Finally, review your project’s links in the Menus and Timelines tabs of the Project window, and use the Check Project tool on the Disc tab (as shown in Figure 9-15) to double-check that all your project’s links are set, and with the proper values. By following a consistent naming convention, you can sort the menus and buttons, and timelines and chapters, and easily scan the list to verify a consistent pattern of link names.

Figure 9-15. Use the Check Project tool to verify links.

The fundamental approach to reusing material is to break it up into separate timelines, which then allows you to link them together in different navigational paths. Encore provides two mechanisms for reusing timelines: overrides for simple cases, and playlists for multiple clips.

For your main path through a group of timelines, you can simply set the end action for each timeline to link to the next in the sequence (in the Properties palette). Then when you jump to the first timeline from a menu, playback will continue automatically through the sequence, linking from one to the next, to the end of the list. You also need to set the end action for the final timeline to jump back to the menu (or use Return To Last Menu).

However, this approach has some drawbacks compared to simply creating a single video with each section marked with a chapter point. With the linked timelines approach, each timeline can have its own independent chapter points, so the chapter number display on the DVD player will increase and decrease while the DVD is apparently playing one single (but actually linked) clip. Similarly, the viewer cannot easily skip forward (or back) within the linked timelines as if they were chapters. The best you can do is to provide a chapter point near the end of each timeline to make it easy to skip past it to the next. In addition, the playback may not be seamless; there may be a visible jump when linking from one timeline to the next (depending on the disc and player).

This approach also has drawbacks from your point of view as a DVD author. Because the chain of linked timelines is implemented with explicit links defined for each timeline, possibly including the end link back to the menu, you cannot necessarily reuse the list from other menus. And an over-lips ride link will not work, as it would just override the end action of the first timeline in the list.

Overrides do provide a convenient mechanism for reusing single timelines. You can chain together two clips in this way, to play different introductory video clips before jumping to a common clip.

For example, in a language menu, you could set the link for each language choice to jump to a customized clip introducing the material, and then set the override to jump to the common clip and also set the audio and subtitle tracks for the associated language, as shown in Figure 9-17.

Figure 9-17. Use link overrides to reuse clips by linking them in different orders.

You also can use overrides to play the same material from different menus, and ensure that the navigational flow returns back to the correct menu. Although Encore provides the Return To Last Menu and Resume link options for these purposes, overrides give you even more control. (Use Return To Last Menu from timelines, and Resume from menus, to return back along the navigational path to where the viewer linked to the current timeline or menu.)

For example, you can set the link for a menu button to jump to a timeline, and then set the override to not only return to the menu, but also choose the button to be highlighted and the audio and subtitle tracks.

This may also come down to your own design preference: setting Return To Last Menu and Resume in the destination timeline or menu means you may not have to set explicit overrides when you link to these elements, but setting explicit overrides lets you review all the links in the Check Project window and Menus and Timelines tabs.

For more flexibility in creating multiple playback paths through a collection of material, Encore also provides the ability to create playlists. You create playlists in the Project window, where you then can link them into you project just like individual timelines. And you define playlists using the Playlist Inspector (its Properties palette) as a list of timelines (see Figure 9-18).

Figure 9-18. Define Playlists as lists of timelines to be played in sequence.

You can use playlists, for example, for anything from a training disc to a wedding keepsake DVD. One approach is to start with an hour or so of material, divide it into around six sections of ten minutes each, and then split each section into shorter sequences (introduction/opening, body, conclusion/wrap).

Now, imagine some of the ways you could present this hour of material by linking it together with playlists:

Even better, playlists in Encore act much like individual timelines, so you can set an End Action associated with the playlist, and set an Override and the Audio and Subtitle tracks when you set a Link to a playlist. You therefore can re-use playlists by linking to them from different menus, and setting the override for the link in each menu to Link Back To Here so playback returns to that menu.

Buttons can be invisible, with no visible image and no highlight layer. These buttons still can have actions associated with them, and can be accessed from the menu using button routing.

To create a placeholder button object in Encore, you do not need to create a special button template. Just copy a button from the Library palette into the Menu Editor, and delete all highlight, video, and text layers, plus all but one graphic layer. Keep one graphic layer so that you can resize and position the button out of the way on the menu, and then unclick the visibility icon (eye icon) in the Layers palette so that the button is now totally invisible.

Buttons can be inaccessible, or not included as part of the menu button routing. (However, on a computer, you still can find buttons by moving the cursor over the menu background and even try to click them with the mouse, so make the button extent small and hide it out of the way on the menu.)

In Encore, set the Automatically Route Buttons option in the menu’s Properties palette if desired to route the menu’s buttons normally. Then disable automated routing and click the Show Routing button at the bottom of the Menu Editor, and then drag-and-drop to link the other buttons around the inaccessible button. (This is easier if you first move the invisible buttons to the bottom of the menu, and set them to use the highest button numbers, to they will be the last buttons in the routing sequence.)

However, invisible buttons still can be activated by number. You can activate menu buttons on a set-top DVD player using the numeric keypad (as with Video CDs). Pressing a single digit activates the associated button number. In Encore, assign the invisible buttons in the Properties palette to use the highest numbers.

Now that you can make invisible and inaccessible buttons, you can create Easter eggs, or secret buttons that require some special knowledge (or persistence) to discover, and which provide access to additional content or features.

Buttons can be non-obvious, so they are not normally visible and accessible only in one particular way. For example, in a scene index menu, you can provide a button to bonus footage that can be accessed only if you go Right from the Main Menu button at the bottom of the menu (which would be especially unlikely to discover accidentally if you design the routing to reach the Main Menu button by using Down).

You then may want to use a visible highlight for the surprise button to indicate its purpose as a reward and feedback when the user finds it. This could be as simple as a text highlight.

Buttons can be extra-secret: accessible only through a convoluted button routing path. Similar to secret codes for video games, you can design a path of invisible buttons (i.e., Left-Up-Right-Down-Down) to reach a final button to link to some additional content.

Set the button routing to link to the path from one of the normal buttons on the menu, and make sure that all other routing directions from the invisible buttons go back to the normal button sequence, as shown in Figure 9-19.

Figure 9-19. Arrange a series of invisible buttons to define a secret code to access bonus content.

In this case, you also may want to set the final button to Auto Activate, and immediately take the link without being pressed. In this case, none of the invisible buttons should have a highlight. Once the viewer starts entering the secret routing sequence, no highlights are visible on the menu, and there is no visible feedback of any sort, until the menu suddenly jumps to the new content at the end of the sequence. Or, you could arrange the invisible buttons to highlight with a countdown effect as the sequence is successfully entered.

Besides hiding entire video clips so that they are not obviously accessible from the DVD menus, you also can hide information in the audio and subtitle tracks of timelines. For example, you can include an additional audio track that has a spoken message, or a subtitle track with a text message or even an informational graphic. (You can make a treasure hunt of hidden clues, or display a map of where the Easter eggs are hidden.)

If you place this material in tracks that are not otherwise used in your project, and are not linked from the normal use of your project, viewers can watch your entire disc and never see them. They are directly accessible only if the viewer selects the appropriate secret button that has its link set to the timeline and also explicitly sets the appropriate audio and subtitle track numbers.

Or, do not link to the track at all in the DVD navigation. Instead, have knowledgeable viewers manually select the required tracks using the interface on the DVD player.

In these kinds of ways, you can use invisible buttons and hidden tracks to stash away extra material on a DVD disc so that it is not obviously accessible to the casual viewer. However, the material will be visible when the disc is viewed on a computer. Viewers can use a DVD software player application to examine the structure of the disc and find all the video titles, or use a DVD editing tool to examine and even extract the contents.

Any alternate audio and subtitle tracks also can be easily discovered with a software player, and even with a set-top DVD player. Many set-top players include both dedicated buttons on the remote control and user interface menus that allow the viewer to explicitly select from the available tracks.

One partial solution for providing more obscurity is to hide material in plain sight, at the front of an existing timeline. Edit the two clips together, and then design the normal navigational flow to always jump to Chapter 2 in the timeline, and only link to Chapter 1 at the beginning when you want to display the bonus material.

In this way, you do not have any extra timelines in your project, so the extra material is not immediately obvious when the disc is viewed with a software player. However, the tradeoff is that any viewer can access the material, accidentally or not, by pressing the Previous Chapter button on the DVD remote control. And the careful viewer may notice that playback always starts at Chapter 2.

You can partially address these problems by placing several chapter points at the beginning of the clip to guard against accidentally jumping back, and by keeping the remaining clip relatively brief so that the viewer is not inspired to start jumping around anyway. For example, you can hide additional material such as this in a timeline used as a motion transition into a menu, so the viewer typically sees only the transition, but the secret button plays the full timeline followed by the transition.

Even better, set the Timeline User Operations to prohibit using the Previous/Next Chapter and Search For Chapter functions on the DVD remote control, as shown in Figure 9-20. However, constraining the user like this is rude for longer clips.

Figure 9-20. Hide secret content in plain sight at the front of another timeline, and then use Timeline User Operations to prevent viewers from stepping back to it.

Although you cannot hide secret material on a DVD so that they cannot be discovered by a determined or patient viewer, you can go a bit further in making the material harder to find. Because any content stored in a timeline will be directly accessible from a software DVD player application, you can choose to hide it in a menu instead. Menus can play motion video with audio, and even display overlay text and graphics, much like a timeline.

The disadvantage of this approach is that it can be used only with relatively small clips, both because DVD menus are limited in storage size, and because menus do not support the expected interface conventions such as chapter points and the use of the Menu button. But using menus works well for short bonus clips, and they will not be trivially apparent using either DVD player or even DVD copying software.

Another approach to adding fun to a DVD is to use the timed playback of both menus and timelines to require a fast response from the viewer. You can use this to make game-like DVDs that require (relatively) quick reflexes, or to add more difficulty to the task of entering secret codes by only presenting a menu for a short length of time.

For example, you can have a short timeline that displays the message “Press the Menu Key Now.” If the user responds quickly before the timeline finishes playing, playback jumps to the special content defined by the timeline’s Menu Remote link. Otherwise, the timeline finishes playing and then takes the default end action (or continues on in a playlist).

Similarly, as discussed previously, you could create a menu with buttons that provide access to additional content. But the menu also has a short Duration defined, so the user must press the appropriate sequence within the allotted time, or the menu will time out and take its End Action link.

The self-timing features in DVD menus allow you to create self-running discs that can be used for standalone presentations such as kiosk displays. These discs can be set up to automatically advance through the presentation—for example, for hands-off use in training—or can be set up to loop through various short clips intended to attract viewers who will then begin interacting with the disc.

In these kinds of uses, you may have some content on the disc that you want to be available to viewers who are browsing the presentation, and other material that is intended only for use by an authorized presenter or trainer. As discussed earlier, you can use invisible buttons and other techniques to hide this second set of material from casual browsers.

Another possible need for this kind of use is a lockdown screen that prevents unauthorized users from accessing the disc. For example, you can display a blank menu (to make the DVD look like it is turned off), and require that the viewer enter a secret button code to activate the disc.

If this menu is defined as both the First Play and Title button for the disc, the entire contents of the disc will be hidden from casual users on a set-top player.

Or, you can use this kind of menu when playback pauses in the middle of a disc, and also set the Menu User Operations to prevent using the Title button to break out of the menu.

Of course, you can expand on this approach to have the menu display some sort of message asking the viewer to enter the pass code, or even play a looping timeline that will escape to a menu prompt when the Menu key is pressed.

Using alternate menus provides a way to have high-quality button highlight graphics by actually using a different menu for each highlighted button. The usual method of using one menu image with buttons burned into the background clearly restricts your design, with the dynamic effect limited to using subpicture overlays to highlight menu buttons. Instead, you can switch in an entirely different menu image, which has been edited to show the highlighted button effect.

To do this kind of effect, create the background menu design, as usual, plus button graphics for both the normal and selected states. For your sanity, you can compose the entire design as one multilayer Photoshop file, and selectively enable different versions by clicking the visibility icon (eye icon) in the Layers palette to make the elements visible or invisible.

The trick here is to set up individual copies of the menu, one with each button highlighted. They all have the same basic button routing, except that the buttons are set to autoactivate when the user routes to them. At any point, the user is viewing a version of the menu with the appropriate graphics to show the current button highlighted. If the user presses Enter, the current link is taken as usual. But if the user presses a cursor key to route to a different button, the route is taken, and then the new button autoactivates and links to the alternate version of the menu with that button highlighted.

The major disadvantage of this approach is that it can cause a visible glitch as the menus are switched between each button press, although this varies depending on the disc and player. In contrast, users are used to instantaneous and seamless button highlighting, which was explicitly designed to be cleanly implemented by swapping button overlays.

This idea of alternate versions of the same menu can be combined with playlists and overrides to provide customized versions of your content, or for sneakier purposes. For example, you can have alternate versions of your menu structure in three different languages. Each set of menus link among themselves. And the links to play clips then explicitly set the audio stream to the associated language, and include an override to return back to that same menu. (The same idea could apply to other alternate presentations, such as presentations with alternate commentary or subtitle annotations.)

One way to think about organizing these menus would be to have a main menu in which you choose the language, and then three groups of submenus, one for each language. Another approach could be to use shadow menus, in which the user sees only one menu structure, but has the option to switch between different languages. In a language submenu (or at other useful points), the user could choose a button to switch languages, and the menu would immediately switch to that language by linking to its shadow copy in the appropriate menu set.

In Encore, you can use the Link To dialog not only to set the button link to a menu or timeline, but also to explicitly set the audio and/or subtitle tracks to be displayed from then on.

To go further with this approach, you can use alternate versions of a menu to make even sneakier ways to access hidden or Easter egg content. You can have different versions of the same menu which look exactly the same, but only one includes a hidden button to access the secret content, and you have to take some other action first to even access the alternate menu.

For example, playing Chapter 2 from the scene index menu could set an override to return to an alternate menu, which includes the hidden button. Taking any other action from the alternate menu then returns back to the original menu, and the user would never know the alternate menu existed.