DVDLab PRO Menus - They're pale and blurry.

[Aeolis]

Hi folks,


I’m here again. DVDLAb PRO is the best authoring application, but it has a lot of little bugs. Well, I built my menus in Adobe Photoshop CS and they lot great there then I export them in .png format to DVDLab PRO and then compile my project. When I watch that menus in my TV they look pale and just a little blurry doesn’t matter how great they look in Photoshop they always get like this when authored. I’ve tried to compile with DVDLab PRO NTSC Filter safe color disabled, but same final result.
Just to know: my Photoshop menus setting are 720X480 and I always export then after use Photoshop CS built-in NTSC Color filter.
Does anybody have this problem? Is there any solution? I’ve made contact with DVDLab PRO author by e-mail, but no answer.

I love DVDLab PRO I just want it to become perfect. Sorry bothering you.

See you later,

Aeolis

[skeg64]

they look blurry because they are compressed to MPEG2. the paleness could be your TV set, your DVD Player, or it could indeed be a problem with DVD LAB. Nothing you can do about that, why not just increase the saturation in photoshop a bit to compensate?

[guns1inger]

You should either use the D1 NTSC (non-square pixels) template in CS, or resize to 720 x 540 before exporting for use in DVD Lab Pro

[alsyed]

export from photoshop in a different format such as bmp

[NoodleMaps]

Can't you just import PSD files directly, why compress them?

[guns1inger]

I use PSD files because the layyers are part of the menu. Playback, especially on a CRT TV, will appear slightly softer, but the colours shouldn't change unless you have used colours that are outside the NTSC range. Perhaps the colour filter in photoshop errs on the side of caution - don't filter and see what happens.

[Aeolis]

Hi folks,

Once more guns1inger you’re here to help, thank you. And thank you guys trying to help me. Guns1inger could you be more specific because I found out Photoshop NTSC D1 Squarte Pixel, 720X540 with guide lines template and you said non square pixel?

Could you tell me best template, best exporting format and all that stuff?

And another question: Does it make some difference exporting in. psd, .png or .bmp?

I’ve tried to increase a little bit the pictures saturation (as suggested here), but the results were not as good as I thought. And now comes a new question: in that same pictures I’ve made a beautiful set of artistic lines to make stand out the chapters pictures, but they got a little distorted I think they are too close to the TV borders so the TVs borders distortion comes on. Do you have some advice for that? Should I try to center that set of lines? And other thing, when working with pictures for DVD is there some sort of magic to choose what colors to work, I know the issue about NTSC Safe colors, but is there something else?

See you later,

Aeolis

[dvd3500]

Shouldn't it be 720X480 ?

[guns1inger]

Sorry - NTSC 720 x 480 with non-square or 720 x 540 with square. DVD Lab Pro uses 720 x 540 with square pixels. By chance or by design, this will correctly resize for both PAL and NTSC when pixel aspect ratios are taken into account.

Your best bet, work with the 720 x 480 NTSC template (with guides - save a lot of overscan issues later on), then resize to 720 x 540 square when outputing the final PSD for DLP to import (I keep a multi-layered master at the correct (PAL for me) AR, then a slightly flattened 720 x 540 version for import. It will look distorted in DLP, but will be fine once compiled.