Advanced Menu Q

[Afterlife]

So Ive started doing Widescreen DVD's (as WS tvs are becoming more and more common), which so far has not been an issue, I can map 2 dif subs depending on the screen, and the letterboxing is fine on a regular tv.

Now my issue is the menu. In DVD-Lab Pro (DLP) you have the option of a 16:9 menu, or a 4:3 menu.

4:3 menu is stretched on a WS, and a 16:9 on a 4:3 has two options.
1. Pan and Scan (basically lose 1/3 of the menu)
2. Letter box the menu.

Now neither seem to be a good idea, so im curious as to how retail dvd's do this. I use DLP as its a cheap effective program.

And as a second related question, should I stick with still menus or try branching out into motion menus? I have no idea about motion menus, or the learning curve etc, just curous if its worth my time.

thanks in advacne.

[mikiem]

RE: retail or commercial DVDs, in my experience most often the menu is the same as video aspect -- as you'll find out it's easier & in my opinion, safer... Folks who want to see widescreen want to see widescreen, & a 4:3 menu seems a bit of a cheat or let-down, but that's *only* my opinion.

On some DVDs you'll also be given options, with 16:9 & 4:3 menu systems.

RE: still menus... Actually one of those terminology things where the choice of words is descriptive, works well, but is *usually* inaccurate. While you can use a still with the hold command, much (most?) of the time you're creating a video -- it just doesn't move. So the biggest penalty to creating motion is often you've got to create the video. You'll have to decide if it's worth it or not. :P

[Afterlife]

ok well my entire DVD collection is 90% widescreen. I have one widescreen tv, but the rest are all 4:3.

On the 4:3 tv's the movie letter-boxed, as it is supposed to be. But the menus dont look stretched on a 4:3 or pan and scanned. I have yet to see a feature like the subtitle mapping in DLP for menu mapping (show this menu if 4:3, that one if 16:9), or maybe im not looking in the right places.

[mikiem]

I'm not expert by any means with DVD Lab, but if I remember correctly you can set the project aspect (under properties), as in other authoring prog., and that sets the DVD to tell the player to show the menu 16 x 9 or 4 x 3. I think that you can set the individual menus to be either in the Pro version, but you might have to create a new vts to hold the 2nd aspect menus. I *think* the help docs mention this in combining titles on one disc.

Also the player itself I think defaults to using the aspect as flagged in video files -- If DVD Lab isn't creating these files, and you supply a 4:3 m2v for the background of a 16:9 menu, Not sure if it won't play 4:3.

On the DVDs where I've seen a choice of aspect, they have 2 menu sets, and the choice is made on a set-up menu page, same sort as used for audio, subs etc.

Looking at the ifo files in something like ifoedit you'll see how/where they have listings for each m2v, listing the aspect and if it's fixed (same video can be viewed pan/scan, wide, L/B) (you can set this in muxman). You'll also see options (I think by PGC under Pgciti) where it's mapped out which sub track to use for which film aspect (DVD Lab Pro I believe can create multiple sub tracks - 1 for narrow, 1 wide...).

These settings I think are used by the player when you force the display format in the player controls. It is possible to have different versions of the tracks containing the button overlays (if you stretch the menu the button highlights aren't where they should be), but AFAIK authoring apps that use this are usually expensive and few, with the exception of using one of the GUIs for the freeware DVD author.

[kschang]

From the retail DVD's I've seen...

They put Fullscreen on 1 side and Widescreen on the other side.

The only one that doesn't do that is Top Gun. When you play, you get a choice between full screen vs. widescreen. But the menu is fullscreen.

[Afterlife]

Ok I figured it out.

I put my WS movies on the WS tv and watched the menu, then put the dvd in my non WS TV and watched, the menu seems to be P&S, which while still functional isnt as good looking.

So, as im creating a WS movie, as the movie im working with is in fact a WS copy, is there a guide (ive looked to no avail) that shows how to make WS menus, that are still safe for FS tv's?

in Photoshop I can open up a WS menu present new image, but it only shows the text/button safe areas for the WS area, when it P&S's I dont know where it going to cut exactly, do I just map over the full screen safe areas onto it?

Thanks for your help guys!