DVD Menu Highlighting

[pxlclr2000]

Hi guys. I have a few questions regarding creating DVD menus in Scenarist. Thanks for any help in advance! :)

When I create a still menu, with a 4 bit color sub-picture (with corresponding highlight buttons), I notice all my buttons are jaggy (not antialiased). Is there a solution to this other than using Auto Action?

Also when I do auto action? Do I just put all the images with Auto Actions under the "Language" folder? or do I need a dummy PGC to link to it?

Also if I were to create still menus in Photoshop for use in Scenarist, what color depth and dimension should I use for NTSC?

Much thanks in advance!

[dan]

As usual, you guys who know more than I do, correct me where needed, as I've half-butted [not sure if the forum doesn't like the real word]to solve some of the issues that I've come across in authoring.

I'm assuming you're new to the DVD authoring game, so if you're not, feel free to say so and call me a idiot.

First question...
I guess you'd want auto action so that the viewer wouldn't see the "ugly" jaggies? This actually shouldn't be too much of a problem unless your buttons have extremely [extremely] thin sections. A regular TV's resolution is low enough that it'll look fine, so you can use the traditional 'highlight and select' navigation set-up.

Second question...
I'm not totally sure what you mean...but here's the best I can do...[I'm assuming you mean menu screens when you say images]...I do it by putting each menu screen as a pgc within a language folder...[drag the track that has the background and the subpicture into the language folder] and link from there [see the Scenarist guide]....you could also drag the track into the PGC of the main menu screen. [I think....correct me at will if necessary.]

Question 3...
For fullscreen menus, make the image 720 x 480, any color depth you want [not sure if there's a reason to not use the highest]. Save as something that isn't compressed [i.e. bitmap or .tif if you're overly worried about compression artifacts, but a high quality JPEG will take the MPEG2 compression just fine. But, if space isn't an issue (what's 1 mb when you're working on a DVD?), keep oit uncompressed for peace of mind.
For widescreen menus, use 853 x 480. [that's (16/9)*480].

The "right" way to build the menus is at 720 x 534 [I think] then resize them in photoshop to 720 x 480 to compensate for the minor aspect ratio difference between a computer monitor and a TV, but that's up to you. I haven't come across this before, but for widescreen menus, I do believe you'd want 853 x 534, then resize them to 853 x 480 so that they look correct on a TV.

Hopefully this'll help. I don't mean to sound rude at all, but some of the questions you asked are covered in
the guides (http://www.doom9.org/guides.htm). Maybe you just stumbled in here and didn't realize they're there, but there's a boatload of information in them about this sort of stuff.

Dan

[again, you guys who know more, correct me at will]