DVD Design for Live Events

Here are some tips to make the video fit into your showing seamlessly (and maybe make the tech guys love you).

I ran into this design back in August when I was working on an annual event called “Monday Night Live” here on campus. Basically, there are a bunch of skit-type things, with live music and video thrown in occasionally.

So how can you make a DVD that will allow you to make the constant jumping back and forth between segments as seamless as possible? Here’s how to do it:

Make a no frills but obvious and easily navigable title menu.
Link each menu item to a separate “Intermediate In” menu. This menu should have one black button that fills the entire screen. (Note: all tracks will need to be directed through separate intermediary in menus.)
Link this button to the track with your video on it.
Set the end jump to an “Intermediate Out” menu, also with one black button the size of the screen. This button should go back to the main menu. (Note: end jumps for all of the tracks can go to the same Intermediate Out menu.)
Here’s how it should look:

So here’s how it will play out: the tech person will choose the correct video while the projector’s image is muted. It will go to the correct “Intermediate In” menu, at which point the image can be unmuted, as all that is showing is a black screen. At the right time, the tech person only needs to press the button, at which point the video will play. When it is over, it will go back to a black screen. At this point, the tech person can mute the image and pick the next item.
This is the best DVD design I’ve found to show multiple videos cleanly in a live setting. Just remember to make sure the tech person knows what’s going on, and they’ll love it like this.