Video Editing: What Makes DVDs Go 'Round

Marshal Rosenthal
August 2004

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When it comes to making your own DVD, the only thing more important than the movie is how the viewer gets to see it: will you start with an animated splash screen? Or will it go directly to the main menu? Will you have all sorts of buttons to select from? Or will you use just a few straightforward panels with text? These are the decisions to consider before you make your DVD. Let's look at some commercial DVDs and how they handle the menus.

Most discs start with some type of start up animations, previews or warning screens, and Disney's The Lion King 1 1/2 is no exception. After the Disney logo and a spate of video previews (which you can skip), the screen goes black and then changes into a frenzy of activity. The main menu is quite active and busy. Our old friend Timon the merekat looks on as various animals move all of the scenery into position on a movie stage. Once all the action is complete, the title appears on a static screen, accompanied by music and random animation of Timon popping up from the tall grass.

Animation can add a lot to a menu. In this case, the opening is so entertaining and goes by so fast that it only enthralls the viewer. And, since the main audience for this disc is children, a little bit of craziness is probably appropriate. For most adults, the animation is cute once, but could quickly become quite annoying to watch over and over again. When you select a feature from the main menu, there's another brief animation featuring Timon that takes you to a new screen. The new screen features its own animation and music and quickly shows you the choices you can now select.

These animations require you to watch until they finish, but they move very fast. Since DVD menus are just MPEG-2 movies, anything you can encode for a DVD you can use as a menu. Basically, this means you have unlimited creative possibilities. An important consideration is whether the viewer must wait for the animation to finish before pressing a button to continue.

Theme music from the movie is constantly playing in the background of the menus, but it changes depending upon which menu you are on. It's fairly long, so it doesn't become too repetitive. Music clips can be short or long, but the only reason for having a lengthy audio track is if you have a lot to look at on a particular menu screen. If you do not have an animated or video background, music can increase the amount of space the menu takes up on the disc.

Children's discs are colorful, loud and fun, but a classic movie, such as The Maltese Falcon, would take a very different approach. Humphrey Bogart stars in this classic tough guy detective film and the opening splash screen is as subtle as our detective ain't: it's just a simple, static photo of Bogey at a desk with the Maltese Falcon perched before him. The black and white image has been colorized and the menu buttons highlight when pressed.

This is a good example of a straightforward main menu page. Taking this as an example, you have all of the choices presented right there in front of you without any distractions.

Pressing one of the buttons takes you immediately to other screens which also use photos. There's a consistency that keeps you in the era and mood of the movie. It's important to maintain a consistent feel throughout your DVD's various menus, whether using artwork, video clips or photography. Theme music from the movie plays during the opening menu, but disappears once you go to the other menus. The menus are also a part of the content of the disc, as a series of menus superimposed over photos serve as a history about detectives. The photo here is very stylized and simple, which keeps the text from being lost and so remains easy to read. When you place text over a photo, strive to make sure the photo isn't competing with the text.

The Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD jumps right in (after the obligatory Paramount logo) and hits the ground running. The action-packed splash screen goes on for quite a while, but what's really cool about it is that the text seen at the bottom is active: you can navigate to any part of the disc during the splashy introduction. Once the main menu appears, you'll still have access to the same choices, of course. This disc really has two menus that serve the same purpose as far as navigation is concerned. This is not a bad idea at all and allows the producers to present some exciting footage without interfering with disc navigation.

When the main menu finally comes up, it continues the theme of motion video by having a moving map rotate in the background. And after about 30 seconds, if you don't touch anything, the splash video starts up again. If you select a feature, animations appear as a transition between menu screens (a plane flying you from one screen to another, for example). The new screen also features different music to suit the mood.

Suddenly going back to the splash screen can be annoying, and the transition gets old quickly as well. If you have a cycling screen, it's a good idea to make sure that there's enough time for the viewer to digest everything before it starts up again and the viewer can get out of it quickly. Still, Raiders is a fun action film, so there's really no reason the DVD can't be fun as well. If your movie falls into a genre where this sort of excitement is appropriate, menus like this can be quite fun.

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