Customizing a DVD Menu

Using iDVD’s built-in themes with your own photos and movies is a quick way to create a custom menu for your DVD. However, there may be times when you want to have even more creative control over the appearance of your menus. With iDVD, you can take greater control of many aspects of your DVD menus, including button style and position, text style and position, highlight color, and menu transitions.

Tips

Adding text to a menu

Many professionally created DVDs use menus to provide additional information, like an actor’s bio or “filmography”. These “menus” may display only text. iDVD allows you add text to any menu, or create text-only menus. Simply open the Project menu and choose Add Text. A text block will appear in the menu. You can then add your own text, change the text style, and reposition the block of text on the menu.

Changing one or more buttons

iDVD lets you apply button style and text changes to one, several, or all buttons on a menu. In addition, you can change the highlight color shown when a button is selected. To reset text to the default style, select the button and click Reset Label. To reset the button style to the default style, select the button and click From Theme in the button style

Adding a transition that plays when exiting a menu

You can set a transition (such as a page peel or water droplet) to occur when viewers move to a new menu, movie, or slideshow. In the Buttons view, open the Transition pop-up menu and choose the transition that will occur when leaving the menu.

Checking the position of your buttons and title

The outer area of your DVD menu may not be visible on some televisions. To see an approximation of how your DVD will look on most television sets, go to the View menu and choose Show TV Safe Area. Make sure your buttons and titles appear completely within the white area.

Applying theme changes to an entire project

If you change one menu’s attributes, such as its button style, you may want to apply this change to other menus in your project. From the Advanced menu, choose to apply the theme to the entire project or just to submenus of the current menu.

Saving your custom theme as a favorite

By saving your custom theme as a favorite, you can easily apply it to new menus created in existing or new iDVD projects. Save your custom theme by selecting “Save Theme as Favorite” from the File menu, then give your theme a name. You can share your themes with other users on your computer or keep them for yourself. To apply a saved theme, select Favorites from the Themes pop-up menu of the Themes pane. Select a menu, then select a favorite theme to instantly apply your custom look to the menu.

Steps

Change the style of your menu

Create a new menu for your DVD and choose a theme with large buttons, like the Chapter menus included with each iDVD 6 theme.
Add several movies and slideshows to the menu. Notice that the buttons appear with an image instead of text.
Click any of the buttons and a slider appears above the button.
Use the slider to change the image that appears on the button. Repeat the process for each of the buttons in the menu.
Click Buttons to see the options for customizing your buttons.
Select one or more buttons and change their style by selecting a new button style from the Buttons pane.
Change the size of a button using the Size slider.
Click Free positioning, then move your menu buttons to your preferred layout.
Click Snap buttons to grid to return the buttons to their default locations.
Select one or more buttons and use the options in the Label section to change the style, size, and color of the text in the menu.
Use the Highlight Color option to change the selected menu's highlight color.
Save your iDVD project.