This chapter has focused on creating the visual appearance of menus, with buttons and animation and highlights, and has not yet addressed actually using these menus and buttons to link together the DVD navigation. But there still is one form of navigation that applies to the appearance of menus: the routing between menu buttons when you navigate within the menu using the DVD remote control.
A DVD remote control has four buttons used to navigate within menus: Up, Down, Left, and Right. The intent is that pressing these will cycle logically and naturally through the available buttons on the menu, as indicated by the menu button highlight. However, like other aspects of DVD design, this button routing is totally under the control of the DVD author, who may have other creative choices in mind.
By default, Encore automatically generates the button routing for your menus, but you also can take full control of how the buttons are ordered. The DVD specification also offers a second way to select menu buttons, by entering the button number on the numeric keypad. Encore also provides the ability to assign the button numbers, so, for example, the user can enter the chapter number to select the associated menu button.
To review and modify the button routing on your menu, click the Show Button Routing button on the bottom of the Menu Editor window. Encore displays routing icon overlays over each button on the menu, as shown in Figure 5-38. (This is also a good way to verify the layout of your buttons on the menu: while button routing is enabled you can only select and move the buttons.)
Figure 5-38. Click Show Button Routing to display the routing icon overlays over each button on the menu.
The icon displays the button number in the center, and then has four arrows indicating the button that will be selected if the corresponding button on the remote control is pressed. So, for example, if the top-left button is currently selected and the viewer presses the right button on the remote, it will jump to button 2. If the viewer presses the left button on the remote, it will jump to button 3.
You can drag the buttons around in the Menu Editor window and see how Encore dynamically changes the automatic routing based on the 2-D button layout on the menu.
Encore offers four presets for automatic button routing. To select a preset, choose Edit → Preferences → Menus to display the Preferences dialog (see Figure 5-39).
You can enable Route up/down and Route left/right to perform automatic routing vertically and horizontally, respectively. Enable the Wrap around up/down and Wrap around left/right options to have the buttons at the ends of each column or row wrap around to the other end. With the latter two, you can choose from the drop-down menu to have the routing Wrap within the same row (or column)” to stay at the same level, or Wrap to the next row (or column) to sequence through all the buttons by pressing the same key.
If you change these options after you have created a menu with routed buttons, simply unselect and then select the Automatically Route Buttons option in the Menu Properties palette (discussed shortly). This regenerates the button routing targets.
You can also manually set the routing targets for each button. To manually change the button routing, first uncheck the Automatically Route Buttons checkbox at the bottom of the Menu Properties palette, as shown in Figure 5-40. Encore then will no longer update the routing.
With automatic routing disabled, you can now drag from each button arrow to route it to a destination button. Hold the cursor over one of the four arrows on the button routing icon (i.e., the right arrow for the Right button), and the cursor changes to a hand icon. Then click and drag a line to another button, which highlights to show that it is selected (see Figure 5-41). Encore updates the button number in the arrow to show the new button routing. To route a button to itself, drag outside the button and then back in to select it.
Figure 5-41. Specify button routing by dragging from the button routing icon to the destination button.
In this way, you have complete control over specifying the button routing of your menus. To revert to automatic routing, simply check the Automatically Route Buttons checkbox in the Menu Properties palette.