Pan & Scan display mode means the DVD player crops or cuts the sides off of a 16:9 picture and displays the result full screen on a 4:3 TV. The picture still has the same proportions as the original, unlike fill mode (used by some players) that distorts a 16:9 picture to fit a 4:3 screen. Filling the screen on both 16:9 and 4:3 displays might be preferred artistically, or perhaps a more practical matter for something like an educational project.
Pan & Scan causes problems with menus however… DVDs have an overlay track for the button highlights, and this does not get altered by the pan&scan process. A 16:9, retail movie DVD will normally have 3 sub-picture streams making up the button highlight track — 1 for 16:9, 1 for letterbox, and 1 for pan&scan — so that button highlights appear where they should.
For a 16:9 project DVDA creates two sub-picture streams — 1 for 16:9 and 1 for letterbox — so in pan&scan display mode button highlights will be in the wrong places; however it’s not as bad as it might seem… A DVD has _MAT tables that list the allowed display modes for menus, and DVDA does not include pan&scan with 16:9 menus. As long as the player obeys this restriction, there can’t be a problem with pan&scan buttons not lining up.
That said, the “Automatic Display Modes” in the _MAT tables can be edited in IfoEdit very easily, and it is indeed possible to create pan&scan menus in DVDA. Please remember though that they won’t look right in any other mode, so you want to take whatever steps (i.e. scripting etc) to make sure that they only show up when a player is set to pan&scan. It is extra work, whether you’re creating separate menus in DVDA or a pan&scan sub-picture stream in high end software like Scenarist, and of course you have to decide if it’s worth it.
If you want to provide both 16:9 and 4:3 menus without distortion, supplying a second set of menus is still perhaps the best way, since you don’t have to rely on the viewer’s player being set to pan&scan mode. But, using DVDA, providing pan&scan menus is less work.
The menu background is the easiest part: just make sure the important parts of the menu are in the center 720 pixel width. It also works to import a 4:3 image or video, selecting the letterbox display option in media properties — be warned that DVDA will re-render if you do this. The highlight mask is what’s tricky, as you’ll deliberately place highlights away from any buttons. [Please Note: the image or frame sizes provided are for NTSC only, since I don’t have PAL TVs to verify that it works as planned.]
Pan & Scan Highlight placement relies on using image editing software to distort the frame for temporary button graphics and/or masks. Since button areas and highlights will not line up with the final menu background in DVDA’s preview window, a temporary background graphic can be useful for placing your buttons and/or the button areas.
Starting with a 16:9 or 4:3 image [873 or 720 X 480], the frame has to be first cropped, then enlarged, so that when a DVD player distorts the sub-picture by performing pan&scan, everything matches. The width should be cropped to either 654 [16:9] or 540 [720 or 4:3 frame]; the easiest way to do this is by resizing the canvas. The result should then be re-sampled, enlarging the frame back to it’s original size [873 or 720].
A simple example using Photoshop to create a button highlight mask would start with a still of your menu page background. Next you’d place text for buttons, leaving them on original layers and NOT rasterizing. Save As to get a PNG file for your menu background. Crop the image, then enlarge, to get the needed distortion, Save As to get a PNG to get a temporary background for button placement. Turn off display of the background layer so only the text is visible, merge the visible layers, load the text selection, and fill the selection with black. Save As to PNG gets you your Highlight Mask.
The same basic concept can be used for overlays in Vegas for motion menus, for graphics instead of text, and hopefully anything your creativity can come up with — the only critical part is the dimensions for the crop and enlarge.
To optionally check your work before burning to DVD, you can use DVDSubEdit… Load the VOB file with your menus [DVDA uses VTS_01_0.VOB], moving the slider under the video window to show your pan&scan menu. [Please Note: you’ll see 2 of them – you want the first one]. In the Drop-Down box on the left below the video window, select Pan & Scan, then move the slider all the way to the right under “SubPic Color/Transparency”. You’ll see your highlights, and the green boxes for the button coordinates — if everything went right both line up. If you need to do a bit of tweaking in DVDA, it’s often painless since only changes are re-rendered, and if you just adjusted the button bounding boxes for example, it might take a minute or less.
The last step once you’re satisfied, is to edit the menu IFO file [for DVDA VTS_01_0.IFO] to allow a DVD player to use pan&scan. Using IfoEdit open the Ifo file, select the *_MAT line in the top window, scroll down in the lower window, double clicking on the line: “Video attributes of VTSM_VOBS”. Check the box for auto pan&scan, and save.
Pan & Scan causes problems with menus however… DVDs have an overlay track for the button highlights, and this does not get altered by the pan&scan process. A 16:9, retail movie DVD will normally have 3 sub-picture streams making up the button highlight track — 1 for 16:9, 1 for letterbox, and 1 for pan&scan — so that button highlights appear where they should.
For a 16:9 project DVDA creates two sub-picture streams — 1 for 16:9 and 1 for letterbox — so in pan&scan display mode button highlights will be in the wrong places; however it’s not as bad as it might seem… A DVD has _MAT tables that list the allowed display modes for menus, and DVDA does not include pan&scan with 16:9 menus. As long as the player obeys this restriction, there can’t be a problem with pan&scan buttons not lining up.
That said, the “Automatic Display Modes” in the _MAT tables can be edited in IfoEdit very easily, and it is indeed possible to create pan&scan menus in DVDA. Please remember though that they won’t look right in any other mode, so you want to take whatever steps (i.e. scripting etc) to make sure that they only show up when a player is set to pan&scan. It is extra work, whether you’re creating separate menus in DVDA or a pan&scan sub-picture stream in high end software like Scenarist, and of course you have to decide if it’s worth it.
If you want to provide both 16:9 and 4:3 menus without distortion, supplying a second set of menus is still perhaps the best way, since you don’t have to rely on the viewer’s player being set to pan&scan mode. But, using DVDA, providing pan&scan menus is less work.
The menu background is the easiest part: just make sure the important parts of the menu are in the center 720 pixel width. It also works to import a 4:3 image or video, selecting the letterbox display option in media properties — be warned that DVDA will re-render if you do this. The highlight mask is what’s tricky, as you’ll deliberately place highlights away from any buttons. [Please Note: the image or frame sizes provided are for NTSC only, since I don’t have PAL TVs to verify that it works as planned.]
Pan & Scan Highlight placement relies on using image editing software to distort the frame for temporary button graphics and/or masks. Since button areas and highlights will not line up with the final menu background in DVDA’s preview window, a temporary background graphic can be useful for placing your buttons and/or the button areas.
Starting with a 16:9 or 4:3 image [873 or 720 X 480], the frame has to be first cropped, then enlarged, so that when a DVD player distorts the sub-picture by performing pan&scan, everything matches. The width should be cropped to either 654 [16:9] or 540 [720 or 4:3 frame]; the easiest way to do this is by resizing the canvas. The result should then be re-sampled, enlarging the frame back to it’s original size [873 or 720].
A simple example using Photoshop to create a button highlight mask would start with a still of your menu page background. Next you’d place text for buttons, leaving them on original layers and NOT rasterizing. Save As to get a PNG file for your menu background. Crop the image, then enlarge, to get the needed distortion, Save As to get a PNG to get a temporary background for button placement. Turn off display of the background layer so only the text is visible, merge the visible layers, load the text selection, and fill the selection with black. Save As to PNG gets you your Highlight Mask.
The same basic concept can be used for overlays in Vegas for motion menus, for graphics instead of text, and hopefully anything your creativity can come up with — the only critical part is the dimensions for the crop and enlarge.
To optionally check your work before burning to DVD, you can use DVDSubEdit… Load the VOB file with your menus [DVDA uses VTS_01_0.VOB], moving the slider under the video window to show your pan&scan menu. [Please Note: you’ll see 2 of them – you want the first one]. In the Drop-Down box on the left below the video window, select Pan & Scan, then move the slider all the way to the right under “SubPic Color/Transparency”. You’ll see your highlights, and the green boxes for the button coordinates — if everything went right both line up. If you need to do a bit of tweaking in DVDA, it’s often painless since only changes are re-rendered, and if you just adjusted the button bounding boxes for example, it might take a minute or less.
The last step once you’re satisfied, is to edit the menu IFO file [for DVDA VTS_01_0.IFO] to allow a DVD player to use pan&scan. Using IfoEdit open the Ifo file, select the *_MAT line in the top window, scroll down in the lower window, double clicking on the line: “Video attributes of VTSM_VOBS”. Check the box for auto pan&scan, and save.