i have these goals in mind and they are easy to do in dvda. unfourtunately to use dvda i would have to reboot due to obvious registry errors. i just do not want to reboot right now because of the mass amount of stuff i would have to move and reinstall. so i am stuck authoring the dvd in encore. i am liking encore because it integrates with after effects and is pretty easy to use. i am just hung on this 1 thing i am not quite getting. the goal is this i have a 15 second animation menu created from the same psd that makes up the static menu.i just want the animation to play first along with the menu music which is 1 min 37 sec long. and the buttons should all be functional and visible after the 2 second fade in of the menu. the buttons should always be functional.the menu music should play out and at the end the menu is just static with working buttons. the major flaw i have found with encore is you absolutely have to have a psd for the menus. this kinda defeats everything that after effects allows you to do. like use a fade in for the menu. in order to not see the buttons and other elements during fade in you have to make them invisible by turning off the eye icon in the layers tab of the menu. which would be fine because the buttons are in the animation already but the button highlights are a problem because they show during the 2 second fade in.so this means buttons and other elements have to be invisible on the static menu to be able to use a fade in.unless i am missing something crucial which seems likely.there has to be a way to have the fade in and then have the static menu become visible after the motion menu completes. i just dont see it. it makes no since to me that in order to have a motion menu you cant have a fade in. i am either missing the big picture or adobe has missed 1 very important feature in dvd authoring. if anybody knows the trick to overcome this simple problem i would be ever so thankful. otherwise encore has just fallen short of greatness and i am back to rebooting involving 2 days work just to be able to use dvda again to finish this edit. sorry for the long rant guys just trying to give you a clear image of the goal and the problem. here is images of the buttons showing during the fade in. if i turn off the eye icons you dont see the buttons but you see the default red highlight. if i turn off the highlights you dont see them at all during fade in but no button highlights at all of course which is pointless. help me please before i have a mental collapse.