A film buff always likes to have his (or her) own collection of movies, nicely arranged in glass wall cabinets, where each DVD is kept in its own box with a colorful cover and a distinctive spine. Such covers are, of course, available with purchases of original DVDs. Otherwise, you have to get your own cover from the net. When I wanted a cover for Arabesque (1966), I visited this site first:
and find that there are no covers for Stanley Donen's Arabesque (1966). So my next stop is:
where, again, I find no covers available for download. I realize that I'll have make my own cover.
Creating DVD-covers isn't too daunting a proposition. With expertise, you can create one within fifteen minutes, starting from scratch. If you love movies, you'll love this job, and the quarter-hour will just breeze by.
Launch Nero 7, and click on Nero Cover Designer in the list of Applications on the left.
Point out your basic desire from a list on the left border of the New Document window: Standard CD-case cover, DVD-case cover, Multi-CD-case cover etc.
Select DVD-Case and on the right you will see the components of the DVD-Case template that Nero offers. These are:
1. Booklet cover - this is the promotional booklet that's included in the box with a DVD
2. Inlay - this is the one we're after in this guide. This is the DVD-Cover.
3. Disc 1 - this is for creating graphics for printing on the disc itself, either with 'Lightscribe' or with a printer with CD-printing capabilities (like the Epson Stylus Photo R-230). Of course, you know that the disc has to have a special coating for that.
Click 'OK' and Nero opens the DVD-Case template for you. By default it opens with the Booklet Cover workspace, but click the appropriate tab at the bottom (see below) and you will see the Inlay workspace displayed:
This workspace interface is somewhat complex, and as you become familiar with it gradually, you will appreciate the full significance of the extraordinary wallop that Ahead has packed into its Cover Designer. Let's first understand a few basics relating to this interface.
1. There are three templates that will create the three components of the DVD-Case that was described above. You have chosen to display the Inlay workspace by clicking on the Inlay tab in the bottom left.
2. The Inlay workplace shows the outlines of the cover that you will create, clearly demarcating the two surfaces (front and back covers) and a spine. A closer look will tell you their dimensions and aspect ratios. In the ruler provided on the top and the left of the workspace window, you can observe that the front (or the back) cover has these dimensions:
Height = 185 mm
width = 130 mm
Aspect ratio 185:130 = 1.42:1
The reason why this ratio is important is that, while importing pictures, we need to pay attention to this ratio to efficiently resize them to fill up the space within the outlines. Nero will let you resize your imported picture as you wish, but you have to bear in mind that if you don't keep proportions intact, you will land with distortions.
3. You can see that there are many icons in the interface. If you place the cursor over an icon, its functions will be described in plain text at the bottom margin of the interface. Do that right now and get the feel of the icons.
Okay. We have gotten as far as opening a workspace for you. Now import or create some nice and appropriate graphics for the front and the back covers. What's appropriate? Suppose you created this picture for the front cover of Arabesque by sourcing a nice picture of your choice from the internet and putting text on it:
One of the main reasons why this will not be too appropriate is that Arabesque doesn't have a shark in it anywhere, let alone a shark gobbling a person. Another one is that its proportions are 1.26:1, and it falls far short in the length, a fact which will be apparent if you import it (in a moment we will tell you how to import a picture into your workplace):
Of course, you could stretch the picture vertically by pulling the resize-handle at the middle of the lower margin, but this, as remarked earlier, will introduce distortion. Perhaps not be too noticeable in this particular picture because of the nature of the graphics, but, nonetheless, another buff will always spot it, and you will know that it's there, a fact that will itch you constantly.
So how do you go about getting a nice and appropriate picture for Arabesque? The avenues open are simple and complex ones:
Simple
1. Google-image-Search 'Arabesque'. You hit pay dirt on the fourth page:
The image AR is 1.53:1, a figure comfortably close to your target of 1.42:1. You can import this one or go on to look in other pages of this search. Remember, generally, the bigger the picture you get, the better.
2. This is the first one I do try: I visited this site and searched for 'Arabesque'. It's a poster/image site for movies. See what you can come up with:
What a completely satisfying array of appropriate images! You can select one image or all of them from this page and save in a folder on your hard drive.
Complex
1. Take (or make if you can) a number of images and compose a graphic design of appropriate size in Photoshop. This will give you impeccable graphics. If you can do it, you can apply for a job as a graphics designer.
2. Take a number of images and compose a graphic design of appropriate size in Microsoft Paint. This is also hard work, but a schoolboy can do it. Resolution isn't great, though, and working in the sizes you must work with (in the vicinity of 1500 x 1000 pixels) is downright awkward.
(this guide is continued into Part-2 (next post, below) for restrictions on number of images)
Regards.
