Basic DVD Menus for Premiere Elements

Report · Jun 07, 2020

I presently (COVID19-days) have the job of creating DVDs of my Church Online Service for our vulnerable and isolated (and offline) members. As part of this I need a simple DVD menu with my own fullscreen image as background and a couple of simple buttons but I can find no way to achieve this. The pre-supplied templates are universally inappropriate and useless for this task overlaying my image with fish, cartoon biffs or weird flowers. The nearest is the terminally dull 'General/Faux Widescreen' and that mucks up your image.

So the question is how do I produce my own template or find a simple one? I'm astonished that there isn't an 'Empty' menu that just needs a fullscreen image and adds basic rectangular buttons for this purpose. Did I miss something?

Report · Jun 07, 2020

Just found https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-elements/in-premiere-elements-2020-can-i-create-new-dvd-menu... (which mysteriously didn't come up when I searched before I posted)

Report · Jun 07, 2020

Me again. The First 'Slideshow' template is fairly unmangled. That one served the purpose though the second screen overlays my image with a dark mask (probably usefully in this case).

If only I could stick the scene buttons on a single main screen I'd be sorted...

Report · Jun 07, 2020

You can do your editing in Premiere Elements and then author the DVDs in DVD Architect, a great, simple program that's is very versatile. You can create pretty much any kind of menu you want! As many scene menus as you'd like on one menu page. Thumbnails or text. Any background you'd like. Stills or moving video. And I have tutorials for using the program and for porting the video from Premiere Elements if you're interested.

If you're looking for the simplest solution, that's it.

DVD Architect is available for $99 from Magix. Or, if you buy their Vegas Movie Studio Platinum editor for $79 you get DVD Architect free.

Not to promote other programs on the Adobe site -- but if you're looking for a program that can do what Adobe's products can not, it's the best value out there!