Help Creating a Menu

[Ken]

Hello,

Im new to Video Studio, but not new to video creating & editing. I have made many videos using the software bundled with MS Essentials several years ago. However,I am stumped. I'm running Video Studio 2020 and creating my first video. I want to create a Menu for my video so i can jump to various sections if i wish. I searched the Help information and found the following:

Editing a menu template
"To edit a menu template, choose options in the Edit tab or click menu objects in the Preview Window. You can also add new texts, decorations and note menus. Customized templates can then be saved as new menu templates.
If you are authoring Blu-ray discs, you can create advanced menus that can be used without interrupting playback. This means that viewers can navigate the contents of your disc while watching the movie."

The problem is none of the items listed (underlined above) even exist. They are simply not their. Did something get missed in the installation? This is very odd. Is there a tutorial i can watch to help me create a menu?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Ken Berry]

From one Ken to another, welcome to the forum!

You don't say what sort of video you are trying to make. Those menu templates assume you are wanting to make either a DVD or Blu-Ray disc since they are the things which normally have a menu. And if you are indeed making either of those, then you will find the templates when you have finished editing and click on the Share tab. That will open the burning module and there you can choose DVD, Blu-Ray and other formats. If you choose DVD or Blu-Ray you will be presented with a choice of templates.

If, on the other hand, you are going to produce, say, an mp4 for playing directly on a TV or computer, then I'm afraid those don't come with a menu...

[Ken]

Thank you for your quick response. I will be creating a Blue Ray and i had a feeling i would see the Menu Items once i got to that point. Perhaps you can modify the Help on this subject to include this information. Just a thought.

Thank you again. When im ready to burn, and if i have additional questions, i will revisit this thread for assistance.

Thank you!!

[Ken Berry]

Perhaps you can modify the Help on this subject to include this information.

Nice thought, but this is a user to user forum. We who run it are users just like you who volunteer their time to help others. We are not Corel employees, so have no participation in the preparation of the user guide.

Good luck with the project, though!

[Ken]

Now i understand. Thanks Ken!

[canuck]

Could you explain perhaps step-by-step exactly what you are doing? From your initial post it appears you are trying to edit an existing menu template. Is that correct?

[Ken]

No. I will be creating a new menu using a template or creating one from scratch. Either way, Mr. Ken Berry assisted me and it seems i first need to prepare to burn my project to blue ray. However, im not ready for that quite yet. Thanks for your inquiry.

[Davidk]

Since you haven't outlined what you've done so far, but there a number of steps to reach the menu stage. The following assumes you have a rendered clip or clips ready. If not, import/edit/render them separately until that is the case.
1. open VS to an empty workspace (no project loaded)
2. select Share mode (tab across top of screen)
3. select the disc icon from the strip tool bar in the middle of the screen. This mode of output is the only one that allows a menu - which is simply a good way of structuring quick access to material on a slow serial access medium/device.
4. choose the output media (choice of 4) - you prefer Blu-ray; there's a blu-ray button there. At this point be advised that a blu-ray plug-in is a paid for extra. If you don't have it, selecting this button will get you a panel with various payment methods (visa, paypal etc), once you've downloaded it and executed the file, the plug-in will be available for use when this button is selected.
5. all the media output options use the same style of burn panel. If you don't have a blu-ray plug-in yet, choose the DVD button (option included with VS) and the burn panel appears.
6. at the bottom of the panel are buttons to set preferences, choose the size of disc, and whether you want a finished disc played to revert to the menu after playing an item, or to contimnue to the end (a list box choice). Also, an icon to create a disc label if you want that function once the disc is created. Check that the default preferences esp screen size (4;3 or 16;9) are what you want.
7. The burn panel opens at the 1st of 3 steps to disc creation. This sets up use of a menu (tick the box (default)), and whether you want to use any promotional introduction (like the movie house logos such as roaring lion for MGM). If you do want to use a promotional introduction, it MUST be the first clip imported to the clip bar at the bottom and the use first clip as introduction box ticked. It will play once before any menu display and selection.
8. at the top of step1 there are add media buttons. VS works best if the media are already rendered and ready for use, so click on the add video files item (LH icon). The others are options but there are many reports of freezing in this process, which is why the advice is to use rendered files. Select the add video files icon, use the navigation panel to locate the folder and file you eant and click OK. A thumbnail of the clip will appear in the clip bar. Repeat for as many clips as you need on the disc. The sequence of clips can be changed by click and drag sideways.
9. be aware of the disc size limit - probably not an issue with Blu-ray, but is easily reached if you are making a DVD or AVCHD disc. The usage of space on the selected disk type is shown at the bottom of the screen as strip bar - content used in green. If that strip gets to the yellow marks, the content may ior may fit,; if it reaches the red marks, it certainly won't fit. The only real options at this point are to either reduce the resolution of the output (generally undesirable) or to simply delete clips until usage is in the green zone, and maybe make your project a multi-disc production.
10. Click next at the bottom of the burn panel This gets you to step 2 and the actual menu - construction of. All of the clips in the clip bar of step 1 are now showing as menu selections. If you don't like the sequence, go back to step 1 and change the sequence in the clip bar. In this step2, you can edit the text, font, size, colour, position of each clip label (the clips are identified by file name initially but you can change the label to something more useful to a viewer). You can change the menu theme (the imagery) to one of the standard ones in VS using the side panel, provide your own background as a video or still photo, and change the menu music for a selection of you choice. You can add (or not) menu buttons (tick box), but this does not stay once selected - depending on how you move around the burn panel you'll have to keep re-selecting this.
11. there is a preview button at this step so you can view the menu as constructed; works like a TV remote, and each menu item plays for (default) 20 seconds. Can be changed in step 2, but the limit is 30 sec max. Go back to step 2 when preview is complete, make any changes, or go to step 3
12. Step3 is the actual disc burn. There are choices here: to make an iso image, burn the disc or both. Select only the iso image option is strongly recommended: what it does is make an ISO image of the disc you can then play on a player to check your work; if there's anything you want to change (spelling ! often sneaks thru a check), then you can re-visit the saved project file and make any changes you need: this saves wasting a disc. Make sure that when you burn the final disc - either using VS (option in the VS tools menu of the main workspace) or a separate burn program, that you set the burn rate to whatever the disc is made for. Typically for a DVD that would be 16x for a shop bought barrel of discs, and 6x for most BR discs. If you try to burn faster than this the disc cannot accept the rate rate and you wind up with a very choppy/missing data result -> another way to waste a disc.

Have fun

[Ken]

Wow! David, thank you! You have provided exactly what I'm looking for. I was going to muddle my way through the process when the time came. But now, you made it much easier. I copied and pasted your very detailed instructions into a word doc that ill refer back to when the time comes.

The only question i have now, however, is regarding the "Chapter" function. As i understood, i can make a Menu and point to a predetermined Chapter rather than a separate clip. Is that correct?

[lata]

Hi Ken
David is in AU and as such will be in slumber-land at the moment

The menu used by Video Studio is quite basic
#8 mentions importing your video files, each file added creates a Title that shows on the timeline in step 1
These Titles show as a link or thumbnail on the main menu page

Each Title can have Chapter points assigned to it, this is done from Step 1 where it indicates Add Edit Chapters, this opens yet another panel allowing us to create our chapter points, showing on the timelines
When done it returns to the Step 1 panel

If you have more than one Title you can apply chapter points to the other Titles.

Next takes us to Step 2 where from the Gallery we can choose a menu Template, a bit limited I am afraid.
Edit Tab by default shows the Title Menu displaying the Title Names one for each Title used

Below the preview screen shows Main Menu, the down arrow will allow you to view and edit the Chapter menus

Think of Titles as being the Main Menu and Chapters as Sub Menus.

You should investigate the use of the options to the left.
Step 2 being where all the work is done

#6 mentions Set Preferences, I see that as a cogwheel and showing Project Settings
To the bottom of that panel are the Navigation Controls, deselect the box for more options.
Back to Menu will return to the menu after playing the Title to the end

There is a lot going on in Step 2, I'm sure more to tell you, a bit of a learning curve, practice with a short sample.

[Ken]

Thank you, Trevor for your added information. I'm sure, once i actually perform the steps, it will all make sense. I have some experience using a Microsoft Program that was discontinued a few years back, so i understand the basic concept(s). Now, however, the steps are much clearer and more comprehensive.

Thank you again. I'll be back if i have more questions.

[Ken]

Hello All,

Well, I worked my way through the Menu Creation adding the chapters I reserved within my *.VSP project (5 chapters total). The process, thanks to the help all of you provided in this thread, was actually quite simple.

Then it came time to actually burn my project to disk. I first went to burn to my portable Blue-Ray player connected to my PC via USP port. No luck - see attached image: Error-Blue-Ray.png. So, I thought my Blue-Ray player may have an issue or there may be something wrong with the file itself. So, I found a thread within this forum and followed the advise in the thread.

https://support.corel.com/hc/en-us/arti ... _site=true

The thread explained one possible issue with the music in my project that was recently downloaded from iTunes. So, I copied my project, removed the music from the copied project file and tried the process again. Except this time, I tried burning to my DVD player instead. Still no luck - see attached image: Error - DVD.png.

Now I'm completely perplexed. I'm not sure if I should be contacting Tech Support on this, or if someone can point me in a different direction. Is it possible that I may somehow have a corrupt project file?

Thanks for all your help.
Ken

[Ken]

One further note - i did check my drivers to insure they were up to date. They checked out fine as far as i can tell. Attached is the *.txt file that was created.

Also, i did create a iso file and it burned fine. However, i don't know what to do with the iso file, nor how to read it.

[Ken]

I did some more investigating within this forum and found how to burn from the iso file to my Blue-Ray. Its currently burning as i write this. So, i may not have an issue after all. Stay tuned....

[lata]

Hi Ken
If you are burning a DVD and not a Bluray Disc you have to use a DVD disc

Your best option is to burn an ISO, we can then play that using VLC media player to check quality
Then the ISO can be burnt to disc using Tools -- Burn from Disc Image(iso) hopefully will see your DVD burner without those errors.

Burning a disc
Before you do Share Disc DVD you should render your project to a DVD Mpeg2 compliant video file
This will then burn to disc without any further rendering making the final process much quicker
Have a read at the process I use, the web page is a little old but still holds true for any version of Video Studio.
http://lata.me.uk/corel/all.htm