Mastering DVDs

Step 3: Customize the Appearance of Your DVD

Once you've created the navigation points for your disc, you're ready to add some decorative touches.

Premiere Elements contains 32 menu templates for you to choose from, all of them reachable via the Change Template function in the DVD Layout dialog box. Available themes include travel, business, holidays, weddings, kids' parties, and sports. Each template consists of a main menu of chapters and a submenu for navigating movie scenes.

The Titles button located on the taskbar permits you to change the fonts and colors of your movie's titles and credits, but this feature doesn't work on the DVD menus.

To customize your menu--for example, to swap out its background image in favor of something you like better--use Adobe's Photoshop Elements or any other program that can modify and save .psd files. Your image editor must be able to display and modify the layers in a Photoshop file. You can purchase Photoshop Elements bundled with Premiere Elements for $150; separately, the programs cost $100 each.

Premiere Elements stores menu files in its DVD templates directory, at C:\Program Files\Adobe\Premiere Elements 1.0\DVD Templates. Save a copy of the menu you wish to modify in a directory that you can easily find again; then edit the menu file, and save it in the DVD Templates directory under its old name, so that Premiere Elements will be able to recognize it.

Though Premiere Elements lets you add music to movie and slide-show sound tracks, it doesn't permit you to add background music with menu screens. Rumor has it that the next version of the program, scheduled to be released soon, will include features that address this and other program limitations. Other software packages, such as Pinnacle's Studio 9 and Apple's IDVD for Mac OS X, support menu background music already.