I live in PAL land an haven't hit this problem as yet. Have you actually seen it happen or are you trying to prevent it from happening?

What I have seen happen is the highlights turn up much fainter on the TV / DVD player than they appear on DVDAs preview. Making them less transparent or using a different highlight style or color seems to cure this issue. But if they are simply not their then this is a different issue.

As a matter of interest if you are seeing it happen on a player and it's not the above does this player highlight the menu items correctly on a commercial DVD?

Farss, make a search with “highlight” in this forum and you will see it’s a know bug:
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=179544&Page=0&ms=1

Rosebud,
read right through it. I must say my confidence in DVDA has taken hit today.
I've just wasted hours on the File Size problem and now I read about this.

What really worries me is I see the Sony guys posting in the VV forum on a regular basis as does SPOT. DVDA is being ignored. I know everyone has been screaming for a flashier version of DVDA, I think they need to give some serious attention to getting what they've released to work right beofre adding more bells and whistles.

When you said it's a known bug I saw no aknowledgement from the Sony guys that they recognised it as a bug. I don't expect them to give away corporate secrets like what's in the next release but a few pages listing know bugs and expected fix dates would be mighty handy.

Searching the forums is no answer unless someone has found a workaround, being able to lookup known issues could save everyone a lot of time.

I have had this problem, did not know it was a DVDA issue though, I can stop scratching my head now I was getting splinters.

DVDA is crying out for an update - I've had enough and need to reach for my wallet and give some money to that other company which is somewhat annoying.

What do you bet the answer will be around the corner which is even more annoying.

PAW

This problem concerns *several* DVD players, mostly the low cost ones such as LG. It's already known because it's been over 5 months people talk about it ! There's nohting to prove again. This is a bug of DVD architect and nothing else. And yes, of course the commercial DVD work on them.

Again yersterday, i did my tests on a LG and the highlight didn't work if the menu was in 4/3. However, in 16/9, it does work. But as i said, i want an entire DVD in 4/3.

no answers from SONY ?

Nope. Do they read the forum at least ??

Please send the .veg file for your problem project to: MD-sonicEPM@sonypictures.com.

Please also include the DVDA version #, DVD player models you are testing with, monitors you are viewing on.

Thanks for you reply. I will send you this.

SonyEPM,
This problem has been discussed in numerous threads on this forum. In brief it only affects some DVD players playing PAL DVDs. Sorry I cannot add more to this than that as I haven't struck this specific issue myself but a quick search through this forum will find quite a few unhappy customers from the world of PAL.

If you are interested, another more serious issue exists with DVDA incorrectly calculating file size. That in itself isn't the problem but associated with it it then attempts to re-encode everything but never seems to comlete.

I've only had this happen when I was at 97% capacity with ac3 audio on everything and then added a scene selection menu using the markers in the mpeg file rendred in VV.

Optimise reported that there were now 4 instances of the ac3 file, there was 3 scenes to the single file on the DVD. Removing the scene selection menu didn't clear the problem. Removing and re-inserting the file did.

Let me add it concerns PAL projects in 4/3 only. It does work in PAL 16/9 and NTSC 4/3 & 16/9. And yes, as we said, it concerns some DVD players, the low costs ones in particular : LG, Daewoo, Sharp were reported. LG is the most mentionned.

By the way, i just received an email from Oscar who is the author of DVDlab (http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/), another authoring software that has also the exact same bug. He hasn't found the solution yet.

SonyEPM, just email him : oscar@mediachance.com and you'll see. In this forum, the bug is reported since May ! You should be aware of it and reckon it's a known bug.

This could be a nightmare to track down I guess.
Obviously there's a way to make it work that the high priced authoring packages have solved.

In all fairness to Sony there is a huge list of features in commercial DVDs that don't work on some players, seamless branching is one that comes to mind. Used in conjunction with parental control.

Ooops maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that or someone will try to get that feature into the next release of DVDA :)

For the record I have had the problem with PAL 16:9 DVD's not just 4:3

PAW

up...

Apparently LG dvd players are the worst culprit for this kind of thing I was so shocked to see this happen to one of my DVDs at a friends recently the menus worked but the hi-light couldnt be seen

Other DVD authoring programs use different maths to compile their respective projects, no 2 authoring programs are the same in this approach i.e photoshop and paint shop pro both do images but in completely different ways to render say Jpegs.

I can confirm the LG 3200E problem (PAL) with my home machine no highlights, the cheapo DVD players shows them no problem.

BUT

I had the same sometime ago, I forgot to set it on the menu page, after I did it the hightlihght worked on the LG and cheapo, so not sure what I did.
Must be sommething you have to do, but appears random.