DVD Studio Pro 3: In the Studio

Easter Eggs

The popular definition of an Easter egg in the DVD world is any unadvertised feature of a disc. For example, something as simple as a gag reel appended to a movie that plays after the end credits can be an Easter egg. If the term Easter egg doesn't give it away, you're supposed to go hunting for these eggs and be thrilled and squeal with joy when you find one. Well, the squealing is optional, but you'd be surprised….

Things such as our treasure hunt can be considered an Easter egg. Usually the kicker is whether you advertise the game. If you have a big bullet item on the packaging that says "Play 'Find the Ship' to see bonus artist sketches!", its not an Easter egg, it's a game. If you don't tell anybody about it and let a rumor start on the Net, you have yourself an Easter egg. In fact, entire web sites are devoted to helping hapless (or lazy) viewers uncover the eggs in commercial DVDs. A good site is http://www.dvdeastereggs.com.

Simply obscuring a button can qualify as creating an Easter egg. But we want to try something more interesting. We'll password-protect our next Easter egg.

Figure 8-27. The Graphical view of the hunt project flow

Passwords and numeric input

One clever trick that falls into the serious Easter egg category is using a "password" to protect a menu or other asset on your disc. There are no actual password entry mechanisms, but you can fake it. ...