Hey guys, I've recently switched from Mac to pc (sadly), and I need some help with using Premiere, since I can't use Final Cut pro or iMovie anymore. (Those bundled Mac programs were really useful, too)

1.) - A menu.
I want to create a dvd menu, where you put in the disk, and you can choose two options, one to play a slideshow/movie, and one to go into a section where it has tiled pictures, and you can choose one to make it bigger.

2.) - The tiled pictures.
How would I go about making this? I'm assuming I'll need some kind of software other that Premiere Pro (equivalent to iDVD), could you recommend a program? Ideally, the viewer would be able to go through the pictures, click on the one they'd like to see bigger, and just go left/right through the full screen pictures too.

Thanks a lot,
Kyle Hamilton


Edit:
I forgot to ask, is there a way to export from Premiere as a smaller resolution video. I'm editing the video in 720x480 (I think, something like that), and I'd like to export as 320x**, how could I do this?

In PPro 1.5 there is no inbuilt option to make a DVD with a menu at all. You can only create an auto-play DVD.

So basically you need a piece of DVD authoring s/w. Adobe offering is called Encore (or Encore DVD depending on the version you pick up) which is good but pricey if this is all you want to do.

I believe that Premeire Elements (the cut down version of PPro) has limited DVD authoring built in so might prove a cheap option to stay Adobe.

The 'pick a picture' requirement could be done in the same way as a standard chapter menu on the DVD. You would need to pre-prepare the scrolling and zooming of the big pictures though as a movie clip to play back. You won;t be able to do it dynamically and scroll the picture around using the remote control.

As to exporting small sized clips. Easy enough. Go into media encoder choose your format (say WMV) and look at the set of presets available. All sorts of standard sizes for web distribution there. Just pick the combination of image size and bitrate you like.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

Go for Encore DVD. Thats what I use but I do have all the Adobe software so the intergration between the titles really pays off.

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Mark

www.onlinevideosolutions.co.uk
www.legalmedia.uk.com

I agree. One thing to add about Encore and what helped prove tome to be a great selling point is that the menus themselves are simply layered Photoshop files. i.e. menu buttons and highlights are just carefully named layers. I could already drive Photoshop (to soem extent) so this proved really useful.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

Wow, thanks guys. I'll have to grab encore, I'm pretty good with photoshop (3rd year photography student), so it should be pretty easy to start with.

I have one more question.

I accidentally created my video in premiere as 720x480, is there any way to change that to 640x480?

I think if I can't change it, I should be able to create a new project, then move the time line from the current project to the new one, correct?

Thanks so much,

Kyle

Sounds like you chose one of the NTSC projects rather than PAL. Never tried changing the preset half way through but I'd be a little suprised if you could.

Try this though. Start a new project with the correct preset and import your old NTSC project into it.

__________________
I'm not young enough to know everything!

I agree... nothing better than the bridge of photoshop and premiere. I do heavily use the DVD window option on 2.0... Not a lot to be creative with... but all the templates are photoshop files...allowing you to manipulate, but not add animation, say to buttons on a DVD menu.