Menu Templates

[rrmunn]

Hello everyone.

I recently installed VideoStudio Pro X4 after a long and very regretable experience with Adobe Premiere Pro and Encore. I moved from VideoStudio after years of using it to Adobe because of the problems with VideoStudio X3 and AVCHD clips. While Adobe products esp. Encore are functionaly way ahead, they are totally bug ridden and simply unusable for modern video formats. I found VideoStudio X4 far more flexible with AVCHD plus it works most of the time and thought I could build a compilation then use Encore to build very large menu enabled BluRay media images. But Encore is intolerant of everything and simply wants to transcode perfectly valid BlueRay compliant clips producing a very poor quality result. There are lots of complaints about this but...

So the only option I could think of was to try and use VideoStudio's disc builder and accept the loss of function. But I'm finding this tough going as well. The disc building is easy and seems to work very well and is fast (relatively speaking) but menu's are my problem. In the past I made some DVD and BluRay menu templates using Steve Jones tutorial (which is a bit dated now) in PhotoImpact (V12). I have the UFO files and these used to work just fine but in X4 I have no idea where they go anymore. Actually they have been altered to match the Photoshop templates that Encore uses but the format is correct I'm sure.

I did see a reference to something like c:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Documents\Corel VideoStudio Pro\14.0\Favorites\16x9\Favorites which I assume means D:\Users\Richard\My Documents\Corel VideoStudio Pro\14.0\Favorites\16x9\Favorites on my computer since My Documents is offloaded to a second drive, but this does not work.

My question is, will these older UFO's still work and if so where do you put custom templates and what other files need to be modified to expose the custom templates? If not is there a documented way to create or convert templates that X4 will accept?

BTW: I have intention of creating BluRay discs. I use a media player that is one of the few that supports BluRay menu. I need menu to easily navigate the end result since it is quite long. In total I'm talking about 10 hours which equates to about 80GB of h.264 video + AC-3 audio. Since a BluRay image can;t be more than about 45GB I have two have 2 media files until someone supports BD-XL type formats.

[BrianCee]

When you installed VideoStudio X4 where did the install put the C:\Users\<user>\My Documents\Corel VideoStudio Pro\14.0 folder - did it install it on your C drive or your D drive - there are a couple of other folders in the VideoStudio pro folder as well such as Bonus Content and My projects so it must have put them somewhere.

If the installer put that folder on the C drive then I'm afraid you will have to add additional templates in the favorites folder on that drive for them to work - it is not going to work if you manually moved that folder to any other drive because to a computer C:\Users\Richard\My Documents\Corel VideoStudio Pro\14.0\Favorites\16x9\Favorites is very very different to D:\Users\Richard\My Documents\Corel VideoStudio Pro\14.0\Favorites\16x9\Favorites.


I have succesfully transferred many of the old templates into the new version - if the .ufo file has an identical .msi file (which you must transfer as well) then they have always worked - some of the older ones without a matching .msi did not work although I managed to get some of them to work by copying and renaming an .msi from a similar template

where are you looking for them within VideoStudio - they appear as a separate list called favorites in the drop down over the gallery

[rrmunn]

Brian, My Documents points to D:\Users\Richard\My Documents\
VideoStudio install put the Corel VideoStudio Pro folder in this place. When the Bonus content etc. was installed it all ended up in D:\Users\Richard\My Documents\Corel VideoStudio Pro so I'm pretty sure VS knows about this folder OK. The folder has a 14.0 folder with DMF_TEMP and SmartProxy in it.

I have two tabs in the gallery one called All and the other favorites. Favorites is empty. As for the ufo's there is no .msi file. I had a look for the supplied templates and I see groups of three files: <name>.jpg, <name>.ufo and a <name>_W_MS.ini. Is this last one the additional file you are referring to?

[BrianCee]

Yes - sorry it's the _MS.ini file you also have to copy (typing from memory instead of checking)

In your first post you mentioned both AVCHD and Blu-ray and standard DVDs - but your mention of having only two lists in the drop down suggests that you are in fact talking AVCHD/Blu-ray - so are you looking for menu templates for those - because you cannot use the same templates for those as for standard DVDs - so no you cannot transfer old menu templates if they were not for AVCHD/Blu-ray.

You said in your first post you had no intention of making blu-ray disc - so I assumed you were trying to make a standard DVD and the templates you made and used previously should appear when you want to produce a standard DVD if you put them in that folder - but making a standard DVD I have 5 choices in the drop down above the gallery

[rrmunn]

OK, here might be a problem.
What I meant about the menu is: In previous versions of VS I only used DVD menus and created templates for them. In Encore I started using 16:9 HD (1920x1080i) for AVCHD targetting BluRay/H.264. The menus were fine the video was rubbish. So what I have done is take the HD menus rebuild them in PhotoImpact 12 (i.e they are 16:9 1920x1080) and adding the all the buttons and text items as per the DVD menus to produce a brand new .ufo.

Have I ever tried these new templates: NO
Are they they same as the DVD templates: YES except they are 1920x1080
Is the output format BluRay: YES

I had assumed that there was no other difference between the templates for BD and DVD.
Is it then a case that the templates for BD or AVCHD are meant to be located somewhere else?

[rrmunn]

OK so I worked out where the menus go by altering a standard one and saving it as a template.
I started altering that more in PhotoImpact to get the look I wanted.
But I can only get so far then it will no longer show up in Favorites and has a blank icon. Selecting it causes an error.
Obviously there something not right. I beleive the UFO is right but the .ini file is a bit of a mystery.

Surely there must be some documentation about making menus????????????
Anyone????????