Video Editing : DVD Menu Authoring

Bill Davis
April 2005

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Once upon a time, making a video dub was a simple thing. You slapped a tape into a VCR, fed the deck a signal, and pushed Record. While there's no denying that the switch from a VHS culture to a DVD culture has given us a lot of benefits in such important areas as image quality and signal consistency, there is one area where dubbing to DVD is much more complicated. And that's the fact that when you go to burn a DVD, you'll need to do at least some basic disc authoring.

A big part of authoring is structuring your DVD's menus and linking them to the videos, pictures and other content on your disc in a way that lets the user navigate easily through it.

The standard DVD interface -- at least, as experienced on most Hollywood-style movie DVDs -- is that upon disc insertion, a "first-play" screen appears, usually some sort of FBI warning, followed by the main navigation menu with buttons to help users navigate to the content they want to watch. Often, menu screens provide the option to play the entire movie or to jump to various chapter points within the movie. There also might be global options that need to be established, such as screen format (standard or widescreen), audio preferences (Dolby or DTS surround sound, for example, or just plain stereo) and the viewer's language preference. The underlying reality is that in order for these choices to function, the disc's author has to make a series of decisions as to what features are appropriate for the viewer.

DVDs are non-linear in nature, which means the viewer doesn't have to watch the content from start to finish. The format allows the user to jump from scene to scene, or in some cases from video to video, or even to still images or other "bonus" content. So we might find that building a DVD is a bit more like building a Web site than recording a videotape. In order for the DVD to function, the designer must link things together. This often makes the process of menu creation a bit complicated.

Knowing that their chances of selling their software to more users will likely increase if they can keep the interface as simple as possible, software manufacturers often build in as much automation as they can. Still, it's left up to the DVD producer to make many of the decisions about how the menus will look and function.

So where do you begin when you approach the process of designing menus for your next DVD project? It's tempting to approach menu design in the same way you'd approach other artistic endeavors, putting a premium on creativity and working hard to make your DVD unique and special. But the creative approach to menu design is not always the best approach; often, simplicity and common sense win out over creativity and originality. Unless, of course, your goal is to frustrate the DVD's end user. One comforting thought is that it's not always necessary to completely re-invent the wheel; there are copious examples of ergonomic menu design in the world today.

Look at a variety of Web sites and DVDs and you'll discover that menu designers have some established standards for screen layout. Generally speaking, commands for elements like the program title and global navigation are located at the top of the screen. Down the left side of the frame run sub-menus or choices related to page topics, and the lower right of the screen is often reserved for the display of text or other site content. While these are the standard conventions, there are lots of examples of ways that DVD designers can break these rules and still build content that's both easy to understand and navigate.

But like the old saying goes, it's better to break the rules after you've learned to understand them.

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