Re: Using After Effects with Encore DVD....?

Hi Dan-

What specifically are you having problems with? It sounds like you may need to start using the "loop point" property. What that does is it a) keeps the button highlights hidden until that time has been passed, and b) loops back to that point instead of the beginning once the menu finishes playing.

The catch to this is that you need to set up the animation in After Effects so that the whole menu looks like you want it to, including the buttons- Encore can only control when the button highlights are visible or not. Once you have the background animation, then you need to set up the button highlights in Encore.

For example, let's say that your menu animation is of a car screeching to a halt in front of the camera, and then the buttons fade in over the grill. In After Effects you first make the car and the buttons, including the fade up, look exactly how you want them to look, minus the button highlights. Then export the whole thing as a movie (AVI or QT). Then, still in AE, add the button highlights (AE 6.5 has some great new features for automating layer names and nesting them as button sets), turn off the visibility of all the layers except the highlights and use the Composition > Save Frame As > Photoshop Layers option. In Encore, import the video as an asset and the PSD as a menu, then set the video as the background and set the loop point. Done.

In re-reading your post, there may be an even simpler way for you to do what you want. If your menu is going to be completely static, you don't need to worry about the loop point business. Make your animation so that the last frame looks exactly like the menu. Import it and set it as First Play, and set its end action to be the menu.

Hope that helps. Let me know if I can clarify any of that for you.

-=Tim