Create Motion Menus with Adobe Premiere [QUICK GUIDE]

[lordsmurf]

This takes software, time, patience, and skill. Many people already have the software. Time and patience are personal skills. Skill is obtained by merely having the discipline to read and, again, have some patience.

See this menu I made, the video portion of my X-MEN cartoon DVD:

Wow, huh?!

Anyway, this is how to make something like that:

STEP 1- Edit out scene in the MPEG files you would be using on the DVD. In this example, in addition to video scenes, end credits supplied audio and got their own files. Save to folder on hard drive.

STEP 2- Demux the video only or audio only for source files, using TMPGENC's MPEG TOOLS function. You'll have M2V (MPEG video) and AC3/MP2 (audio) files. Or something similar.

STEP 3- If using Ulead DVD Workshop 2, re-encode the M2V files to 720x480 8000k and give them an IVTC using the default settings with 24fps and odd adaptive, but encode into a 29.97 output framerate. DVDWS2 cannot handle interlaced menu content. If using other authoring software, it may be possible to skip this step.

STEP 4- Open VIRTUALDUB (MPEG mod version) and convert the MPEG video to uncompressed AVI files. These are easier to edit. Premiere may reject MPEG video files later on.

STEP 5- Convert the MP2/AC3 audio to WAV in Besweet. Edit in SoundForge as needed, to normalize, etc.

STEP 6- Create a PSD in Photoshop. Any transparent section in the PSD will be the see-through areas in the MPEG menu.

At this point, you've got edit-ready image, video and audio files.

STEP 7- Import all pieces into Premiere. Create additional video tracks on the timeline, do not use VIDEO1 track. Essentially, drag all the video, audio and images onto the timeline. The PSD image needs to be on the top track, and must be changed to an WHITE ALPHA MATTE. The fades betweens tracks are handled by the rubber bands.

this is what the Premiere timeline will look like:
menupremiere.gif

To learn more about exactly where the Premiere tools are, and how to use them, see this video guide: http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotut...sthrustill.htm

You'll need to make sure your project settings reflect the interlace settings of the source file. By default, Premiere's primary template assumes DV with bottom field, but many interlace sources are instead top field.

Encode output with any Premiere MPEG plugin, export the timeline. In this example, Procoder was used. Audio of final file was 256k MP2 and 720x480 MPEG-2 interlaced TFF.

This guide is not made for dummies, so a lot of people probably won't understand it. But anybody that's willing to learn or extend their current video knowledge, this should help.

When using Ulead DVDWS2, for the button images, create images in Photoshop and save them. Get Ulead PhotoImpact, open the PSDs and save as UFO objects.

[lordsmurf]

NOTES ON THE DOWNLOAD VIDEO:
Just as a side note, the X-MEN menu appears a bit darker on the computer than it will on the tv set. I'm respecting colorspace properly. This is also a compressed AVI for web only, squished down to 8MB. The full version on the disc is about 100MB and is super-clean and has very crisp details. And then if you're having trouble viewing it, it requires the XVID codec.

MORE ABOUT THE FINAL MENUS:
The menu when complete has red X logos between the ep title and the large round X logo where video is. This is just the first step here, how to make the menu object. The buttons and files are not linked until the next step, when authoring is actually done. In this case, it's all done with Ulead DVD Workshop 2. On the X-MEN set, each disc has it's own theme. As is probably quite obvious, the theme of DVD1 is WOLVERINE/SABRETOOTH. This is a 12-disc set.

[cnickle1]

I followed everything down to the exporting of the final product. Now I have a couple of questions. FYI, I'm working with Premier Pro 1.5 and I was intending on using the final video as a menu in TMPGEnc DVD Author 3.

Should I just export as an AVI and then convert to MPG with a conversion program?

Or, is there a plugin or another piece of software that I need to export the premier project to MPG? If so, what is it called?

Am I losing any video quality by exporting to AVI and then converting to MPG?

[lordsmurf]

Adobe Premiere 6.5 and higher all have the Adobe Media Encoder (Adobe MPEG Encoder) as an export option. I now use Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 myself, and I use the media exporter to create the MPEG file. It is built on the MainConcept engine, and is optimized by Adobe. It works better than TDA3 would do.

I've not authored motion menus with TDA3, so I don't know what challenges you may face. I only use Ulead DVD Workshop 2 (on Windows XP Pro) or DVD Studio Pro (on Mac OS X), when I work with motion menus.

[lordsmurf]

Just as an update, VirtualDub can be used to merge several steps:

1. First, it can be set to only process video (ignore audio stream).
2. Second, the VirtualDub filter Deinterlace Area-Based may work just as well as the TMPGEnc IVTC filter. VirtualDub also has a IVTC method available, if needed.
3. Finally, you can export to uncompressed or lightly-compressed (HuffYUV) video in a single step, there is no need to have TMPGEnc-created middleman M2V files.

The TMPGEnc method still works greats, however. That method does allow for easier archiving of the source files, smaller M2V's instead of large AVI's.

If I was doing this project, as of April 2009, I'd probably run everything through VirtualDub in less steps.