Jun
This week Adobe, during the Adobe MAX conference, released the first update whose new features will only affect those users subscribed to Creative Cloud (due to the change the company made at the beginning of last month).
In addition to the improvements and new features that were promised when they presented what would become Creative Suite 7 (which you can read more about here), in this update they have increased the collaboration and publishing capabilities, being able to share and store files through Creative Cloud, on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. There will now also be integration with Behance so that clients can get feedback on their projects.
One of the Adobe systems included in this collection is Encore for DVD and Blu-ray authoring. It is a software with many possibilities that allows you to create from the simplest DVDs, which start directly with automatic video playback, to complex ones with fully customized menus.
In case you still don’t know how to use it but you want to try it, here you have a series of tutorials created by Andrew Devis for Creative Cow. Although they don’t use the latest version of Encore, I think they are very well explained and will help you to get started.
The first steps
As always in the first tutorial you will get acquainted with the software and its interface.
Here you will learn how to create a new project, adjusting all the features needed to set up the DVD. You will also learn how to import the files, either independently or as sequences from a Premiere Pro project.
The menus
- Menu creation
In this tutorial you will see how it is possible to create a DVD menu from existing templates or modify them to make them a bit more personal. For this it is necessary to go to Photoshop, as Encore menus use its layer structure and have to be saved as PSD files.
- Buttons
Again starting from the “Library” window we can add buttons, duplicate them, move them, change their names and font. Once we have as many buttons as we want, we must link them to the video clips and at the end of each clip automatically return to the menu.
- Customized menus
Before continuing with the Creative Cow tutorials I would like to show you two more (by Jahir Ordoñez) about creating custom menus. Besides being in Spanish, they go a little deeper into this process explaining step by step how to make a unique menu with Photoshop. You may find them useful as an idea for a simple but effective design, with several pages and the insertion of chapters.
Tricks” are also taught to make Encore identify the function of certain buttons through the name given in Photoshop to the layers.
DVD recording
Before burning our DVD we can check that everything works correctly and that we have not left any loose ends in the menu configuration, as well as make a preview.
Once the checks have been made, we can make the settings to finally burn the DVD.
DVDs for the web
If we select the “flash” format we will be able to create DVDs for the web that contain a template that will appear as background on the page. In this tutorial they explain in detail how to do it.
More complex menus
When creating menus the possibilities depend on your creativity. Therefore, here are the latest tutorials that will teach you how to create menus with more complex elements, with which you can play and try until you get the desired effect.
- Menus with movement
We can make the background of our menu a moving clip, add an audio to it and make it repeat as many times as we want, whole or from a specific point.
- Slideshows
Or, finally, use photos as a slideshow. It is possible to change their duration, size, framing, make them move with pan and zoom, add audio, adjust the images individually, and many more options.
