DVD Menu Size

[Ricky Barrow]

Is your DVD SD, if so, 4×3 or 16×9?

Ricky

[Austin Culkp]

The settings are SD, 4:3. I think I realize what I need to do. It seems like I need to make the Menus in a 4:3 dimension since the film is already in a 16:9 format.

[Ricky Barrow]

I think you just lost me mentally, but I will tell you my workflow. If my video’s are HD 1920×1080, then that is my menu size in Photoshop. If they are HD 720 or SD 16×9 then I make menu sized 1280×720. If my video’s are SD 4×3 then i make 720×540 Photoshop menus. SO, if your videos are “film” 16×9 and they are not letterboxed on the DVD then a menu of 1280×720 will work great – if they are going to the DVD as letterboxed which is 4×3 then menus should be 720×540, IMO.

Ricky

[Austin Culkp]

Oh I see. My main video is HD 1920×1080 so my menus should be the same size. Will that result in a letterboxed menu? When in the preview mode, my menu has been in letterbox.

[Ricky Barrow]

Your HD videos should be widescreen, 16×9. As for menu’s, I believe there is a box to check or a setting to tell the menu it is 16×9 as well. Sry, can’t remember where that is. THIS is all me assuming you are going to transcode your HD videos as widescreen for SD – you must tell the transcode (edit quality presets) to transcode WS to get 16×9 – the “auto” transcode presets may do that – again, not sure. I do believe that the way the video is displayed in the monitor is how it will look with current transcode settings (either letterbox or widescreen).

Ricky

[Daniel Ludwig]

hey guys,
first of all please let me tell you that SD DVD NTSC is 720×480, and by the way it make no difference if it would be 4:3 or 16:9, this is just a flag/bit that will be implemented into the MPEG-stream how the aspec-ratio of each pixel must be displayed.

depending on the CS-version that you´re using you need to set menus in different pixel-aspecs, as adobe decided to do some significant changes from CS4 to CS5.

as I haven´t got the NTSC-parameter in mind at the moment (as I´m in PAL-land) I will describe it with PAL. PAL is original 1024×576 for 16:9 in square pixels, if you are working with anamorph pal-pixels this is 720×576 (which is in fact used), but adobe decided to change it to 1050×576.

NTSC is 720x486px, that will be cropped for SD-MPEG2 to 720x480px, but what ever you do, NTSC-DVD could only handle 720×480.

I would advice to transcode assets prior authoring within any DVD/BD-authoring-application. if you are using 16:9-material you should flag it 16:9, so everything should be fine.

cheers

danny

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Austin,

Good advice from Danny. I don’t transcode in Encore, I follow Danny’s advice and do that before I get to that stage. In other words, assuming editing in Premiere, use Adobe Media Encoder and export the HD sequence as MPEG-2 for DVD, resulting in a widescreen SD export of .m2v for video and .wav for audio. Check the “Maximum Render Quality” setting when going to from HD to SD for best quality downscaling.

In Encore, use File > Import as import the assets as a Timeline. For menu creation in Photoshop, use 720×480 as suggested, but be sure to set the Pixel Aspect in Photoshop to 1.2 so the results are not distorted on your widescreen DVD.

Do not, I repeat do NOT create a 4:3 “letterboxed” DVD from your HD source! Create a 16:9 DVD to match the source footage. If the viewer happens to have a 4:3 display, their DVD player should add the 4:3 letterboxing to the video output automatically. If you create a 4:3 disc with letterboxing as part of the image, when viewed on a 16:9 display, the entire video will then be surrounded by black, not pretty at all.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Ricky Barrow]

I have a point of contention and a point of exception.
I do not understand why you would create a menu in 4×3 aspect ratio when your video is not 4×3. 720×480 in photoshop will be distorted in Encore CS4 if you select 16×9 in properties to match your WS video’s – to display just as WS video, then menu must be WS in Photoshop, yes, you may want to stay 4×3 safe but the template must be 16×9. I only contend with this because it “works for me” ONLY when I follow this procedure.
I would agree with transcoding to DVD spec before Encore but would ask the same as someone just posted in another thread – is Encore transcoding inferior to other programs … that said, my workflow sometimes is dictated by time – this means from the Avid I can export a QT Ref. file(s) and start authoring immediately and determine the bitrate inside Encore based on amount of video and ROM content added – thus I skip the step of calculating the bitrate beforehand (sometimes a time constraint) and can optimize the trancoding quality ‘last minute’.
I am not being argumentative – I am responding for discussion and dialogue to learn and improve my workflow! Thanks1

Ricky

[Ricky Barrow]

Oh yeah, more thought – we are doing all video in HD but at the moment are only authoring to SD DVD – IF in the future I want to go to Blu-ray, then since my video’s are already HD, wouldn’t I want my menu’s as HD (aspect ratio) 1920×1080 or 1280×720 so everything is simply ready as-is? BUT, I still ask why you would not at least do SD WS 16×9 menu’s for WS video’s and flag video’s as well as menu’s as WS, thus the menu should at least be 864×480?

Thansk!

Ricky

[Joseph Owens]

[Ricky Barrow] “why you would not at least do SD WS 16×9 menu’s for WS video’s and flag video’s as well as menu’s as WS, thus the menu should at least be 864×480?”

You’re pretty much on the right track there. From the DVDStudioPro manual, the advice, at least for that application, is to make SD NTSC menus 853×480. Flag it for widescreen 16×9, and all should be well.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?