16x9 and 4x3 Friendly Menus

[dopef1sh]

I just got an HDTV so i've been looking to create true widescreen menus for my homemade DVD projects, but still have them behave nicely for my friends with regular tv's.

After reading dan's excellent how-to for Scenarist
HERE (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=45870&highlight=menu+resolution)
I've gotten all my art ready and I fired up my copy of Maestro, only to discover, you can't seem to add multiple subpictures (to allow the separate overlays needed for 16x9 and 4x3) to a single menu. Do I have to make a separate menu for each aspect ratio (seeing as how you can specify the aspect ratio of the menu), and, if so, how does the DVD player know which menu it should be using? (ie: do I have to specifically set up something or will maestro somehow 'make it work' behind the scenes?)

(I also seem to have read somewhere that if the video on the DVD isn't actually anamorphic that 16x9 menus wont work... any truth to this? My videos aren't anamorphic)

[dan]

Thanks for the shout-out...

Well, I only know Scenarist, so this doesn't quite answer your question because I'm pretty clueless about pretty much everything in Maestro.

Anyway, the simplest aspect...you can use anamorphic menus for both 4:3 and 16:9 [anamorphic] videos. You make a language domain in a given titleset, and the contents of that language domain do not need to be the same as the contents in the other titles in that titleset. The problem here is, I don't know if Maestro handles this sort of trick automatically or not...

In a thread a while ago, someone talked about how Maestro automatically did some of that subpicture resizing for you and how Scenarist was a bear to use in that [and many other] regards.

***EDIT*** No SPRM check needed, the player automatically displays the correct subpicture.

Sorry I can't be of more help...

Dan

[Zeppeliner]

I recently did a menu in Maestro which I wanted to be 16:9 on 16:9 sets and 4:3 on 4:3 sets, using Pan&Scan. I made the content in widescreen res (1024x576 pal for true proportions) but using a background template so that all the actual menu content (buttons) would be within a 4:3 field (768x576). I ofcourse encoded it to be 720x576. In Maestro I set it as a 16:9 menu, in project options I set the menu(s) to be forced to pan&scan (don't have Maestro right here on this computer but I think that's where it was)

[auenf]

Originally posted by dopef1sh
I've gotten all my art ready and I fired up my copy of Maestro, only to discover, you can't seem to add multiple subpictures (to allow the separate overlays needed for 16x9 and 4x3) to a single menu. Do I have to make a separate menu for each aspect ratio (seeing as how you can specify the aspect ratio of the menu), and, if so, how does the DVD player know which menu it should be using? (ie: do I have to specifically set up something or will maestro somehow 'make it work' behind the scenes?)

in Menu mode, Maestro automatically creates the subpics for the other aspects, but in button over video mode, you can specify more than one subpicture:
http://www9.brinkster.com/sportschook/?subpicaspect.jpg

Enf...

[dopef1sh]

Thanks guys.

Apparently maestro autoMagically™ makes 16x9 menus work correctly on 4x3 tvs with the 'Force to Pan and Scan' option. All this fuss over nothin' =)

[Jestorius]

take a look at the www.mediachance.com 's DVD Menu Studio software. I guess it can solve a lot of those menu creations problems.