 Jump
Backs as DVD Motion Menus: Part I
Motion
Menu Design Basics
by D. Eric Franks
Attractive, animated menus are a large part of the initial visual
appeal of a DVD. While you can't judge a book by its cover and you
can't judge a DVD by its menus, first impressions are still important.
While we're not here to pass aesthetic judgments on your DVD menus,
we can show you how to use Jump Backs to create motion menus that
are attractive, attention getting and appropriate.
THE
DURATION OF THE ANIMATION
Motion menus are typically quite short, from 30 seconds to a minute.
The duration of your DVD menu is pragmatically limited by the amount
of extra room you have on your DVD, but will also be constrained by
either the duration of your menu's background animation or the menu's
background music. Most Jump Backs animations are between 15 to 30
seconds in length, making them the perfect length for most DVD menu
applications.
You can, however, change the default speed of Jump Backs animations
and retain their loopable characteristics using the Juicer. To do
this, you will need to not only change the animation's speed, but
you will also need to inversely change its length (Figure 1). On the
Settings tab, use the Speed dropdown list to select from five discrete
speed options. Then, click the Length drop-down list and select Reset
to Default (Figure 2).
| Very Slow |
1/4x (25%) |
4x |
| Slow |
1/2x (50%) |
2x |
| Normal |
1x (100%) |
1x |
| Fast |
2x (200%) |
1/2x |
| Very Fast |
4x (400%) |
1/4x |
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|
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| Figure 1 |
Figure 2 |
For a 20-second animation, for example, this means that you can make
the animation fit a menu that is 5, 10, 20, 40 or 80 seconds long,
but only in those discreet durations. That gives you a handful of
options, but because Jump Backs are seamlessly loopable, they can
be made to fit just about any duration.
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| This DVD menu uses
Jump Backs animation #940 from Volume 23: Clean Streak and an
element from Juice Drops image #3020 from Volume 30: lifeSHADES. |
SEAMLESSLY LOOPABLE
After a DVD menu has finished playing an iteration, the DVD player
goes back and starts playing the menu from the beginning again, looping
it, effectively forever if you want. There is, of course, no need
to rewind a DVD to loop the playback, but most players need a second
or so to start the loop again, which results in a very noticeable
pause between repeats of the menu, both in the flow of the animation
and in the background music. Unfortunately, this pause is an unavoidable
issue with most DVD players. If you have extra space on your DVD,
one workaround is to make your menu's play duration much longer.
It is a simple matter to loop a Jump Backs animation to roll continuously
and seamlessly for five or fifty-five minutes. This is because the
last frame of a Jump Backs animation seamlessly loops back to the
first frame. You will most commonly need to create the background
movie of the duration you need in your editing software by laying
down multiple copies of the animation one after the other on the timeline.
The final background movie will be completely seamless for its entire
duration, but the DVD menu repeat pause will still be inevitable.
D. Eric Franks is Senior Editor of Digital Juice Magazine.
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