Making title shot dissolve to menu

Question

I am following the instructions of Larry (Rescue Team) to place a title photo and a photo of the menu of my DVD into the 'Drag content here' box in iDVD map.
His instructions were:
___ Achieving what you want is easy to do,
if I'm correct in my understanding of your wish here.
When your audience slips your DVD into its player,
you want it to spring to life and display the Title
of your marvelous movie (for whatever period you specify),
and then you want your movie's Title to dissolve into
a display of your very first Menu.
___ Yes?
___ iDVD only thinks you can't place a transition at the end of a movie or a slide show.
__ Step One: Create the Menu in iDVD exactly as you want it,
and then take a snapshot* of that menu. Drag it into iPhoto next to the jpeg of your Title.
___ Step Two: Instead of placing a jpeg of your Title into the Autoplay zone in your iDVD map, place an iMovie comprising just two motionless Ken Burns iPhotos of whatever duration you choose, separated by a dissolve transition:
_________ 1) your movie Title, and 2) the snapshot your Menu.
Now, when your DVD starts, it automatically displays your Title, then dissolves to an image of your Menu, and then jumps seamlessly to the real Menu, and bingo! you've gotten just what you've wanted.
____ One little thing is necessary, though. Before you drag that snapshot of your Menu into iMovie, open it in whatever graphic editor your like (I use Graphic Converter) and make sure your snapshot contains all of your menu, but nothing more, and is precisely the correct dimensions. It will be, if you had dragged that snapshot marquee over precisely the boundaries of your Menu, no more, no less. Experiment. You'll get the idea.
But, when I try this, I have a problem with the 'seamless' jumping from the screen shot to the real menu. I have captured the screen shot, put it and the title photo into iPhoto, then into the short iMovie and dropped it onto the autoplay box of iDVD. It plays ok and looks good until the real menu 'pops' into place.
It appears that the screen shot is the correct dimension size, but there is an obvious jump from it to the real menu.
What other suggestions would help this work for me?

Answer 1

Creating a transition at the end of a movie that seamlessly returns to the originating menu requires a few things:
1) The originating menu must be static. The snapshot must be of a menu that never changes, otherwise a "seamless" transition is impossible.
2) The snapshot to which your movie's end forms a transition must be a perfect reproduction of the menu to which that movie will return.
___ I'm pretty sure I can shoot the trouble you're having in your gracious attempt to follow my clumsy instructions, Beverly, if you might describe in a little detail exactly what you see instead of the hoped-for "seamless" transition about which I keep bragging so tastelessly.
Perhaps this description of what I've just done to recreate the situation myself will provide your answer:
1) I chose the iDVD v5.0.1 theme Travel 2, and dragged Navigator's Wings into the drop zone.
2) I placed one iMovie and one Folder (a sub-menu) on this iDVD menu, and renamed them "A Tribute to My Uncle Jay — Play the Movie" and "Supplemental Materials" and moved them to appealing places within the TV Safe Area after changing iDVD's Settings/Button from Snap to Grid to Free Position.
3) To make sure I'm taking a snapshot of an accurate image of the menu, I press the Preview button in iDVD, and then press Menu on the Preview "remote control" to display the menu in Preview. I take a snapshot of that, making sure that I include all of it and maybe a little more for margin in editing.
4) I open the snapshot in Graphic Converter, Window/Show Information (which displays the exact size of selection you then make for cropping).
__ I drag a rectangular selection marquee over the whole image (it's 647 x 492 pixels), and then move each of the four sides individually to the precise pixel location of the perimeter of the menu (at which point, the dimensions are now 640 x 480), and save it as a jpeg.
5) I drag that into iPhoto (because Ken Burns still images allegedly display more clearly than simple stills dragged directly into the iMovie timeline).
6) In iMovie, I choose that Menu Snapshot from iMovie's iPhoto pane, make it a Ken Burns at 1.0 magnification to 1.0 magnification for some arbitrary period (a frame or two or even, if you like several seconds or so), and Apply it to the end of my movie.
7) I select the last frame of the movie and that Ken Burns still of the menu, and use an iMovie transition to link the two with a transition of choice, and I'm done.
Macintosh model M0001W (8 MHz) + Mac Mini 1.5 GHz G4   Mac OS X (10.4.9)