Creating Custom Thumbnail Frames In DVD Author 3

Introduction

While TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 provides some neat menu creation tools, some of you may feel the urge to fully customize your DVD or DivX menus. It is relatively easy to change the background, or add some text and pictures, but what about the thumbnail frames? Among all the available effects, you may have noticed one called Frame that allows you to add a graphic frame around a picture in the menu. This option offers a catalog of various frame designs and styles, but you may find it a bit limited for your project. The solution: create your own Frame effect.

Custom Frames: The Basics

TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 provides a simple option to add your own frame design in a project.

To get started, create a menu in custom mode, then open the Menu item editor by double-clicking on a graphic element (Frames are not available for text).

In the editor, select the "Effects" tab, then click the "Frame" button. (You may need to activate the Frame effect by clicking on the checkbox next to "Enable Frame".)

On the left part of the window, click the "Select frame picture" button to display the frame design catalog.

There, locate the "Create from picture or movie file" button then click it to display the frame source picture file selector.

You can choose almost any kind of picture type, including video (which will animate if you enable motion menus). Choose the file, then click the "Open" button. (Selecting a picture will get you directly back to the frame catalog, a movie will display a video editor where you can set the first and last frame to display as a frame.) In our example, we're going to use this image of a sunset.

Once done, the new frame design is added to the list. Please note the frame name is the selected file's name. In our case, the frame is named "Sunset" since the original image was named "Sunset."

This method of custom framing is pretty straightforward; TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 calculates the best display area and places the thumbnail picture over the frame picture. The drawback is that you cannot manually set the thumbnail display area yourself. However, it is possible to have total control and go deeper into custom frame creation by taking advantage of TMPGEnc DVD Author 3's picture decoder capabilities...

Custom Frames: Advanced Techniques

Frame effects are simply pictures with a certain structure which gives TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 specific rendering information. This allows you to create non-square frames such as the TV set (frame 13 in the catalog). You can create such effects by yourself, provided you possess the tools and the time.

The best tool to create a frame is a graphic editor providing layers, capable of managing transparency, and saving such layered pictures into the PSD format. Currently, Adobe® Photoshop® provides such functions, and for this reason we will use it for today's tips. Frames can be of any size; 640x480 should be enough for most cases, and helps keep a high display quality when you resize it in the menu editor.

In your graphic editor, create a first layer, give it any name you wish, but we can call it "Background". This layer will be the back of the frame, and is not mandatory. Then, add a new layer over it and call this new layer "Thumbnail". This layer is the canvas on which the picture will appear. Just make sure the canvas layer is fully black since the picture is mapped on any opaque (non-transparent) parts of the layer. In other words, the thumbnail image will show up in whatever opaque shape you create in this layer.

Then, create a last new layer covering the thumbnail layer, and call it "Frame", or any name you like. On this layer, draw your frame design, while leaving some parts of the "Thumbnail" layer visible, otherwise it wouldn't be a frame.

Your thumbnail and frame don't have to be in a standard rectangle. To illustrate this, we'll use somthing a little more unique.

How about this? We can use this Jack O'lantern as our frame, and we'll have the thumbnail image show up in its mouth. Thus, we have a black-colored area in the shape of the Jack O'lantern's mouth in the "Thumbnail" layer (remember, you can use any color, as long as it is not completely transparent). The rest of the pumpkin is in the "Frame" layer. The checkerboard pattern helps show what is transparent and will not appear when we're done.
If we think about the layers in a 3-D perspective, the picture structure will look like the drawing below:

Once you are done with your custom frame, save your creation into the frame folder of the TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 application folder (you can actually save it wherever you want, but this will make it easier to find it later), then import this file with the same method described above for image or video files. If no problems arise, you should have your new frame appearing in the frame catalog, and ready to use.

Please note that when importing a PSD file, the TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 picture decoder can take in account the layer structure and the transparency level of each pixel within a layer. However, it cannot use layer effects such as shadow, bevel etc. Those effects must be flattened within the layer they belong to before exportation. Last, but not least, nothing prevents you from varying the pixel transparency within a layer, including the "Thumbnail" layer.

And here is the final result of our Jack O'lantern frame. As you can see, the thumbnail image appears only in the mouth area, just as we specified in our PSD file.

We hope you enjoyed this tip! As you can see from our example, you can use practically anything as a frame! Use your imagination and experiment with the layers and varying opacities to create truly unique thumbnail frames! To your graphic tablet! Ready, GO!!