor such as Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, or After Effects, and then import the final still image or motion video into the DVD authoring tool. Even better, with Encore you can use the built-in menu editor to create the menu from its elements: combining a menu background image or video with overlaid text, graphics, and even motion video buttons. Encore also can exchange menu designs directly with Photoshop.

As you watch a motion menu, notice what happens when it reaches the end of the video. In most DVDs, the menu repeats, which can cause a disconcerting glitch for the viewer. As a result, DVD authors find clever ways to disguise the repeat point, typically by fading the audio and video, or by carefully matching the end of the clip back to the beginning.

DVD menus, however, do not have to loop. Still image menus can just remain displayed until the user chooses a menu option. Or menus can timeout or loop a fixed number of times, and then automatically move on to a default action. The Planet Earth main menu, for example, plays continuously for a number of minutes (as the DVD title scrolls slowly across the screen), and then automatically moves on to start playing the DVD. This behavior is particularly useful for DVDs designed for demo or standalone use, so they can continue playing even if nobody is interacting with them.

The Windows Media Player interface has a dazzling array of tabs, panels, pop-up menus, right-click context menus, and small button icons. Select View → Now Playing Options → Show Playlist (you may have to press the small button in the upper-left corner to display the menu bar if Windows Media Player is in skin mode). This causes Media Player to display the DVD contents in a separate panel on the right side, with a list of the titles on the DVD (see Figure 2-18). Note that this information is not stored on the disc; Media Player downloads it from an Internet database—this is the reason for the delay when the DVD is first recognized. Next, let’s click the plus sign to expand the Title listings to show the nested chapters (scenes).

Figure 2-18. Media Player shows the titles and chapters on the DVD.

On typical movie DVDs, the entire main movie is stored in the first title set on a DVD, and additional special features such as “making of” documentaries, deleted scenes, and trailers are stored under additional title sets below. On the Planet Earth series, each major section of the disc (as listed in the main menu) is organized in its associated individual title set, and the previews are placed in the final title set.

Encore DVD and similar authoring tools don’t provide explicit control over grouping material in title sets. They just store each timeline on the DVD in a separate title set, so you can use different video formats in each timeline.

Clicking the Play button causes Media Player’s Playlist display to change. The DVD playback jumps to Chapter 1 in Title 1, as shown in Figure 2-19. Playback then continues sequentially through each chapter, as with a normal DVD player.

Chapters are simply marked points within a continuous video clip on a DVD. A menu can jump directly to a chapter point. You also can use the Previous and Next Chapter buttons at the bottom left of the Media Player window to jump between adjacent chapters.

Figure 2-19. Start playing the first chapter on the disc.

STUDIO ADVICEDVD Navigational Structure

DVD navigation is different from disk directories, which have a clear and fixed folder hierarchy. DVDs are also different from web pages, where you follow an arbitrary chain of links totally independent of their physical organization (or location). In a web browser, you use Back and Next buttons to move to adjacent pages in your history list of visited pages.

Entry-level personal DVD authoring tools typically create DVDs with two fixed forms of navigation: a set of linked menus (Next/Previous) for a long collection of chapters or clips, and nested menus for hierarchical grouping (Down and Up). See Figure 2-20.

Figure 2-20. Basic DVD navigational approaches.

Although this is a great default for logically laying out hierarchical collections of material, higherlevel professional tools such as Encore DVD provide the freedom to create arbitrary navigational links, for example, to access and re-use the same material from several different menus. So, assuming that you don’t confuse the daylights out of your viewers, the sky’s the limit.

The DVD specification does define three dedicated buttons on the remote control for jumping directly within the menu structure: Title, Menu, and Return. However, these keys, in addition to being confusingly named, are not used extensively on discs since they are unfamiliar to end users and are not consistently implemented by DVD authors.

To jump to the Main Title menu in Media Player, double-click the DVD name at the top of the Playlist pane. To jump to the menu for the current section, click the Menu button at the bottom left of the video window area. You can use View → DVD Features (or the right-click contextual menu) to also access the dedicated buttons, as well as the Return function.

The Planet Earth DVDs provide a sophisticated example of using the Menu and Return keys when authoring a disc. At any point during the video playback, you can press the Menu button and jump to an information screen about the associated geographic region (see Figure 2-21).

Figure 2-21. Access the information screens on the Planet Earth DVD using the Menu and Return buttons.

While viewing the information screen, you then press a magnifying glass icon button to jump to a fullscreen image. You then can press the Return button to return to the information screen. Then press the Menu button to return to the video sequence that you were watching. Keep these kinds of ideas in mind when you’re generating your own DVDs.

Most movie discs include a scene index menu that provides direct links to different scenes or chapters in the main movie. For example, the Planet Earth disc contains the Chapters menu shown in Figure 2-24. This menu not only lists the main sections of the disc, but also includes a second magnifying glass icon for each entry to jump to the detail screen for that geographic region (as described previously).

Figure 2-24. The Chapters menu from the Planet Earth DVD, with an index of scenes.

This Planet Earth menu impressively fits all 17 chapter links onto a single menu, plus the associated detail icons. Because DVD menus are intended for display on television sets, and not just on PC monitors, that’s about the most you should try to squeeze onto a menu. And if you use image or video thumbnails for your scenes index menus, as with many movies, you’ll be able to fit only around six per menu page. You will then need to create a linked set of menus to step through all the scenes.

With PowerDVD, you can hover the cursor over a menu, or use the buttons on the menu pad to navigate around the menu and observe how the buttons are highlighted. A bright translucent bar highlights the names of the chapters across the row containing the text, and the magnifying glass icons are highlighted similarly by brightening the square icon graphic.

The drag-and-drop editing capability in Encore DVD can make creating these kinds of scene index menus a real breeze. Just choose a menu background, and then drag the sequences or chapter points to the menu. Encore automatically creates the appropriate links for you, and even generates image or video thumbnails, as we already saw in Chapter 1.

Click on a chapter on the menu to play the associated sequence. The PowerDVD control panel updates to show the current title, chapter, and time within the title (see Figure 2-25).

Figure 2-25. Playing the DVD, with the control panel showing current title set, chapter, and elapsed play time.

Each numbered sequence on the Planet Earth disc is stored in the correspondingly numbered title set. (This will likely be the case with your DVDs as well.) Click the Next/Previous Chapter buttons to jump within a sequence, and watch the chapter number change accordingly. You also can right-click over the video window to use the pop-up menu to explore the disc structure and jump directly to a specific chapter (see Figure 2-26).

Select Show Information to display additional information about the DVD playback and contents.

Figure 2-26. Use the right-click contextual menu in PowerDVD to explore a hierarchical list of the DVD’s titles and chapters.

There are two fundamentally different ways of thinking about organizing a DVD: as a collection of individual clips, or as a long single sequence (movie). Many entry-level personal DVD authoring tools follow the first model, in which you import a collection of videos, and then the tool automatically creates a scene index type menu with a thumbnail for each clip or chapter point.

However, for movie DVDs, or when capturing a long tape to DVD, you import a single long clip (one or two hours), and then create a scene index menu that jumps to chapter points that are marked in the longer clip (see Figure 2-27).

Figure 2-27. A DVD menu generated automatically by Sonic MyDVD, using a linked set of menus to list the available clips.

The real difference, then, comes during playback. In the clip case, you jump to the beginning of a clip, play to the end, and then return to the main menu. In the movie case, you jump to a chapter point in the middle of the movie, and then continue playing to the end of the movie, continuing through the remaining chapter points. Of course, you can combine these approaches on one disc, but be careful—the user needs to understand what kind of scene index menu she is dealing with.

The Planet Earth DVD design actually is an interesting hybrid. The disc is organized in separate title sets in the same way you might group independent clips, but the DVD navigation is set up to automatically play through the entire contents as if it were one long, continuous movie. While playing a section, notice what happens when you reach the last chapter in the current title set: the playback then continues with the next title set, essentially treating the disc as one long, continuous movie.

Encore DVD provides this same kind of navigational control. At the end of a sequence, you can specify whether it returns to a menu or continues on with the next sequence. You can even go further and override the default action to access the same material in alternate ways from different menu buttons. And you can create playlists to list different sequences of clips to be played sequentially.

Many movie DVDs include a menu for changing audio streams and enabling subtitles, often labeled as the Setup or Special Features menu. On the Planet Earth main menu, let’s click Special Features to display the Special Features menu, as shown in Figure 2-30.

This includes options to choose the audio and subtitles, and information on the DVD-ROM features included on the disc.

Figure 2-30. The Special Features menu from the Planet Earth DVD, with audio and subtitle options as well as DVD-ROM features.

The Planet Earth disc provides two audio streams, Dolby Digital and the alternate DTS format (the DVD specification supports up to eight). To change the audio format, click Dolby Digital or DTS (note that there’s no feedback in these menus as to which option is currently selected—something to think about when creating your own DVDs). Multi-channel Dolby Digital is a required part of the DVD specification, so all set-top and software players can process it for playing on surround-sound systems, or downmix it to simple stereo outputs. You also can select the alternate DTS format if your audio system supports it.

Click the InterVideo WinDVD SubPanel button and choose Languages to view the current audio and subtitle stream settings.

Next, return to the main menu and begin playing the disc. The Audio field in the control panel shows the current audio track. You can change the audio track by using the Special Features menu, or directly from the WinDVD control panel. When playing a DVD sequence, you can also use the right-click menu to display the available streams and switch between them (see Figure 2-31). Some set-top players provide the ability to step through the available audio and subtitle streams using the remote control.

Figure 2-31. Use the WinDVD right-click menu to list and select alternate audio and subtitle streams.

Movie DVDs use alternate audio streams for a variety of purposes, including alternate languages, voiceover commentaries, and karaoke tracks. Sometimes these are enabled from different menus (one for languages and another for special features), but both just set available audio streams.

The Planet Earth disc provides one subtitle stream (the DVD specification supports up to 32). Your disc likely does as well. You can click the English Subtitles menu entry to toggle the subtitles on or off—the menu displays the option to change the state; the current state is the opposite of the menu.

When you play the disc, the subtitle text is overlaid on top of the video, as shown in Figure 2-32. The text is actually stored on the DVD as a subpicture graphic overlay, with limited colors and transparency. As you will see later, DVD uses the same overlay mechanism for both subtitles and menu highlights.

Figure 2-32. The Planet Earth DVD displays a subtitle identifying each new chapter.

Because DVD subtitles are actually graphic overlays, they can be used for more than just text. You may see them used as logo overlays and in pop-up commentary. In addition to subtitles, DVDs also can support the use of closed-captioned text associated with the video playback.

The DVD specification also provides the ability to have up to eight parallel video streams. These are often called angles, as they provide multiangle video that allows viewers to watch a concert performance from different points of view, or see a movie scene from a different perspective.

For example, choosing Credits on the Planet Earth main menu displays the credits menus, which are shown in Figure 2-33. A subhierarchy of still image menus are used to display the credit text. You can navigate up and down within these menus and then return to the main menu.

Figure 2-33. The credits menu for the Planet Earth: North America DVD comprises textual images.

Choosing Chapters on the main menu displays the list of chapters on the disc. Clicking one of the magnifying glass icons next to a chapter name displays one of the Image Details screens for that geographic region (as discussed earlier, these are also accessible while playing the associated video by pressing the Menu button).

The Image Details screens, one of which is shown in Figure 2-34, are actually cross-linked in a sequence, with Next and Previous buttons, so you can step through all the images in that group. You can also click on the magnifying glass icon to see a fullscreen image (see Figure 2-35).

Figure 2-34. The Image Details sections of the Planet Earth DVD have a linked series of still images with text and images.

Figure 2-35. View the fullscreen image.

On commercial movie DVDs, you will see this approach used for additional material such as a series of photos of the production, or to present information about the actors in the film.

Choose Previews on the main menu to display a menu of previews or trailers for other DVD productions (see Figure 2-36).

Figure 2-36. The Previews menu on the Planet Earth DVD, with trailers for other DVD productions.

If you choose the Planet Earth Series button, it will play the trailer for the Planet Earth series (see Figure 2-37). Notice that the trailer is standard video, formatted at a 4:3 aspect ratio (and squished horizontally), unlike the main movie video, which is widescreen. All the trailers are actually stored in the same title set, at standard video resolution.

Figure 2-37. The Preview video for the Planet Earth DVD series is stored at a standard aspect ratio.

DVDs can include two basic kinds of content: motion video (movies) or stills (images).

And DVDs can contain two kinds of fundamental objects that you create during the authoring process: menus and tracks. But wait a minute! Motion menus can contain video, and tracks can contain still images. You actually can play video clips or present slide shows either way.

The real distinction is in the interaction. With menus you can display button overlays and link to new content, while with tracks you can display subtitle overlays and jump to adjacent chapter points. This gives two different ways to play slide shows:

In addition, these same approaches work with video as well: you could author an entire DVD as a series of motion menus, each playing video and audio, with both navigation links and default behavior for hands-off playback.