Any way to smoothly transition from animation to a menu?

Question

My DVD starts with an animation that, when it ends, forms the main menu background. The problem I'm having is that the only way I know to set up the DVD is to have it pause awkwardly in between the end of the animation and the menu background. This is my setup: I have the opening animation as the source of a track which then connects to the main menu with has the background graphic as its source.
Is there any way around this so that the animation plays seamlessly into the main menu without the pause? Is there is a way to make the background for the main menu the entire, single animation, then somehow "turn on" the buttons and overlay file once the opening part is over and it settles to form the main menu background?

Answer 1

Yes. You need to create one single video (in FCP) that is your opening animation that leads to your menu animation (you need to put all of your graphics in FCP, not DVD SP). Put a chapter marker at the point you want your buttons to pop on. Create an overlay file for your buttons. Sending the video to Compressor to encode as a m2v file. Then bring the .m2v and your overlay file into DVD SP, and drop them into your menu. Then set the loop point at your chapter marker.
Now when someone plays your DVD, they will see what is before the loop point once and it will seamlessly go into the second half of your menu, which will endlessly loop.