Menu flickering

[mrcoolekin]

I authored a DVD using GUI for dvdauthor. The only problem is when I watch my first titleset, the buttons look like they're flickering. I read the whole manual and it says, "The larger the contrast range between the foreground and the background, the more obvious the flicker. If the graphic material has fine details, then the easiest way to limit the resulting flicker is to blur the image." As in what the manual states the highest blur is 1.58. I already used 1.58 and there is still flickering.

I have a still background with animation tabs for chapters. Is there another antialiasing method I can use? If you need a screenshot then I can show upload it. Thanks.

[guns1inger]

A screenshot would be great.

Part of the problem with DVD subpictures is that lack of colour depth allowed for them. This means there isn't a lot of room for anti-aliasing.

I get around this by creating the menus almost entirely in Photoshop and/or Vegas, where everything can be anti-aliased nicely, and keep the subpictures to the simplest indicators.

[mrcoolekin]

Here's a screenshot. As you can see, Chapter 5 is all jagged edged. Sorry for the blurry picture....it's cause it's at the highest blur parameters.

[guns1inger]

The font is a perfect example of Fonts Not To Use When Authoring. It is too fine, too curvy, too intricate. At a larger point size it might fair better, but that small is asking for flicker. The manual tried to tell you not to do this, but you did it anyway. Nice to know the manual was right.

It would have looked better if the menu had been created in a video editor/graphics editor, instead of an authoring tool with limited graphics abilities. This would have allow for proper anti-aliasing of the text, drop shadows under it, and if necessary, a little motion blur to drop the flicker.

I suspect that your two best options are to either

1. Replace the font you are using for a simpler, san-serif font with think horizontal elements

or

2. Create your menus with a tool that allows for much greater control over the elements in general, and use the authoring tool to assemble everything and to add simple indicators to the menu for navigation.

[mrcoolekin]

Well it didn't SPECIFICALLY tell you not to use fine graphics for font.

I like option 2 of what you said. It'll be easy to edit the picture as I can edit TS1BackStrs.bmp. Then run TS1Brun1.bat, TS1Brun2.bat, and author.bat to finish it all up. I have photoshop, so I'll give it a shot, but do you have a guide I can use or instructions where I can try it out? Thanks again.

[lordsmurf]

The menu design is also quite poor. Don't put a full image behind a grouping of thumbnails. Either ditch the thumbnails, or ditch the background image.

You don't see this sort of menu on a professional-authored menu do you? Of course not.

On pro menus, note how clean backgrounds are used when thumbnails are present, maybe with a nice header or footer above or below the thumbnails. Never behind. Or inversely, use a title listing on a nice background that has "blank space" for writing where it can be clearly read.

Your photo is also squished, the aspect ratio is way off.

[borax]

...and to add simple indicators to the menu for navigation.
You can do something like this in GfD too. Just set the highlight style for the menu to 'Frame' (not 'Fill' or 'Both'). But I doubt that this will completely remove the flickering. You can use photoshop to add the texts with this extreme TV critical font directly to the background, use this background in GfD as menu background and add buttons with just a space character in fixed size and highlight style 'Frame'.

[mrcoolekin]

I ended up blending TS1BackStrs.bmp and TS1BackgImg.bmp for the background. Then set it to both. So pretty much, I'm using the button special guide. Thanks everyone.

edit: errr....it didn't work out the way I thought it would. I suspected the menus of being interlaced by HcEnc. I added the command *PROGRESSIVE to HC.ini. Now I can use all the skinny font I want.