Hi! I'm seriously considering getting DiscWelder Chrome after we use that in our studio from time to time to create simple DVD-A's (automated). However I'm a bit more demanding. I know that DiscWelder can do menus, and I even tried that on the studio engine, but it wasn't satisfying at all. Well... due to the fact that I usually don´t do this, I don't know what graphical layers are, or how I should make my graphics, buttons, etc. Anybody has experience in that and/or knows how to do this? Maybe even have a tutorial at hand? This would really help. Thanks in advance.
The menus are quite simple once you get your head around how it all works in Chrome. You have 2 components - the background image (BMP, TIFF, JPEG) and an overlay image. (Don't worry about buttons, we will get to this later) The background has to be done correctly - are we talking PAL or NTSC? If you are in, say, NTSC we also need to know if you are working in Non Square pixels or Square pixels. If Square, create & edit at 720x540 then resize to 720x480. If non square, and using a PAR of 0.9, then work at 720x480 as normal. Whatever you want to be seen goes in the background image. The overlay image needs to be 4 colour, delimited & indexed Bitmap. And the background should be transparent and this counts as one colour. When you get better used to it, it is also possible to use highlight groups for another 8 colours. On the overlay image is where you put the graphic that appears for your buttons to show selected & activated states. Save this as the format mentioned earlier - 4 colour, indexed & delimited. Photoshop can do this easily. Buttons you literally draw on yourself. When you load the background and the overlay, make sure your overlay image is visible - then you can accurately draw the buttons. Set the opacity later on to how you want it to be displayed. I will try to find the time to create as guide for this - no promises though, but the main thing to do is sit & study the manual. It's hard going at first until you get to grips with the concept, but it can bbe done. Speak Later
