Image Button looks too crisp

[Joe Bowden]

It’s probably just a rendering artifact in the display of the Menu editor. Have you tried Previewing the menu (in Encore Preview mode)?

[Jack Bob]

I did. Previewed then burned to DVD. The button is too crisp on TV screen.

[Joe Bowden]

I’ve created hundreds of menus in Photoshop and used them in Encore, and have never seen this problem.

Maybe you could post the PSD someplace, and I can look at it on my system?

[Jack Bob]

Thanks for your help Joe. Here is the psd:
https://uploadpsd.com/file/38191.psd

[Joe Bowden]

Thanks for posting the file.

What you are seeing is the highlight layer (=1) being distorted as it’s converted into the correct format for button highlights. It’s jarring because you have fading opacity in the artwork of the highlight layer, and that’s being (unavoidably) crushed in the highlight conversion process.

In DVD-Video, button highlights are a 2 bit indexed graphical overlay. What this means in practical terms is that the artwork highlight layer cannot have more than one opacity, so no soft strokes such as you have, no drop shadows, glows etc…just full on pixels for the highlight layer.

Now if you want to avoid this limitation by not using highlight layers, you can get what you want from this button by creating multiple menus, and then switching to the next menu using the button auto-activate feature. Note that this will be a lot of work if you have multiple buttons and menus.

[Jack Bob]

I see what you mean. I was hoping someone would convince me that button highlights are a 2 bit indexed. I guess the best I can do is to set the opacity down in Encore, just to give a bit of a touch with motion menus. Thanks!