Simple HD DVD Template question

[JBCoons]

I video at horse shows and have used PE3 very successfully for many years. Lat month I upgraded my camera to a Panasonic high-def AVCHD and I am now shooting everything in 60p and editing in PE11. My clients now get a high-def AVCHD DVD (last year they got a standard-def). A typical DVD has maybe 3 or 4 2-minute "clips" - a clip for each time they show their horse in the ring. With PE3 I used a Menu that had a simple "Play" and marked each "clip" with a scene marker (I deleted the "Scenes" option from the main menu) and they would insert the DVD in the player, hit Play on the DVD remote, and watch their riding. If they wanted to "skip" or "go back" they would use the Next or Previous buttons on the DVD remote. My problem is with the HD DVD templates - what I need is a template that has only a "Play" option - no flowers/waterfalls/champagne glasses - there does not seem to be such a HD template available. My solution is to make the DVD an Auto-Play, but that means they have to have the TV "looking" at the DVD player when they close the DVD drawer. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[Steve Grisetti]

In Premiere Elements, you can replace the background on any menu template with any image or video you want -- even a blank page, if you'd like. So you can use practically any disc template as your starting point, as long as it doesn't have an additional layer of graphics over the background. (Virtually all of ours do not.)

As for only wanting a Play button, Premiere Elements will only generate the buttons you've got navigation built into your video for. In other words, if you don't have any scene menu markers on your video, you will get a disc menu with only a Play button.

But if you still want chapters in your video but you don't want scenes on your menu, you're going to have to open a template in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and delete all of the layer sets except for the Play button.

[Chuck Engels]

We also have simple text based menus in the products area available for download