Motion menu "blown out" on some DVD players

[Phillip Chapman]

I'm mastering a DVD for duplication with DVDlab Pro 1.60.

I've found a problem with all of my motion menus, however, on some DVD players (component and computer) the menus play fine, on others (component and computer) the white background with moving objects appear blown out and are barely visible.

For the motion menu, I'm setting a mpv file as the background and using render motion to put the objects together into an uncompressed AVI file. I'm then compressing the AVI in Sorenson Squeeze to a mpv and then using the final mpv in DVDlab. Both the AVI and mpv file appear to play fine on my test machine before authoring.

Does anyone have any suggestions of changes to try to rectify this? This is the largest discrepency from player to player that I've ever seen. If anyone has any suggestions of what may be causing the problem and how to fix it, I'd much appreciate it.

[guns1inger]

Different players on the same TV, or different players on different TVs ?

Two things to remember

1. Your PC is almost always darker than your TV, so don't overcompensate

2. You will never have control over how others have their TVs setup

[jagabo]

Maybe you're using illegal colors. Not all RGB colors are valid in YUV. Some players may clip the YUV data before sending it to the TV. Bright red or orange is often a problem.

Another possible issue: the luma component of YUV video should be limited to the range of 16 to 235. RGB on the computer usually ranges from 0 to 255. Most RGB to YUV converters will compress the RGB 0-255 range to 16-235 to keep the video in conformance. But some do not. Make sure the software you are using does this properly. Or adjust your RGB data before the conversion.

[Phillip Chapman]

These results have all been on different machines and different set top component DVD players.

Here's something else that may help in diagnosing the problem...

I just tried replicating the effect simultaneously on the same PC and found some interesting results. I'm running Windows Media Player 11 and WinDVD 5 at the same time using the same source disc. The background animation on the menu is too hot in Windows Media Player 11 while in WinDVD it's displaying properly.

As mentioned above, I have seen the "too hot" issue on a component DVD player as well. Other component players display the background animation properly.

[jagabo]

I'm running Windows Media Player 11 and WinDVD 5 at the same time using the same source disc. The background animation on the menu is too hot in Windows Media Player 11 while in WinDVD it's displaying properly.

That is likely just a video overlay issue. Only one program at a time can use overlay. The first media player you start up gets it, subsequent ones don't. So it may just be the difference between the overlay video controls (brightness, contrast, etc) vs the desktop video controls.

The overlay window usually displays the video in the YUV colorspace (the graphics card is responsible for conversion to RGB to send to the monitor) whereas the non-overlay window displays RGB converted by the CPU. This could be indicative of illegal color or luminance values in the source as discussed earlier.

[Phillip Chapman]

If it's an overlay issue, why is it also happening on a set top DVD player?

Also, if I only play the source in Windows Media Player (and WinDVD is closed) it still is shown incorrectly whether overlay is enabled or not.

NTSC safe color mode is selected in DVDlab. There is no bright red or orange in the background. It's mostly white with light lime green and a little black. If the issue is the luma component of YUV, how do I correct this if all I have is the background mpv file?

Any other thoughts or suggestions are more than welcome.

[jagabo]

I don't know Sorensen Squeeze -- look for options that mention PC.601, PC.709, CCIR-601, or CIR-709. The "601" settings are for standard definition NTSC video.

Or reduce the contrast of your source images so that the whites max out at 235 and the blacks don't go below 16.