Blurred Text on DVD Menu

[boofer]

Hello. I am a relative newbie when it comes to producing DVDs. I will do my best to explain my situation.

I am turning all of my family's home movies into DVDs. I am using Adobe Premiere Pro and Encore DVD. I am trying to keep it as simple as possible. I am using a picture for my menu background and all of the buttons are simply text. Here is my problem. The text on the menu when viewed on the television is blurry. I am keeping everything in a 4:3 format to help preserve the original format of the tapes. I am viewing the dvd on a wide screen rear projection TV. Although I change the aspect of the TV to 4:3, the text still looks blurry. I understand that the way something appears on the computer is not necessarily the way it will look on the TV. I have messed with using different colors and Encore has a setting on the Color Palette to display only NTSC colors (which I select). I have messed with just about every text effect (size, font, bold, color, sharp/strong/etc). Nothing seems to make any improvement. I cannot make the font size too big. On the DVD that I am currently working on it has 12 chapters. I have to use a fairly small font to keep the buttons from overlapping and to keep them within the safe area.

This is the final step in a daunting process. I will settle with what I have just to preserve these movies. But, it would be nice really top this project off with a nice product for my family.

Any help at all will be greatly appreciated. And, I will do my best to answer any questions.

[SmokieStover]

Not at all familiar with your DVD authoring software, but when setting up the track menu, try using only 4 or 6 chapter thumbnails per page. Also check under the settings for the bitrate used on the menu....set it at 8000 kbs. Should take care of your problem.

[boofer]

Thanks Smokie. I really want to keep the menu to one page (no submenus). Encore does not allow me to choose (as far as I can tell) the data rate for the menu only.

To this point I am using "Automatic" transcode settings for my projects. From what I have read, more current versions of Encore will display the transcode settings for each transcoded item in the Project window after the transcoding is complete. With my version it will not. But, I used AVICodec to find out that my MPEG movie is being transcoded in 16:9. I am going to attempt to select my transcode settings to a 4:3 resolution and let the TV do any "stretching." Plus, I can change the TV to display in 4:3.

I would make the project super simple by just turning the movie into a DVD without menus and maintain the highest quality. But, I love being able to select scenes. This is the one huge advantage that I have found over watching these movies on VHS (no more wondering what is on each tape, no more FF'ing and RW'ing).

I want to preserve the integrity of these movies. Since they were recorded in 4:3 then I want them to be in 4:3 and allow the user to decide what looks okay. If the 4:3 image looks good stretched to 16:9 by the TV, then fine.

I did try the DVD on 2 other TVs. One is a 35" CRT and the other a 32" LCD. Needless to say, the menu looked better (not perfect) on the LCD. The CRT looked okay (still not perfect).

[MysticE]

I want to preserve the integrity of these movies. Since they were recorded in 4:3 then I want them to be in 4:3 and allow the user to decide what looks okay. If the 4:3 image looks good stretched to 16:9 by the TV, then fine

A 4:3 stretched image never looks fine. If you have any women in them I'm sure they will object to looking short and squat. If you really want to preserve the integrity use 16:9. You'll end up with pillars, but the people will have the proper proportions on any TV that way without any user intervention, just in case Aunt Clara wants to watch it on her new TV. I would also try a 2 page menu as a test and see if that clears up your text problem.