Graphic Buttons Over Motion Menu?

Hi guys, although it's the weekend i'm hoping there's some workaholic moderators who are also online

I've been using photoshop and FCP for over ten years but this is my first dance with DVDSP.

1- So when the video file in dvdsp is in the viewer, i import the psd but those layers only appear on the menu tab, i can't seem to get the psd layers over-layed onto the video to then link up as button highlights (over the text in the video file from fcp) i also wondered why the background video file from fcp does not appear in the menu tab and in the viewer, when of course i'd want the video i prepared as the background for the menu.

2- Pending that, my current idea is to prep all button text over my video in the fcp time-line as png or psd layers then flatten the entire sequence out to be used as DVDSP's menu backing as a prores quicktime that i'll then compress in in Compressor (best quality 90mins - as the menu backing is only 2min 30 secs long).

Then i'll prep the text 'button' highlights (two states for each menu-text already baked into the video file) 'selected' and 'activated') in a photoshop file.

My idea is to then import the psd file containing these highlight layers into DVDSP and place these highlight layers for 'selected' + 'activated' over the background video, the highlight layers will overlay the text in the video file then i'll be able to assign select and activate actions which will link to the video file i then want them to lead to and play.

Am i right in thinking that once these highlight layers are successfully overlayed on the video background, that i would drag a button selection around the area of the text and highlights to create the link to the desired video file?

In brief i think my actual question is "can i use psd/png or any other graphic file as an advanced-overlay element?"

alternatively i would except the text/button highlight mode to also act as the activation state, so there is only one overlay per text selection (again - the text that the overlay is highlighting is baked into the video file i'm using as a background)

i've tried to be concise as possible, and inclusive of my goal very much look forward to any clarification and pointers.

thank you very much for your time.

You need to think of the menu as two layers. The background will be the video and must contain all of the graphical elements that you require the viewer to see. The top layer is a static file that contains only the overlay information such as highlight shapes. This overlay can be. Tiff or pict. Most of it will be white, and this will become transparent in DVDSP.

Treat this as a standard menu - lots of info in the manual for these - but with a video background. Psd files work well as layer based menus, but you cannot combine them with video.

--

lafcpug mod