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Total Menu Size Exceeds Limit — RESOLVED!
Wow — I just figured this out! I am working on a large DVD project that uses video for menu backgrounds. I kept getting the “Total Menu Size Exceeds Limit” error when I checked the project and couldn’t figure out why. My menus were only ~700MB, so I still had room to spare.
Here’s what I was doing wrong: When I created the video in Premiere Pro CS3, I exported the file as mpg2-dvd format and I changed the Multiplexer tab from none to DVD. This ouput my video as a .mpg file which has the audio embedded. I then added this file to my Encore project and specified that one file as the source for both my video and audio background in my menu settings. What I didn’t realize until now is that Encore has no idea that just because I specified the same file for both audio and video that it should just load one file and use the audio & video. No, no, no! Encore was loading the file for the video and then loading it again for the audio! So my 300MB mpg file was being loaded twice which resulted in that menu being 600MB! And it was doing the same for all my other menus, which is why I was over the 1GB limit.The correct method: Encode the video using mpg2-dvd format and leave the multiplexer setting to none. This will result in separate video and audio files (.m2v & .wav) so that when you add them to your menu, Encore is only loading the large m2v file for video and the much smaller .wav for the audio. This method ended up with Encore only loading 250MB for that menu instead of 600! Happy days…
Hope this helps someone keep their hair on their head where it belongs!
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8 Replies
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Glad you hair will be longer with you, but mine is still falling out.
My question; what if you want larger menu’s, larger than 1G? That’s what I want, only menu’s. Sounds a little strange, but I want my menu’s with moving image, so one can change to an other video while the first is still running. So in fact I’m making my dvd only with menu’s.
Any idea?
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Intriguing idea. I’ve never tried, so I don’t have an answer. Based on the research I did for my problem project, I suspect that it is not possible without some sort of hack.
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The DVD-Video format has a 1 GB limitation on menu space.
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Well, I think I just have to live with this communist 1G border.
Is there a way making motion menu’s smaller? it looks like you can’t. I’ve tried importing several filesizes video, but the length of the video seems to be the bottleneck, not the file itself. Like the menu’s have their own (unadjustable) compression. Or am I overlooking a possibility?
Thanks
Sietse -
Dirty DVD Consortium commies… 🙂
It’s possible to make motion menus smaller if you do all your precomposing and encoding to MPEG-2 elsewhere (like in After Effects), and then make it a video background and add only add button highlights to the menu in Encore, no other layers. If you do this, Encore will not render the motion menu and therefore will not apply its default motion menu encoding setting.
Doing all this outside of Encore requires familiarity with AE, MPEG-2 encoding for DVD, and a good grasp of DVD subpicture overlays.
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Thanks for the info.
At least communists did not like choice! You just drive a Lada or nothing, nothing else. No confusions or difficult choices and no artists making programmers life misarable!
Anyway,I am editing in premiere and made the complete image there (a video frame and the buttons, wich are no buttons but video, they just look like buttons)
Then used only “empty” buttons in encore (exept highlights). I used a blank menu basis and replaced with the audio and video wich i made in premiere (including the visuals for buttons). Then I exported the video in different file sizes, but encore did not matter; it made bigger files from small ones for example.So, if I understand you correctly; I have to export from premiere as a mpeg2 in a lower resolution (so the file gets smaller) and then the total menu filesize will get smaller because encore does not have to transcode it again?
Interesting solution, I’m going to try that.
Thanks
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[sietse bruggeling] “So, if I understand you correctly; I have to export from premiere as a mpeg2 in a lower resolution (so the file gets smaller) and then the total menu filesize will get smaller because encore does not have to transcode it again? “
That’s is the idea…but only if Encore does not have to transcode it. That means the MPEG-2 file must be DVD-legal, and it must not contain an audio stream (use a separate audio file instead), and there must be no layers in the menu file except button layer group with highlight layers – otherwise, Encore will have to render graphics into the video, and it will retranscode to its default MPEG-2 encoding setting for motion menus.
You might also want to do some bit budgeting to see how much video you can get into 1 GB.
If you pay attention to all the details I mentioned, Encore should not re-encode the video. Good luck.
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YES!!! Thank you
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