Creating a custom DVD template for Premiere Elements 7

Question

I have Premiere Elements 7, as well as Photoshop CS3. What I want is a very simple DVD title page that shows all 18 scenes in our movie - text listings would be enough - the point of the exercise is to make it easy for someone to click on a specific scene (I could use movie markers instead of scene markers, I guess, if that makes life easier) while giving a talk.
I cannot find instructions for doing that in either PE7 or Photoshop. Clearly am not looking in the right places. Can someone point me to useful instruction?
Many thanks,
ari

Answer 1

Ari,
Welcome to the forum.
One thing that tends to get in the way, when creating Menus for PrE is that PrE's authoring module (creates navigation, Burns DVD, etc.) is that it does things semi-automatically. To accomplish this, one needs to think of Menu Sets (a Main Menu and a Scene Selection Menu, that will be replicated enough times to fit the Project). If you look in the folder structure of the Library, you will see that there are two Menus, and their accompanying PNG's (thumbnail display for Create Menu organizer) for each title. That is done to accommodate the semi-automatic aspect.
Now, using a well-defined set of properties, one CAN create Menu Sets for PrE. There are also several additional Menu Sets available from Muvipix, including one with a Text-only Scene Selection Menu. These can be purchased, or can be downloaded free, if one is a subscriber.
One consideration, in your stated case, is that if you have a Widescreen Project, you can ONLY have 18 Buttons on any one Menu. If you have a Scene Selection Menu for 18 Chapters, then you have no room for a Back to Main Menu Button. If you have a Standard Project (4:3), you can have up to 36 Buttons on a Menu, so all is cool, so long as you can fit them into the area - NO element of a Button may overlap any element in another.
If one is creating, or editing a Menu Set, I strongly advise that they spend a great deal of time studying similar Menu Sets from the Library. There are many conventions that MUST be maintained, and if one does not, problems WILL occur.
This ARTICLE will give you a few tips on editing/creating PrE Menu Sets.
Steve Grisetti also has some useful articles on editing Menu Sets, on Muvipix.
For more options, regarding Menus and navigation, many like Sony's DVD Architect. One limitation of that program is that it does not use Photoshop PSD's for the Menus. I do not know about its Menu editing capabilities, or any limitations. I use Adobe Encore, and it does use PS Menus, and is also 100% manual, so I can set up any navigational scheme that I want - though I do this fully manually. Unfortunately, it is ONLY available bundled with PrPro, and not as a stand-alone.
Good luck,
Hunt