DVD Studio Pro - Adding Easter Eggs to Your Menus

Adding Easter Eggs to Your Menus

It is becoming increasingly popular to add hidden items to DVD projects. For example,
you may include a track or menu that you only want people to find if they know the right
buttons to push.

Most often, invisible buttons on less-used menus are used to access these items.
Depending on how elaborate you want to be, you can configure the button navigation
so that the viewer can only get to the invisible button by pressing non-obvious arrow
buttons on the remote control.

For example, if you have a menu with a column of six buttons, you could set the button
navigation so that the invisible button is reached only by pressing the left arrow button
when on the fourth button in the column. (Most viewers would not think to press the
left arrow button if the menu’s buttons are arranged in an obvious up/down fashion.)
You can make it even harder to find by using multiple invisible buttons, with each requiring
the correct arrow button presses to get to the next, with incorrect presses jumping back
to the visible buttons.

About Invisible Buttons

You can set an overlay button to be invisible by selecting Invisible in the Advanced tab
of the Button Inspector. In this case, making a button invisible means that the highlight
colors do not appear when the button is selected and activated. This can be confusing
when combined with visible buttons on a menu because it can lead to a condition
where nothing appears to be selected.

Instead of using a true invisible button, you may want to use a button whose normal
state is invisible, but which acts as a visible button when selected and activated. To do
this, you only have to make sure the button has no normal state graphics on the menu’s
background (making the button invisible when not selected), but does have supporting
graphics, such as a star or happy face, in the overlay file that will show the selected and
activated highlight colors. Note that if you do this, a viewer playing the DVD on a
computer may be able to find the button just by waving the pointer over the menu.

See

Advanced Tab in the Button Inspector

for information on invisible buttons.

Important:

While using invisible buttons can make it difficult for viewers to accidentally

find hidden features, you should not assume this is entirely secure. Determined viewers
can use a variety of methods to find hidden content on a DVD disc.

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Chapter 3

How Do You Do That?