Bob, I am aware of that - but the Activated Button colour set is reported by DVDA to be the Color Set 2, and I don't see Yellow in the Color Set 2 definitions (all the colours being identical to that of the Set 1 colours)

NB. : I have selected Mode: Blend Colours after manually adjusting the Set 1's Fill colour to faint red.

Have you checked color set 2 for the page on which the buttons appear?

All these settings can be page specific I think, check everything, it does work correctly but you have to look carefully.

Bob.

OK, so I have - in the Menu Page Properties "General" tab - assigned both Selected and Activated buttons colors to the Color Set 1, leaving Inactive button colors as None.

In the Color sets tab, I have set the fill color to 160, 50, 0, 255 to achieve a pastel reddish brown colour of selected buttons (those not selected are dark white). This works great with my DVDA preview - but not from a standalone player on an SD TV :(

When I navigate with a pilot button to one of my menu buttons, it doesn't change to the nice brownish and solid color, some bright (white?) pixels show through it, making the small lettering illegible.

I'm after a very simple, elegant look without any 3D effects, animation and alike - just do I do get a solid colour of my choice for those selected buttons (all my button styles are text only). Oh, and one more infor - in the color sets' definitions, I have Blend colors mode ON.

Any further advice appreciated.

Piotr

I've found that using changed text colours for highlighting can produce varying results on different screens, making it hard sometimes to see which button is highlighted, so generally I stick with Underline as my highlight method.

There are I know some impressive effects possible by creating your own highlight masks - I've never got into these, but if a client specifically asked, I would.

It would seem that the best way to do this is as per recommended in several places, use Photoshop to build the menus and buttons using layers, what you see should be what you get. I haven't ever found the need to go to that much trouble for the inelegant but functional DVD menus that I create. If I was I'd probably go the whole hog and use Encore.
So much to learn, so little time.

Bob.

I shoot and edit mainly wedding videos and after lots of experimenting, I came to the same conclusion as Peter - underline in a suitable colour is the safest way to go (must be something in the water over here in Oz!)

You do need to watch that your text box isn't any larger than necessary though because the underline highlight is matched to the width of that box, not the text it contains.

Wayne

My situation is that:

- I must make and hand over the master today, and even have Photoshop
- my producer doesn't like underlines; he wants text highlighting

Can someone explain to me why the highlighted button text looks fine in DVDA preview, but the color isn't solid on an SD TV? Is it caused by too small letters on a low res TV?

How would you modify my scheme outlined in previous posts, so that no fancy effects (like outlining, etc) take place, but a white text simply turns dark-red when highlighted?

What is the difference between Mask Overlay, and Text mask overlay (I'm currently using the former)?

Would "Reduce interlace flicker" help obtain cllean highlighted text?

PS. I just further inspected the highlighting on my fullHD 50" plasma, and it looks like the ugly effects are here too, so it's not the resolution problem. It seems that no matter what, DVDA tries to add a "3D" look to the highlighted text, which is causing the outline/shadow pixels leak into the fill colour.

How do I force it to stay "2D", so that the fill colour just changes but no outline is applied?

"How would you modify my scheme outlined in previous posts, so that no fancy effects (like outlining, etc) take place, but a white text simply turns dark-red when highlighted?"

IF the menu item is only text then switch the Highlight to Text Mask Overlay. Adjusting your Highlight Colorset should get you there.
HOWEVER if you have say text in a button you need to go outside DVDA to build a highlight mask that will make the highlight color only be applied to the text.

As your deadline is now very close I'd strongly suggest this is not a good time to be trying to fathom the complexities of DVDA. Keep it simple, you can make a prefectly acceptable DVD menu without getting yourself in a knot. People buy a DVD to watch the content, not the menus. Push yourself too hard at this point and trust me, Murphy will get ya.

Bob.

Bob,

It is just above my means why - when previewing from DVDA - my text (yes, I only use text buttons) looks OK when highlighted, while after saving the DVD iso image and playing from that using Nero, on the same screen, the same text adopts this pathetic 3D look, which is ugly even on the HD screen...

How to get rid of it (in preview, I don't see any difference between Text mask overlay, and mask overlay...

Y'know I've been reading and re-reading this thread and I have to say I feel for you mate! I have had some of the best support from this forum on the ins and outs of DVDA manipulation and I just don;t get it.

My thoughts are that DVDA is a valuable and value adding tool. But to actually get to its virtues? It requires the seduction powers of a latter-day Casanova!

As you are finding out, it is ALL there, but getting at it?

DVDA should have the User transparency of Vegas. It's when the yardstick is Vegas is when I have my particular angst. Now, an external Safe Area overlay in DVDA is NOT available in VEgas! That's a reverse of this issue.

But I have a long list, and none of this is helping you, other than to say, IMO, it is not user friendly at the point you need it to be.

When you have a "quiet" moment send an email to SONY? Please?

Grazie

Your problem in part is due I think to chroma sampling. What you see in the DVDA preview screen menu wise is before it's encoded to mpeg-2's 4:2:0 chroma sampling. Once it's encoded and you display it the colors loose resolution. That's why you need to keep your highlights especially subtle. Deep reds will really bring you unstuck. You could also try turning on Reduce Interlace Flicker for the page. That will apart from anything else slightly blur the page, that can help reduce the problem slightly, maybe.
Your best bet is to keep the highlights subtle with plenty of transparency so you get plenty of blending.

Bob.

I also have another problem:

The printing house needs the master image along with the checksum, In DVDA master output folder, there is the MAIN.DAT file (judging from its size, it's my image), and the CONTROL.DAT file (judging from its name, it's my checksum file). I opened the latter, and what I can see is different than the checksum I generate from MAIN.DAT using freeware utility winMd5Sum; which do I hand over for printing?

I don't have a clue and I've never been asked for any of this nor a master on tape. I'd hazard a guess though that as there's no way to know if the two checksumming methods are the same, go with the one DVDA created, hopefully whoever wrote DVDA has a clue. There's a lot of people mastering with DVDA inc going to tape so I'd say there isn't a bug in the checksum.

Bob.

"Your problem in part is due I think to chroma sampling. What you see in the DVDA preview screen menu wise is before it's encoded to mpeg-2's 4:2:0 chroma sampling"

Bob, this statement has convinced me that I can't do much better than what I have now; thanks.

Looks like I' done with my first, commercial DVD. Please keep your fingers crossed for me :)

Piotr

Congratulations Piotr - I've felt you agonising over so many aspects, but I bet it's a good product.

Now you can relax - next one will be much easier.

"Now you can relax - next one will be much easier. "

Please not another one, my ticker couldn't take it :)

A few tips for next time.

DVDA will drive an external monitor so you can watch as you work. I find this a big help. Use any of the usual firewire D/A converters. Connect it via composite or S-Video to a monitor or el cheapo TV. You don't want to see how good it can look, you want to see how BAD it can look. If you can design the menu color schemes and highlights etc so they hold up OK under those conditions you know they can only get better under better conditions.

Avoid primary colors, especially as adjoining colors, they'll really fall apart. Browns, pink, orange and grey. Grey works really well. My horridly simple menu scheme:
Chunky typeface like Boombox, around 50% grey, aim for a metallic grey. Highlight using just enough white. Default blue background. I know, I know, I'm not going to win any awards for graphic design but for sports events menus once I add logos it simply works and it looks clean on anything.

Bob.

DVDA will drive an external monitor so you can watch as you work. I find this a big help. Use any of the usual firewire D/A converters. Connect it via composite or S-Video to a monitor or el cheapo TV. You don't want to see how good it can look, you want to see how BAD it can look. If you can design the menu color schemes and highlights etc so they hold up OK under those conditions you know they can only get better under better conditions

Bob, this is a very sound advice - to configure DVDA preview external monitoring in such a way that it shows the "worst scenario possible".

Now, I've been thinking: I'm using the same 50" HDTV plasma as with Vegas (connected via DVI->HDMI), but this of course acts as another PC monitor in this respect. I have recently bought the Manhattan LCD 10.9" field/studio monitor for my EX1; when not used in shooting, I could use it for additional monitoring (the small fonts that look great on a HDTV will look "worst" on a 10.9") - but how do I connect it to my system? It has Component and HDMI inputs (for HD), but also S-video and VGA. Is the firewire D/A conversion necessary to get the previewed picture exactly as it will appear on a SD TV, when playing my DVD back from a regular stand-alone player, or

- can I just connect it using DVI->VGA?

I'll give a tentative Yes to your question. Only because I know that my ADVC 300 or Digital 8 camcorder converting between firewire and composite video works and correctly. I could connect a hardware waveform monitor or vectoscope onto that composite video signal and I know I'm metering correctly. More to the point in your case this is the worst possible way anyone can connect a DVD player to a TV.

There's plenty of better ways, I've got one PC with a Decklink card and I can connect a $8K monitor to that. Problem is whilst that'd be great for color grading it will not show up how the image looks worst case when all the horrors of composite video connections introduce chroma smear and ringing.

You oftenly see a beaten up old TV next to the $50K precision monitor in a grading suite just like you'll see a pair of tinny car radio speakers in a recording / mixing studio. The trick, the art, is to get it to look good / sound good on both those monitoring devices.

Here's another input to consider. My cheapo TV that I use for monitoring at times will loose sync if my black levels are outside legal. My much better Sony monitor will not. You'll never get a computer monitor to loose sync as the sync signals aren't mixed in with the vision. Also computer monitors, LCDs and plasmas are unlikely to showup if the field order is reversed.

Bob.

One more "problem" of a DVDA novice:

Considering optimal player head movement, and which part of a physical DVD is the least / most error-prone:

- which is the optimum physical titles order on a DVD? Already after I've finished this project, I found the "Order titles" option in the DVDA "File" menu; it shows my main title (the concert itself) sitting there at the very beginning, and occupying the first 3.5 GB of it.

Is it the optimum placement, and if not, which is? Does one control it using the "Order titles" option (the Help files only mention using it with playlists)?

For your kind of DVD it isn't going to make much difference.
Where it does make a difference is if you've got a number of videos and he end action of 1 links to 2 and the end action of that links to 3 etc. In that scenario you want the videos physically on the disk in that order to minimise any delay as the players heads move.

Using the Order title option is a right pain and never quite seems to do what it should. For one project with 30 titles I must have rebuilt that project as many times as that was about the only way to get the titles in the right order i.e. add them in the order you want them on the disk. Make a mistake building the DVD and good luck getting Order Titles to actually order the titles. In THEORY you grab a title with the mouse and move it up/down the list.

Thankfully as I've since learned there's a better way to build a 'play all' / 'play each' DVD, phew.

Bob.

Thanks Bob. May you enlighten me where the first (in the Title order window) title really goes onto the DVD: the most "inside", or most "outside" area of the physical disk?

DVDs like audio CDs run from the inside. That's a very good reason why many don't fill a DVD to 100%.
The outer edge of the DVDis easily damaged from handling and is the first part of a RVD +/-R that goes bad during manufacture as the stamper wears out.

Bob.