|
|
JANUARY 22, 2004 Customizing iDVD 3, Part 5
Duration beyond the 30-second limit Unlike every other customization technique we've discussed, altering the menu durations in your DVD presentation affects only individual projects. In other words, we're not going to be increasing the slider value range of your Motion Duration settings; we're actually going to be setting the the duration of individual menus in individual projects to a fixed value. These settings cannot be saved in custom themes. Sorry about that, but, for now, it's the only option available.[an error occurred while processing this directive]One more limitation: You can't make changes to the background video or audio after changing your duration settings without losing your custom duration. Therefore, you need to have these two elements in place before you make any modifications. Otherwise, you'll just have to start over. That said, the technique for changing durations is a simple one. To begin, create your project with all menus and submenus in place. (You can add submenus later, but you'll have to go back in and set their custom durations anyway, so you might as well get it all done up front.) After this, save your project and quit iDVD. Now locate your project file on your hard drive. If you feel uncomfortable modifying it, you might want to make a backup, just in case. Select your project file (such as "My Great DVD.dvdproj") and right-click on the file (or Control-click for those of you stuck with a one-button mouse). This will call up a menu of options. From the list, choose "Show Package Contents."  A new window will pop up with a single folder called "Contents." Switch to a column view, and then navigate to Contents/Resources/PackageData. This is the file that contains your menu duration settings. (This is the reason we can only apply these duration changes on a project by project basis. The settings are stored within individual project files.)  Drag this file onto a text editing application. Usually TextEdit will work for this purpose. But, if you have a large number of menus in your project, it might be too much for that program to handle. So I'd suggest downloading a more robust text editor, like Tex-Edit Plus, which is available from http://www.tex-edit.com as fully functional shareware. (Alternately, you could also use Property List Editor to modify these values. I'll show you how on the last page of this article.) Once you open the file, you should be staring with glazed eyes at something like this.  Don't worry about what all that junk means. We're gong to be in and out in a few seconds with just a few modifications. All you have to do is type Command-F (or whatever the Find command is in your particular text editor). Search for "MotionDuration." You will find several instances of this term. And, when you locate one, it will look something like this. (If it looks jumbled, expand your window so that the elements line up properly.)  At the bottom of this list, you'll see the duration for your menu listed in seconds as a simple numerical value. This is the number you're going to change. In my case, the number is 30. I know that my background movie is 450 seconds in length, so I'm simply going to change this value to 450, as seen in the highlighted text below.  Nothing to it, right? Now just repeat this process for all of the motion duration settings in this file. Then save the document and quit your text editing application. Relaunch iDVD, and voila! Your new duration is set.  Please not that even though the slider now indicates your new duration, you do not have the ability to modify this slider value. If you touch it, your duration will return to the default 30-second maximum, and you'll have to re-open your project. Prev 1 2 3 Next Related sites: • AV Video • Creative Mac • Digital Media Designer • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • DVD Creation • Film and Video Magazine • Presentation Master • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
|