Subpicture alignment

[Matthew Harnick]

Eric – doesn’t this suck? I’m having the same problem…on a main menu with only three selections. I’m reusing a customized template I’ve used for 3 years now with Encore 1 and 2…always worked fine. I somehow found a fix for it unintentionally, but can’t get the fix to repeat itself yet. If you find (or have found) any solutions, please email me directly…

matt@videojournalism.com.

I’ll do likewise if you send me your email address. This SUCKS.

[Joe Bowden]

There is a simple workaround for this: uncheck ‘Create Subpicture from Text’ in the Button properties, then select button and create a subpicture from the Object menu.

[Matthew Harnick]

I can see where and how to do that – but it’s not that simple unfortunately. I just retraced my steps, and everything is fine until I add a drop-shadow to the text in Photoshop…so it appears that this creates the problem…however the subpicture doesn’t even line up with the drop shadow – it goes the opposite direction. Thanks for your assistance, any other ideas?

[Joe Bowden]

You want the drop shadow to be covered with a subpicture? That’s not going to look very good considering how DVD subpictures have very limited opacity compared to what goes into a drop shadow…it’ll look like a blob.

Can you post a screenshot of the problem somewhere?

[Matthew Harnick]

I’ll send something over – thanks for your help.

Basically my main menu has three text chapters, and each piece of text has a drop-shadow. Until now I’ve never had a problem with a sub picture being out of alignment when that chapter has been clicked…for some reason CS3 is making this an issue. The sub pictures look just fine…normal state is black text, highlighted is yellow, and activated is red…no problem. I’ll see if I can send this to you – thank you again.

[Case Marsh]

I know this is an old thread, but I ran into this subpicture alignment problem early on and overcame the problem easily.

For me, the alignmment problem occurred when I used the “subpicture button” in the button properties window. This should be the simple and obviously best way, but not with the misalignment. Also, the problem occurred when I had already set up a stroke on the text (not the drop shadow). So, I merely make sure I use the Object menu to set up the subpicture (Ctrl-Alt-B shortcut) before I apply my stroke and drop shadow.

In summary, no problems if I follow this sequence–Subpicture first from object menu or shortcut keys, then stroke and dropshadow.

[Jon Lutz]

I ran into the same problem a lot of other people online have seen: button highlights out of line with the button text.

My menus were created in Photoshop, using the correct group layer names [i.e. (=1) etc.] and the menus looked fine in both Photoshop and the Encore monitor, where you edit the menus. But when I selected Preview From Here in Encore, I could see the subpicture highlight was off.

A lot of suggestions I found didn’t help me: selecting create subpicture from the object menu, selecting interperet footage, etc.

Here is the solution that worked for me: make the photoshop image size 720×480 and select DV1 for Pixel Aspect Ratio. I had been given menus as 720×540 and just assumed they were right.

Hope this helps someone in a similar bind.

Video Editor | PBS