Importing .PSD Menus into DVD Movie Factory 5 -- Supported?

wishfulthinker · Post by **wishfulthinker** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 6:08 am

I have created a custom layered menu via Photoshop and saved it as a .psd document. I want to import it into ULEAD DVD Movie Factory 5 and use it as a menu. Is this possible? If so, how do I do it? Thanks.

I've messed around with PhotoImpact and it has the ability to open psds. I converted the psd to ufo and put it in the appropriate folder. A blank box shows up when I try to set it as the menu and it states: Failed to change menu template.

Basically, I'm desperate. Is there anyway to apply my .psd with it's multiple layers as a menu in DVDMF 5. Thanks.

Terry Stetler · Post by **Terry Stetler** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 8:24 am

The layers have to be properly named to work properly. The convention is as listed in this tutorial;

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... ght=title1

cjstora · Post by **cjstora** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 11:54 pm

After bashing my head off my keyboard for two days now, I can't sort out why I'm also getting the same errors.

I wanted to create a text menu that would fit 16+ items on one page (the nature of the beast's requirements with this project, I'm afraid). Now, I don't know anything about PhotoImpact, and I'd really rather not spend a bloody fortune on this piece of software and that piece of software just to do little bits that MovieFactory should be doing anyway... but I downloaded and installed the Trial software for PhotoImpact, just to I could open a .ufo file of an existing and functioning template.

I saved it as a .psd file, worked it in Photoshop, named all the layers correctly, brought the .psd back into PhotoImpact, followed every tutorial I could find here, changed the new highlight objects to paths, downloaded and installed the DVD Menu plug-in, ran it through that, the Preview pane showed me all objects were properly defined, the menu is ready for export, and there were no Warning messages, so I exported it to the Favourites folder.

DMF found the menu fine when I selected the Favourites tab, the thumbnail displays correctly, but when I click the menu, I get the "Failed to change menu template" error message.

First question - what is the accompanying .ini file with the various and sundry .ufo files, and how does one go about generating one? Would this be the reason why I'm getting this message? Maybe I skipped a step but when I read and re-read the tutorials I saw nothing on .ini files.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 2:15 am

Please view:
TEST: PhotoImpact -v- Adobe Photoshop for creating DVD Menus for Ulead authoring programs.

cjstora · Post by **cjstora** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 4:31 am

Yes, I read that a few times. It wasn't helpful, sorry.

After spending several hours tonight stumbling and fumbling around in PhotoImpact, I think I may have gotten something working. I can't sort out how to get the highlight images to display in a colour other than yellow, but I can live with that for now.

This method won't help me much after the trial license expires though. I was hoping to find a way to do this in Photoshop. One expensive photo editing system is enough for me. I guess I'd better put my thinking cap on and get designing as many menu configurations as I can think of in the next 29 days.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 11:22 am

cjstora wrote:............. I guess I'd better put my thinking cap on and get designing as many menu configurations as I can think of in the next 29 days.

Most things are customizable in MovieFactory such as choice of background image/video, sounds, Button sets and so on.

What you need to create are some 'blank' Menu templates with different numbers of Menu Thumbnails such as
One Button Menu
Two Button Menu
Three
....
Twelve.

This way when you later have a project and you want a menu with perhaps 7 thumbnails on your DVD Menu you just open up your home made 7 button menu. You then alter the background image, sound and so forth.