Buttons have letterbox bars/ ?video in buttons

wjauch wrote on 8/29/2018, 4:09 PM

I am creating a 16:9 DVD/Bluray project with Menu buttons to select from 4 seperate short films on the disc. The actual video files were shot in a wider aspect ratio, 1:2.35. When I select a frame from the videos to be inside the button it appears letterboxed, with black bars top and bottom. I tried clicking around under button properties. Is there a way to fix this, make the button less tall to match or stretch the still frame?

A related question, under button properties on the right, under media there is "start time" which I use to select the frame for the button. Is there a hidden "end time" somewhere so that if I selected say 10 seconds apart a 10 second piece of the video would play inside the button?

I couldn't find answer in manual or via Google and I am not an experienced DVD architect user. I am using Sony DVD Architect 6.0 build 237 (I do have the a license of Magix DVD Architect from Vegas 15 available to install if that would help). Win 10 Home, i7 I think 6700, 16 GB RAM, Nvideo Geforce GTX 960m

Comments

Former user wrote on 8/29/2018, 5:19 PM

You can set the LENGTH of the MENU and the start time of the video within the buttons, but the LENGTH of the menu will affect all buttons on the menu. Meaning if you set it for 10 seconds, all button videos will loop after 10 seconds. You can't have one loop for 10 and another for 20. BUT you can build an MPEG file with the videos however you want them as the background on the MENU and make the buttons cover the Inserted video frames. This is how most Commercial videos are done.

The length of the MENU is set under general. The start time for each button video is set under each button videos properties.

Former user wrote on 8/29/2018, 5:28 PM

To answer your first question, right click on your video within the button and you can select CROP/ADJUST. This allows to change all kinds of parameters, including aspect and sizing, within the button.

wjauch wrote on 8/29/2018, 6:24 PM

Thank you David-Tu. This helped enormously. I changed the button properties from still to animate, nothing happened but when I went to preview the thumbnail played. Re the letterbox bar, is the best answer to just render a small 10 second snippet to 16:9 for each thumbnail?

 

wjauch wrote on 8/29/2018, 6:40 PM

Thank you. I did the right click on the button, and was going to crop adjust, somehow my finger slipped on my trackpad and seems to have moved this to a new "window" near top of program. I can close it from there, but even after resetting general preferences to default all, it shows up there again. How do I undo this so I can get back to pan crop in a way I can use it?

Nevermind, per Google Control/shift and start DVDA worked

 

 

Former user wrote on 8/29/2018, 6:46 PM

You should be able to left click on the those dots to the far left and move the window.

wjauch wrote on 8/29/2018, 7:43 PM

You should be able to left click on the those dots to the far left and move the window.

Thanks for the future, but I got it by resetting DVDA by holding both shift and control while starting. And thanks for all the help, I got 10 second loops in each button and got rid of the letterbox bars