Professsional Looking Still Frame Menus

[Afterlife]

I still havnt graduated to Motion Menus yet and I generally just make elegant simple yet fully functional still frame menus.

So my problem is this:

In photoshop I create a new image and the following pre-sets exist
1. NTSC DV 720x480 (with guides)
2. NTSC DV Widescreen 720x480 (with guides)
3. NTSC D1 720x486 (with guides)
4. NTSC D1 Square Pix 720x540 (with guides)

Ok so which do I make? for months now ive been using #4 and I never extend my image past the title safe area. But this looks tacky on some tvs as it wont fill the tv.

Dont understand why its not standardized, but w/e.

So looking for some help on getting the right size template down for the job.

Thanks!

[skeg64]

use 1 for 4:3 menus. 2 for widescreen. these presets have 0.9 pixel aspect ratio to simulate a TV set.

if you use 4 you need to resize it to 720x480 before saving, when you are DONE designing, so that it looks the same on a TV (unless the authoring app does this).

overscan is different on all TVs, nothing you can do but work with the guides.

[guns1inger]

The secret is to crop and position your stills so that they fill the frame to the edges, but the important parts remain within the safe areas. This means there will be extra space around them when you play them back on a PC or Plasma, but you don't lose anthing or get borders when you play back on a TV. Sometimes it's a simple as putting a gradient to black around the edges to create a false border effect.

Most professional still menus use these tricks.

[Afterlife]

DVD Lab pro forces me to use #4, and thanks for the tip Gunslinger

I generally find tho that if I make the background extend the entire picture and only titles in the title safe area then the picture seems cut off on a tv. Tho a gradient mock border might do the trick, just sucks how there isnt a way to say IF player = (x) use menu: (y)

[guns1inger]

It's not the player, it's the TV. The overscan area varies from TV to TV, and is just a fact of life.

You should work with the first two resolution when designing, to ensure you work within the correct pixel aspect ratios. Once you have the design right you can either load it into DLP as is and resize their, or resize in photoshop before saving. I do the latter, and have built a series of actions to flatten latters and resize the lot.