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It's great to have this kind of personal history written down, otherwise some of this stuff just gets lost forever. Our first DVD player came with a copy of th

by Nition 4y ago

It's great to have this kind of personal history written down, otherwise some of this stuff just gets lost forever. Our first DVD player came with a copy of the first Harry Potter film on DVD, and it's still by far the fanciest DVD menu I've ever seen, with all sorts of features and hidden extras. It's clear that some serious effort went into showing off the new medium in those early days.

dylan604 4y ago
You should find a copy of Contact for how important they thought extras on a DVD release were going to be. Menu designs were still quite simple, but the production of making of content was longer than the feature. That trend definitely lessened, but yes, the graphics design for menus went through the roof. There's also a few things a lot of people don't realize, but parents with small kids probably do. For certain DVDs, the looping menus have a bit of extra programming where after looping for so many times, it will switch to a menu without audio. The menus with animated transitions from one screen to the next became popular too. I'm not familiar with the specific disc of Harry Potter, but I'd be amazed if it didn't have transitions
- Nition 4y ago
  Yeah it did. One really impressive part of it that I recall was a tour of the set that was implemented like you were playing Myst, where you could go forward, left, or right from your current position. It would play a short POV video taken by someone walking around with a camera depending on which button you pressed, as if you were freely exploring.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    we did something similar for a project and absolutely, Inspired By Myst, would have been a worthy badge for the box. it is funny how the limitations within the DVD spec meant for some creative thinking to get unique results, yet there being only so much that could be done meant a lot of similar ideas. at that point, the execution is what separates. The Matrix' Follow The White Rabbit was a good example. The MSTK discs pushed the ideas of a subtitle track to animate the silhouettes of the characters over clean video. There were lots of clever things that when seen for the first time, you nod at the effectiveness, then you think about what was done, and you nod again at the cleverness.

by Nition 4y ago

dylan604 4y ago

You should find a copy of Contact for how important they thought extras on a DVD release were going to be. Menu designs were still quite simple, but the production of making of content was longer than the feature. That trend definitely lessened, but yes, the graphics design for menus went through the roof. There's also a few things a lot of people don't realize, but parents with small kids probably do. For certain DVDs, the looping menus have a bit of extra programming where after looping for so many times, it will switch to a menu without audio. The menus with animated transitions from one screen to the next became popular too. I'm not familiar with the specific disc of Harry Potter, but I'd be amazed if it didn't have transitions

Nition 4y ago
Yeah it did. One really impressive part of it that I recall was a tour of the set that was implemented like you were playing Myst, where you could go forward, left, or right from your current position. It would play a short POV video taken by someone walking around with a camera depending on which button you pressed, as if you were freely exploring.
- dylan604 4y ago
  we did something similar for a project and absolutely, Inspired By Myst, would have been a worthy badge for the box. it is funny how the limitations within the DVD spec meant for some creative thinking to get unique results, yet there being only so much that could be done meant a lot of similar ideas. at that point, the execution is what separates. The Matrix' Follow The White Rabbit was a good example. The MSTK discs pushed the ideas of a subtitle track to animate the silhouettes of the characters over clean video. There were lots of clever things that when seen for the first time, you nod at the effectiveness, then you think about what was done, and you nod again at the cleverness.