Casablanca Expert Chet Davis as he demonstrates the use of Menu Templates for both Main and Chapter Menus in DVD Arabesk 4.
With DVD Arabesk 4 we are not only provided awesome new menu creation capabilities, there is a great new ability to use Menu Templates. These are already loaded in the software and can be used right away with your version of DVD Arabesk 4 software. You can also modify or customize these templates or create your own DVD main and chapter menus from scratch and archive them for future use.
This is a _huge_ time-saver than can give you really cool looking DVD menus in a matter of minutes!
First, let me clarify that there are two places where you can use these Menu Templates - in the Main Menu and in the Chapter Menu/s. The Main Menu is the top menu, the menu that your audience sees once you begin playing back the DVD (or after the Trailer if you are using the Trailer+Menu control function in Arabesk). The Chapter Menu/s are the sub-menus or title menus that can choose to create for each of your films or projects/titles in Arabesk. The standard is to use between 1 and 9 films, each of them can have a Chapter menu if you so choose.
Let me first walk you through the capability in the Chapter Menu as that is where you would likely first use a Menu Template (as Arabesk loads the film first and guides you through the creation of each film with or without the chapter menu).
1. In DVD Arabesk 4, add the film that you put the 12 scenes in the Storyboard. Click ‘Add Film’ and use ‘Select Project’ to bring that storyboard into Arabesk 4
2. Click ‘Edit Chapter Menu’
3. For Chapters (bottom of Edit Chapters menu) select ‘Scenes>Chapters’
4. You may choose either Numbered or Names for Chapter names
5. Then click on ‘Edit Chapter Menu’
6. You are now looking at the Chapter Menu for this film -- click on Archives to load the template we want to use.
7. Click ‘Load’
8. Select ‘6 chapter vertical’ and click ‘Ok’. It may take a moment but will load your storyboard into this chapter menu template.
9. In the Web Lesson I take you through the steps to change/add a background, modify the stamps, change the border/edge and the shadow (I have pasted those steps below for your convenience).
10.Once you are happy with the look of your Chapter Menu , click OK to leave the menu menu (you could choose to archive or save this menu layout if you have changed it from the original template and like what you have created).
To do that, click Archives, and Save before leaving the menu
Now on to the Main DVD Menu
1. Back in the main Arabesk 4 menu, click Add Films to add another film. This can be any storyboard you have in your editor (we won’t be burning or modifying this, we will just use it for the menu design exercise).
2. This time you do not have to create a Chapter Menu, so after the film has been selected (like Step 1 above) simply click OK (and not Edit Chapter Menu) and you will close that menu
3. You are now looking at the main or top DVD menu -- there should be two stamps/ icons (representing your two films/storyboards).
4. Click on Archives
5. Click ‘Load’ - this brings up the template list of the menu designs that are saved on your hard drive.
6. Select ‘2 films vertical’ and click ‘Ok’. It may take a moment but will load your storyboard into this chapter menu template.
7. In the Web Lesson video, I point out that this template provides not only the main stamp or icon for each film but also a 2nd button that enables your audience to click right into the Chapter Menu... very cool!
8. Also in the Web Lesson video, I showed you how to delete this chapter menu button for the 2nd film we added as we did create a Chapter Menu for that film (To do this yourself, click on the button/icon that you want to clear/delete and then with your Title Menu menu set to ‘Control’, click on ‘Remove Button’ and it will disappear)
9. You can modify this menu to suit your preferences, like the background, border and shadow of the stamps/icons, etc. Please use the tutorials below for this purpose.
Remember that when you create a new menu. either the chapter menu or the main menu -- archive (save) those menus to save you oodles of time for future projects.
