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Safe Areas and Menu Background Images
Hey guys, I’ve created a DVD menu page with a pre-loaded “Football” background theme in DVD Architect. (no video icon menus)
I have the safe area grid turned on and the “Football” background image is way outside of the safe area. I’ve tried to crop the image in Architect but, it seems to zoom-in on the image instead.
How do I get the full image inside or snapped to the safe area? I’ve burned a DVD and I have previewed my work on a 4:3 TV and the image is cropped really bad.
I’m not sure how to fix this.
Thanks!
Korey -
4 Replies
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The safe is just a guide. Your titles should always be within the title safe area (inner rectangle) and all actions would be within the action safe area (outer rectangle). Anything beyond that could be cut off by CRT TV’s but may not be cut off by LCD TV’s. If your background is being cut off then you need to add more area around the part that you want to definitely be displayed (i.e., get that area more toward the center). This is best done with an image editing program. Remember, whatever you do to increase the border may be seen by people with LCD TV’s so make it look nice (don’t just leave black).
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Is there anything important outside the safe area? Anything that you feel your audience needs to be able to see?
If not, don’t worry about it. I guarantee you that 99.9% (that’s a rough estimate, by the way) of DVD menus have some “hidden content” that is outside the safe area. This is simply something that DVD producers (and video producers in general) have accepted — not all of the recorded content is going to be seen on most televisions. They simply do their best to make sure that the important content is.
In short, don’t fix it if it ain’t broken.
Rob
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Thanks for the responses guys! I figured out that I can resize the menu background image within DVD Architect. On a CRT it looks good but, on an LCD it has a black border that doesn’t look that bad.
Any suggestions for a cleaner look are appreciated! Thanks! Korey
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> Any suggestions for a cleaner look are appreciated!
One suggestion is to use the blurred image itself as a border. In Vegas you would place the image on a track below and add a Gaussian blur then when you resize the image on top the edges will be filled with a similar background. In Photoshop you would do this with two layers blurring the bottom one and resizing the top one. It looks a lot better than black borders. You can even feather the edges of the top layer to make it blend smoother.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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