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DVDSP Anti-aliasing
I am building a greyscale overlay DVD menu in photoshop. It is 16×9 so I started with artwork 1920×1080. It looked crunchy and I read the other posts regarding anti-aliasing using DVDSP so I resized one of my 6 menus to 864×480 which is what fits in the 16×9 window. The fonts with that size look much worse than the larger size menu. I have to finish this DVD menu tomorrow and am trying to keep with this font. I have tried bringing in tiffs and picts for the overlay.
Is there anyway to bring in a vector image for the text?
I am using Clarendon LT Std Light and Bold as my fonts and I know that they are thin fonts but that is what the artist wants as it matches the artwork the artist is using for the rest of the DVD packaging.I know there have been many posts about anti-aliasing in DVDSP and I have read them.
Sorry to repost this issue but is there any way to keep my font and make it look professional?
I have never made a motion menu before but is that the way to go? If so – can I make a motion menu that acts as an overlay menu?Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
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3 Replies
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Zoe,
Unfortunately the folks that wrote the spec for DVDs in the beginning never imagined how buttons might be used. So they limited the DVD spec itself when it comes to overlays and did not allow them to be anti-aliased. That is the cause of jaggy looking button overlays. There are a couple of ways to help them look better, though.
One of the best ways to make text look good on a menu is to make the text itself part of the background image. That way you can anti-alias, feather, use gradients, or whatever to your heart’s content and it will look good. Then choose something more simple for your button. Like a simple box that goes around the text, or some shape like an arrow that points to each choice. Keep the buttons simple with straight lines to avoid the jaggies.
If you absolutely want to have your text be the overlay, then there are a couple of things to do to try to make it better. Put an outline on the text that’s in the background image. That way when you lay the button overlay text over the background text, the outline on the background text helps hide the fact that the overlay text is a little jaggy. Also use an opacity of about 65% or even lower for the overlay. That helps it blend in a little more as well. The other, more difficult, thing is to create your own type of anti-aliasing by using three colors to create your text overlay. I’m sure there are more details on accomplishing that elsewhere, but it basically involves using all three colors allowed in a button overlay (the 4th is always for the transparent background). The first color is the text itself, the second would be just a small outline around the text, and the third an even smaller outline around that. Then map the first color to your intended text color, the second to a slightly lighter version of that same color (and make it a little more transparent), and the third an even lighter version of the color, and even more transparent.
Hope this helps. Have fun!
Rob
Rob Neidig
R&R Media Productions
Eugene, Oregon -
Always resize you menus before bringing them into DVDSP. 16:9 and 4:3 have the same pixel count in video so make your menu 720×480, it will look wrong in PS but correct in DVDSP when it is set to 16:9.
There is no vector support in DVDSP or DVD.
Motion menu can only use simple overlays for buttons. It is never a good idea to use text as buttons. Very seldom will you see that being done on Hollywood DVDs.
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Thank you both for the detailed response. My menus now look great and move with ease!!
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