Highlight Buttons in DVDSP

Question

I create a button and select a highlight color for it, but when the DVD burns I cannot see which button I am selecting when played in my DVD player. Pleae help!

Answer 1

OK - let's go through it a step at a time...
You have created a button by dragging out a rectangle in the menu editor. Click on the button once and look in the property inspector under the 'Style' tab. In the middle, look for the Shape drop down and navigate through to whatever shape you want to use. For simplicity, select something like 'L shape highlight', which will create an underline and left hand upstand for whatever is on the background image.
Now click on the 'colours' tab and select 'simple' at the top. You should then see three sliders, one for 'Normal' one for 'Selected' and one for 'Activated' button states.
Leave the 'Normal' one set to 0 opacity (regardless of the colour in the box). This means that nothing will show up at all when the button is not selected or activated - so just whatever is on the background at that point will show through.
Move the 'Selected' slider to full opacity (15) and set the colour to what you want. It defaults to yellow, and I like to change that to red, personally. With this in place the button will then get a red underline when it is selected in your DVD player. You can check this by using the middle of the three buttons underneath the menu editor window that allow you to show the different button states... make sure that you haev a button clicked on in the editor first (i.e. has drag handles around it).
Now change the colour in the 'Activated' slider to be yellow, and set the opacity to 15 as well. This will make the button highlight change colour momentarily when a user activates it. If the selected colour is red, using something diferent (like yellow) allows you to see that the button has indeed been activated. Use the three buttons under the menu editor now and switch between the different states - you should see the highlight appear and change colour.
Now, repeat the process for every button that you have got on the menu, then go into the 'settings' drop down box and click on the text that reads 'Auto Assign Buttons now' (if it isn't already assigning the navigation). If you click on a button and then go into the 'Advanced' tab of the property inspector you should see which button the user will go to if they press a directional arrow on their remote control.
Finally, click on the background, away from any shapes, buttons or drop zones, or click on the menu icon in the outline view, then check the property inspector again - it should now show the options for the menu. Click on the 'Menu' tab and check the setting for the default button. It should say button 1 (if you didn't name the buttons as you went along), or whatever the name is of the first button that you created. This button will be the one highlighted in the 'selected' state when the menu plays.
That should be it.
If you do decide to create an overlay layer, all you do is create the background image in Photoshop (or whatever) and save it as a .pict file (don't use JPEG). You then add a layer and on that draw only the highlight shapes that you want - in our example you would simply draw a few lines to appear under the text on the background layer.
Hide the background so that just the highlight lines are showing and then convert this to grayscale. Export that as a .pict image as well, then import both to DVDSP. Set one as the menu background, one as the overlay and then proceed as above but don't use a shape... draw out the rectangles around the button text and you should see the highlight shapes appear. Set the colours for the states as before.
Lastly, don't forget to assign the button targets no matter which method you choose!