Jon Geddes
Forum Replies Created
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Use a font that looks good, typically this will be a sans-serif font. Button highlights are only 2 bit. So the pixels are either 100% opaque or 0% opaque, there is no smooth edge. Of course you can always make the entire button semi transparent in Encore, but that still doesn’t change the edge smoothness. It is a limitation of the DVD spec, not encore.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
If I were you, I would try and get an Intel Corei7 920 CPU, it will cut your render times in half from the processor you have listed, and is not that much more expensive.
The Geforce GTX 260 and above are great video cards. I always prefer Nvidia over ATI due to superior drivers and usually superior performance and compatibility with software.
4GB of ram is minimum, but if you are getting an Intel Core i7, it uses triple channel DDR3, so you will be getting either 3GB, 6GB, 12GB, or 24GB. I would get at least 6GB.
As for a Motherboard, I am extremely happy with my Asus P6T Deluxe V2. Allows me to overclock my corei7 920 to 3.92 Ghz easily. I could go much higher but the computer is in a warm room, and I didn’t want to push it with the heat. I recommend getting an aftermarket cooler for the CPU. I went with a Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme, works perfectly.
Let me know if you need any more suggestions, as I build all my own systems and I’ve built several hundred over the years.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
If you are interested in creative ideas, you can look at our Pro Motion Menu Kit products, which are advanced motion menu templates for Blu-ray and DVD authoring. Many different methods for button highlights are used. On the product page for each kit, scroll down to see images of each menu and their button highlights:
https://www.precomposed.com/products/pro_motion_menu_kits/
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
Thats very strange, what is the asset for the motion background? Is it a dynamically linked premiere timeline? Have you tried rendering it out then importing the rendered file as the background?
How did you make your menu? Did you start from a blank menu from within encore, or did you start from a PSD file in photoshop? If you started from a blank menu in encore, was it the HD blank menu? Select the menu in the project panel and it will give you it’s resolution.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
Your assumptions are wrong for the most part.
Answer#1 – Obviously a higher bitrate will produce a better looking video. To get the most quality out of your video, you will likely want to customize the bitrate and not use one of the general presets offered by Encore. Using a bitrate calculator you will see that for 2 hours of video with 192 kbps audio, your average bitrate should be 4.8 Mbps. This average should be your target, as you want most of the video to be around that range, with some complex scenes requiring more, and some less complex scenes requiring fewer. It’s usually good to set your max bitrate within 1.5 Mbps of your target, so you can set it at 6.5 or even 7. Your minimum can go as low as 1.5 and not cause any problematic frames.
Answer#2 – I believe you are referring to Encore’s automatic quality transcoding? If so, it will try and calculate out the highest target bitrate based on the duration of all the content you have on your disc. Usually it does a pretty good job, but I’m sure it calculates it very conservatively so as not to cause any problems during the build process. You can probably squeeze out a little more if you set it manually. Also, many times I will give a higher bitrate to the feature video on the disc, and lower the bitrate for bonus content, which you can only do by manually setting the bitrates.
Answer#3 – As a general rule, I never burn faster than 4x, regardless of the burner’s or disc’s capability, as errors often get introduced at speeds higher than that. Using a 2-pass VBR bitrate will offer you the highest quality image at the lowest possible bitrate, often allowing for increased bitrates beyond what CBR or 1-pass VBR will allow you to do. The only thing you don’t want to do is exceed 8 Mbps for the maximum birate, as you will likely have issues with playback on some players, due to reduced reflectivity of burned media, and its sustained transfer rates. It’s a little different story for pressed discs. I wrote an article on it if you are interested:
https://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/05/successful-burning/
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
Your text likely has lots of anti-aliasing applied to it, giving it a much smoother edge especially around curves. The dvd spec does not allow for anti-aliasing of button highlights. You must be careful to choose a font that doesn’t require a great deal of anti-aliasing to look good. Another option (more commonly used in the industry) is to use a symbol, underline, or some other method as a button highlight instead of trying to change the color of the button text.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
Are you creating a Blu-ray disc or standard DVD? Are you using an SD menu and not an HD if you are creating a Standard DVD?
The preview problem you describe with the background starting over is a known problem with the program. This behavior does not show up in the final build.
So you are saying your button highlights are not displaying on the main menu? Do they show up in the preview? What happens when you click on the icon to show the buttons in their highlighted state? Does it display as it should?
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
You must use a codec that is supported on the PC. You are correct that Apple’s HD codec is not available for the PC.
You should try the Avid DNxHD codec (free) which will compress well and is near lossless:
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
This has always been an issue with the mpeg2 codec, even noticeable in hollywood dvds. The stair stepping can be reduced with very advanced algorithms, but it cannot be eliminated. You can watch the Disney movie “Cars” for example. They did a very good job of reducing it, but it is still noticeable. You might want to try using AVISynth (for downscaling) and HC Encoder to encode to mpeg2. HC Encoder allows for custom matrices which will allow you to reduce it if you know what you are doing. It will require lots of research though. BTW, those programs are to be used on a PC, and are completely free.
I wrote an article on using those programs in a HD to SD DVD downscaling workflow:
https://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/07/hd-to-sd-dvd-best-methods/
The workflow was intended for Adobe Premiere users, but you can start the workflow after I discuss exporting out of Premiere.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
After Effects is not a full 3D application. It is designed for compositing. You would need a 3D application for what you are trying to do.
You can do a lot of 3D work in After Effects though as long as you are aware of it’s limitations. Here are some examples of our Pro Motion Menu Kits (blu-ray/dvd menu templates) which do quite a bit of 3D animation in After Effects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pcEnUMASZA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_ClxxJF6kE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r43tmSVjF0A
Jon Geddes
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