Menu Video quality with DVD-Lab

[bigsimon]

With DVD-Lab the menus have no very good quality (for example the text and the background image) when I play the menu on PC.
Is there a setting to adjust the quality of the menus in DVD-Lab in order to have a good menu quality, like the commercial movie DVD have?
Thanks a lot in advance.

Simone Alessandrini
Italy

[sacajaweeda]

I use DVDLab and the menus I create with Photoshop look just awesome.

Maybe the images you are using just suck to begin with?

[racer-x]

I use DVD-Lab and love it. The only weekness it has is menu rendering quality. It likes to leave compression artifacts around text areas.

There are a few thing you can try.
1) You can add a little blur to the image before you import.
2) Use Photoshop to make the menu and the text, then duplicate the text layer. Add a black stroke to the bottom layer and merge it with the background. Save as psd and import into DVD-Lab. Use the Hotspot Rectangle tool to select each text link. You can select highlight color you want.
3) If you're still not happy with the quality, then make a motion menu with your image and text in a video editor and save as Mpeg. This will produce the best posible results if done correctly.

[muskgrave]

I've used photoshop and done as much as I can in it. I save it as a .psd so i can make quick layer changes if needed once i see the finished menu. I asked this in my post, but do you have to use 72dpi images in your menu's or can you use 300?
dlv

[racer-x]

You can use 300 dpi if you want. I use 720 x 540 @ 150 dpi.

[muskgrave]

awesome..maybe thats why my menu's looked so fuzzy and crappy

dlv

[akbor75]

dpi has no meaning when the picture stays on the screen. it's just a translation from real units (inches) to logical units (pixels).
when i create a picture in adobe ps of 720x576 pixels, it will be the same quality no matter what dpi i use.

of course when you use photos they should be of good quality. but as the tv resolution is relatively low, the dpi is not very important.