What colors should I use for my title page?

[44echo]

I've been creating a .jpg of a plain color background with plain colored text and using it as a title page. The DVD then goes straight into playing the video. I've read to keep it as simple as possible. I've used black background with white text and white background with black text. When watching the DVD, the image seems to flicker around the letters. I think it's an illusion.

Is there a better color combo that might look a little better?

Using Ulead Video Studio for editing.

[erayboul]

Your post didn't mention whether you are making a NTSC DVD or a PAL one. You also didn't mention what size your text was. If the text is small or at least has small features (such as serifs) then you may get flickering around those features. Anytime that you have an object on the screen that is only one pixel high, it can only show up in every other field of an interlaced frame and this causes flickering. I'm still learning how to make DVDs but I believe that you also have to stay away from overly saturated colors including pure whites (I think that the whitest white that you want is 235, 235, 235). In many editing programs you can add a "NTSC Safe Colors" filter/effect that will tone down highly saturated images. I'm not sure if the same type of effect exists for (or is needed by) PAL.

[Cornucopia]

More tips:

Don't have horiz lines be only 2 pixels high either. This will then look like it's jumping up and down (because it is alternating lines)

Adding a 1-pixel, 2-pixel, 3-pixel, or 4-pixel vertical (only) motion blur can reduce and/or eliminate those kinds of effects. Adjust to taste.

It's going on a DVD, so it's going to need to be compressed to MPEG at some point. Don't compound the compression artifacts by saving to JPEG. Use an uncompressed format (BMP, TIFF) or losslessly compressed format (PNG). Will look smoother.

A drop shadow or outline on the text may help (good for contrast).

Simple can be good. Can also be boring. "BUSY" is NOT good. Somewhere in between (but leaning toward simple) is probably best.

Look at menus made on Hollywood discs as examples (although not all of them are great either).

Scott

>>>>>
edit: also try changing levels to keep contrast within supported range.

Input levels: 0(pureblack).....255(pure white)
Output levels: 16 (very dark grey)......235 (very light grey)

This can be done easily in Photoshop (Levels). Other apps should have similar adjustment capability.

[44echo]

erayboul,

I'm making an NTSC DVD. The font is Arial, size 48.

When I selected the font color, I chose it from the basic colors list. It sounds like it would be better if it was just a shade off.



Scott,

Thank you for the tips. Saving as .bmp is a good idea. I'm so used to working with .jpg (for non video) because of the size that "I couldn't see outside the box."



Very good help from both of you. Thank you!

[lordsmurf]

I've read to keep it as simple as possible.

I think that's a bit too simple. A menu should be somewhat attractive. Yet legible and easy to navigate. Never sacrifice any of these qualities.

[44echo]

I guess I could explain a little more.

I use menus when making other types of movies, but when I make DVDs of certain musical performances, it's pretty informal. The entire video is the band playing music. I don't have a big need for menus in this case, other than being able to jump to a desired song. Or maybe I just need to be more creative.

Have you seen in movies where it starts off playing some soft music on a black screen? White text will fade in and out, listing the actors and such. Then it continues right into the movie. That's what I've been doing. I list the band, the venue, the date, and on to the video.

As far as keeping things simple, I was referring to the "title page" text. It's not really a menu because there is nothing to select. Title page was the best terminology that I could come up with. I just insert a couple of still images of some text and fade them in and out. A thread here not too long ago discussed the downfalls of making text (subtitles, I think) too fancy, with nifty fonts, colors, etc. The popular opinion seemed to be keep it simple with basic fonts, and nothing too crazy. That's where I got the "keep it simple" from.

I agree with making good menus. I just didn't see the need for them for this application. Imagine that you attend a concert and you record the whole thing. Now you want to put it on DVD. What type of menus would *you* use? I don't say this in a wiseguy kinda way. I'm just looking for ideas.

This forum, actually the entire website has been a great deal of help. I could just sit and read all day. Again, thank you all for your help!