Why do my menus look bad?

[Rogue3]

I'm creating my menus in photoshop, saving as a .bmp and importing them into Maestro.

After I compile them and burn them they always suffer quite a bit of quality loss. The picture becomes fuzzy and the text looks bad. Is there any better way to make menus nice and crisp, like you see on alot of professional movies?

[SIRCOOKS]

if ur making dvd motion menu's, i suggest trying trying tmpgenc dvd author, it automatically makes the thumbnails move if set right, and all i do is before i encode the movie, strip parts of the (like 20 sec peices)join the movie back together then encode the entire movie, then go back and encode the little strips to insert as a first menu to introduce the dvd, then use the other 2 for background motion in my allready motioned thumbnails, to me, tmpgenc dvd author is the best....everyone should try...its real quick and efficeint as well

[Trust_No_1]

Ok, here's a few things you can try:
1) Make sure you use the photoshop NTSC filter on the flatened image before you save the BMP. This basically sets all the colors to be NTSC compliant. Computer red, white, yellow and black are not the same as NTSC red, white, yellow and black. BTW, I'm assuming you are using NTSC and not PAL
2) Use large fonts - a minimum of 14pt for fine print type stuff. Much larger if it will be read.
3) Avoid single pixel lines. These will flicker. Use anti-aliasing.
4) Create you graphics using 720 by 540. Then scale to 720 x 480. This is because computer pixels are square and video pixels are rectangular. If you don't do this, circles will appear to be squashed when played back on TV.
5) Lighter text seems to show better on a darker background.
6) The image pixels/inch should be around 72 anything higher does not help because TV doesn't have the resolution for it.

Some of these may help, some may not.

Finally, maybe there is an option you can set in Maestro relating to the processing of still images. Just a thought.

Good luck!

[Scheif]

4) Create you graphics using 720 by 540. Then scale to 720 x 480. This is because computer pixels are square and video pixels are rectangular. If you don't do this, circles will appear to be squashed when played back on TV.

A good point, but be aware that some authoring apps expect your imported imagery to be in square-pixel form and will do this conversion for you. If your app does, then this procedure will be unnecessary at best and could, at worst, distort your imagery even further.

For example, I used to use Sonic MyDVD 2.3, which came bundled with my Pioneer burner. (Not the greatest authoring app, but I made some decent DVDs with it. Anyway ...) MyDVD wanted menu backgrounds to be 640x480 (square pixel), and it would stretch it out to 720x480 (rectangular). If you fed it 720x480 material, it would first shrink it to 640x480 and then perform its normal stretch to 720x480.

Now I use Ulead DVDWS, and it also wants square-pixel backgrounds, but at 768x576. DVDWS then resizes them to 720x480.

So, bottom line, find out the recommended resolution for your authoring app.

[Rogue3]

Does anyone have any information on the optimal settings for Maestro (when creating the menu in photoshop)? My menus will be widescreen format.

Also, is the NTSF filter in photoshop or is it a 3rd party filter?

Thanks for all the info, I will try some of that out when I get home.

Photoshop has an option to mask at a specific ratio, and I use 16:9 as my selection. It creates the rectangular menu. Should I be resizing this when I am done, before I import it into Maestro? As it is I've just been saving the 16:9 photoshop image as a bitmap and importing.

[NoHelpWhatSoEver]

Photoshop 7 has size presets for 4:3 and 16:9 DVD screens.

[Rogue3]

OK, I tried most of the tips above. I did manage to get my graphics to look better by rescaling the menu once I'm done with it (without constraining proportions) - this helped alot!

However, I still have the flicker issue. My menu seems to flicker, in some places worse than others.

Anyone got any tips to eliminate flicker issues in menus?

Again, using photoshop to create the menu, and maestro to author.

[troyvcd1]

Is it best to us bmp files or can you just use jpgs.