Missing Backgrounds

[ttyner]

I just upgraded to ver. 1.51.2.0 and registered. But I lost most of my backgrounds. Is this by design?

Thanks

Tom

[ChrissyBoy]

No not really. Just trying to keep the file size down.

Here are the original backgrounds

[ttyner]

Got. Thanks

Tom

[Callan]

I just upgraded to ver. 1.51.2.0 and registered. But I lost most of my backgrounds. Is this by design?

Chrissyboy's backgrounds are nice but somewhat limited. As if the only sports were baseball, golf and ice hockey..

This is what I do.
I went through the (mostly useless) Authoring progs I have on my pc. You know, the ones that came with DVD/CD burners, graphics and capture cards. And before I settled for SVCD2DVD and later TMpg DVD Author, I downloaded and installed trial versions of some more. I did find some neat things in ArcSoft ShowBiz, DVD-Lab, Ulead VStudio, NeroVision.

Then, of course, there are the Newsgroups. I give you my favourites:
alt.binaries.photos.original
alt.binaries.pictures.artpics
alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art
alt.binaries.pictures.gardens
alt.binaries.pictures.misc
alt.binaries.pictures.nature
alt.binaries.pictures.scenic

I might have included alt.binaries.pictures.wallpaper, were it not that periodically it does not seem to offer much more than hordes of undressed females..

And finally, you can make your own. With your cameras, scanners, framegrabber or capture cards. And, which of course is most suitable, from one of the MPEGs which are to be on the (S)VCD-DVD itself.

This is most simply done with VirtualDub-MPEG2 (freeware).
A-Click File-->Open video file and load your MPG.
B-At the bottom, there are three groups of buttons. Tooltips tell you what they do.
C-When you have found a suitable image, press Ctrl+1 (hold Ctrl and press 1) to copy it to the clipboard.
D-As this way you are sure to find any number of suitable backgrounds, it is a big time saver to have a Clipboard Caching Utility running. A great freeware one is CLCL http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Reviews/r834.html.
Once you've chosen your shot(s), you save them out to a new Folder.

Fire up your favourite graphics program (the handiest for this purpose, to my mind, is IrfanView http://www.irfanview.com/ which is freeware, too) and use it to (batch) resize them to 720x576 making sure you uncheck 'Keep Aspect Ratio' and set the DPI to 72. (I still don't know if and, if so, why this DPI setting is necessary.)

Finally, you may want to make a copy of your final choice and put some text onto it, like the title of the series and/or the date.

I hope to have given you some useful ideas..


Callan

[ttyner]

"I hope to have given you some useful ideas.."

Indeed you have. Thanks a lot.

[Callan]

For whoever may be interested..

At the moment, the Usenet Newsgroup "alt.binaries.pictures.wallpaper" has a collection of 146 jpgs which do not really look like wallpapers at all, but like DVD Menu backgrounds for programs like S2D and TMpg DVD Author.

The person sending them is "yuriy@optonline.net", and the pix are all named "(number)_JuiceDrop.jpg". So, for instance, 131_Juicedrop.jpg.

Trouble may be that they are all in 2 to 5 parts or segments, so I am not sure whether IE's normal NewsReader will catch them all. It may be necessary to let a dedicated NewsReader loose on them. Like Tifny, NewsPro or PictureAgent.

Callan

IE 6 does not show any of them, just gives pages of unreadable text. Mozilla shows some but gives the others as text in the same manner.

Both programs call the Senderof the pictures "Pyro979".

[bubbz]

At the moment, the Usenet Newsgroup "alt.binaries.pictures.wallpaper" has a collection of 146 jpgs which do not really look like wallpapers at all, but like DVD Menu backgrounds for programs like S2D and TMpg DVD Author.

I've grabbed 300 of these and resized them to 720x576, then zipped the whole lot up at:
edit: ***Tripod took them down already***

Not sure how long they will last on tripod, but get them whilst you can It's a single 9meg file, if anybody knows a reason why these shouldn't be posted here let me know and i'll remove them - I can see no sign of copyright on any of the images.

[ChrissyBoy]

I'll grab these & put them somewhere.

[ChrissyBoy]

Here they are.....

300+ @:

http://www.svcd2dvd.com/releases/alt.binaries.pictures.wallpaper.zip

20MB!!!

[Callan]

and set the DPI to 72. (I still don't know if and, if so, why this DPI setting is necessary.

Hi, Chris!

I downloaded your 20 Mb just to check their DPI settings. Yes, it is 72. While the other piccies in this Newsgroup and others may have DPIs of up to 400, -or none at all.

On this and connected subjects I have asked this periodically. Why do the background jpegs for DVDMM Menus need to have -or be given- a DPI (dots per inch) setting of 72?

Can you tell me now?

Thanks in advance.

Callan

[ttyner]

"On this and connected subjects I have asked this periodically. Why do the background jpegs for DVDMM Menus need to have -or be given- a DPI (dots per inch) setting of 72? "

Since I read Callan's initial message on this s ubject, I've been saving some
of my photosfor use as backgrounds, leaving the DPI as I found it. Most of
these are 96 and work very well.

Tom

[yf2001usa]

They will work but remember a computer screen and a tv can only show 72 dpi if you provide more it might not look like you wanted to.

[Callan]

They will work but remember a computer screen and a tv can only show 72 dpi if you provide more it might not look like you wanted to.

Huh.. I dunno. My standalone, like many others, is capable of showing "slideshows" of assorted jpegs on TV.

So a while ago I made a Data DVD with some 14,000 jpegs collected over the years. I did not bother about their DPI settings. They all come out "like I wanted", in fact expected, them to do. Some have DPIs up to 500. Maybe standalones have a mechanism for correcting the DPI.

(Nice way, too, of finding out what one's DVD Menus are going to look like, by the way. Some colours or combinations which look okay on the monitor turn out awful on TV.)

But, if the 72 DPI is really best, and as jpegs, just like mpegs, tend to deteriorate every time they are decoded and re-encoded, why does not DVDMM accept originals of any (reasonable) resolution and prepare them itself, resampling them to 720x576 (NTSC 480), and setting the DPI to 72?

With "reasonable" resolution I mean width larger than height (4:3 best, as TMpgEnc DVD Author advises). Vertical, i.e. "tall narrow" ones obviously won't do.

And, of course, there is the matter of the re-encoding quality. I do all my operations on jpegs at Quality 90%. Obviously 100% would be even better, but tends to make the filesize very big. Though, of course, the size of the Menu VOB is dwarfed by those of the movie(s) anyway.

Greetinx,

Callan