This is such a very interesting topic and I came up with the same conclusion :)

I've noticed that in the Star Wars DVDs the highlight on the text seems to fade just before the loop on the menus, and on the Lord of the Rings commentaries, the names of those speaking actually does fade in and out.
Might this facility be available in future versions of DVD architect?

I was just wondering...
I've bought the BBC collection The Blue Planet. After all the text buttons fade in, the first button is highlighted. I'm not very good with menus made in PS, so I was just wondering if this is possible with DVDA.
I was thinking about rendering an MPEG2 in Vegas for the animation showing all the text buttons (or whatever) fade in, one by one. This would work as an intro for the menu. Then I was thinking about another animation for the motion menu but the thing is: how to highlight the text there...
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.

If you look closely at the star wars menu, you'll see that the mask isn't fading out, the text that the mask is layered on top of is fading out and then back in at the loop point, but not the mask.

SInce what you see on the menu is a combination of the mask and the text (that is, there's been some transparency applied to the mask) it gives the visual effect that everything fades out, when in fact the selected item just reduces in brightness slightly before the loop point and then the mask cuts out. The trick is to make sure that all of the text has faded out before the loop point.

It is certainly possible to achieve this effect using Vegas and DVDA using a photoshop created button or a text mask overlay.

--Scott

I think the Blue Planet stuff would be possible to do in DVDA3 using the photoshop menu/button features. Or, without using photoshop, drag an existing button on to the menu, set the button style to text only and in the object properties, change the highlight style to "Text Mask Overlay" then pick and/or adjust the color set to get the highlighting effect you want.

What you're going to create with Vegas is a composite with your motion background and the text fading in over it - render this out as an uncompressed AVI to use as your background in DVDA. You'll set your loop point in DVDA to be the location that all of the text in the background can be seen, and then you use the custom buttons you created in photoshop (or via the text mask overlay) to overlay the text on the background - if you went the photoshop route you should probably also use these buttons as the basis for the text in Vegas (so as to keep things in sync), otherwise you'll likely need to re-size the button text as needed to get a nice match.

<edit>
Or, here's a little step by step for creating things that avoids the complication of having to resize/match, etc..

Start in DVDA with a black background (or, if you intend to use black in your menu selection letters, use a solid color from a JPG file where the color isn't used in your
letters).

Position your first button, change the style to text only, set the text to what you want, change the highlight to "Text Mask Overlay" and change the selected color set to "None (all transparent)".

Now, go into preview mode. Set the image quality to Best and capture the image to the clipboard. Then using your fav' photo program (photoshop, paint, whatever) copy the clipboard to a new image and save it as a JPG.

Repeat for each additional button; at the end you should have JPG's for as many buttons as you have on the menu with your final JPG being a picture of all the text buttons on your menu.

Launch Vegas. Put your motion background on a track. Create a second track above the motion background and place your first button JPG on that track positioned so that you have some of the background first fading in and then set a fade in on the button event.

Apply a chroma key fx to the button event track and select the chroma key color using the color picker from the preview window. At this point you should see your button (and only your button) on the motion background.

Bring in the next JPG and position it on the same track as the first JPG, overlap the two events so that you get a cross-fade of appropriate length. Repeat for exach additional JPG.

Render out as an uncompressed AVI and then going back to DVDA, specify the AVI file as your new background video. Uncompressed in order to avoid any artifact since we're dealing with text.

Set the menu loop point to be after the last button fades in fully; change the selected color set to whatever you want, click preview and see how it looks.

--Scott