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  • DVD Authoring

    deadline. DVD problems — image cut off, shaky text, “blurry” menu

    Posted by Elise London on October 11, 2011 at 6:54 am

    Hello out there,
    I am working on a deadline tonight for a DVD I’ve authored for a client, with video I’ve edited. To start off — it’s been a couple years since I’ve had to make DVD’s and am not an expert in DVD specs. I am working in DVD Studio Pro. Some of my material originated as 29.97, some as 23.98. I created 23.98 MPEG2 assets within Compressor (since I think it is better to go 29.97 –> 23.98 than the other way around)

    My client has come back to me with the following notes, and I’m scouring for answers:

    1. Text on black, and subtitles are shaking when viewed on TV screen with DVD player
    2. Menu looks blurry when played on computer, and on TV screen with DVD player
    3. Part of the image is cut off on the left when viewed on TV screen with DVD player

    Regarding number 3, all of the content is 16×9. In DVD SP, for the video tracks, I’ve set the display to 16×9 Letterbox. And the image dimensions look fine when I try playing the burned DVD on the computer.

    Thanks in advance for any help,

    Bill Stephan replied 14 years, 6 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies

  • Eric Pautsch

    October 11, 2011 at 9:40 am

    1. Hard to say without seeing the menu and not know your workflows. It could be your text is too small and your client is seeing the interlacing

    2. Again, no way to know

    3. Did you account for Action/Title Safe?

    But seriously…..Im not being nasty (really, Im not ) but why are you doing a DVD for a client with little or no DVD experience? Would you hire an editor or camera person who wasn’t experienced?

  • Bill Stephan

    October 11, 2011 at 5:32 pm

    Technically, there is no 23.98fps in DVD — there is 29.97fps with the 3:2 pulldown flagged. So I would encode the 23.98fps footage as 29.97 in Compressor. (Converting 29.97 to 23.98 is a difficult and nasty-looking conversion no matter how you do it, unless the footage originally was 23.98 at one point. Then you can strip the 3:2 pulldown.)

    How are you creating the artwork for the DVD menu? The answer to your blurry menus probably lies in your workflow.

    Bill Stephan
    Senior Editor/DVD Author
    USA Studios
    New York City

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