iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Phase 3: Design the Menu Screens

On the main menu screen now before you, you’ll find two buttons:

• Play. On the finished DVD, this button means, “Play the movie from the beginning.”

• Scene Selection. On the finished DVD, this button will take your audience to a second screen, which is filled with individual buttons for the chapters you created. (In fact, this second screen may well have arrows that lead to third and fourth screens, because iDVD menus vary in the number of buttons that fit per screen. Wedding Bronze One holds six buttons per scene selection menu.)

  If you’d like to have a look at this scene-selection screen, double-click the words “Scene Selection.” To get back to the main menu, click the left-pointing arrow on the scene-selection screen.

Tip

If iDVD seems very sluggish when you change screens, it’s because the program is busily processing video in the background. To make it work faster, choose iDVD → Preferences, click the General icon, and turn off “Enable background encoding.” (Then close the General window.)

Creating your DVD at the end of the process will take longer now, because the video hasn’t been preprocessed. But at least you’ll be able to work in the program without feeling like you’re walking through quicksand.

(If things are still slow, your Mac may need more memory. iDVD consumes RAM.)

All about Themes

The blowing curtains, any music that’s playing, and the font for your buttons are all part of a theme: a unified design scheme that governs how the menus look ...