just the two ring background in the templates, 1 picture and some text. The picture is only on 1/4 of the screen and there is only 1 button.

Didn't get that in the menu, but am getting it in part of the DVD. There's a part that is a video made in Vegas which is a series of graphs with a voice over, and it jitters. Almost looks like it jitters with the voice over or something, I don't think it is but it isn't completely continuous.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

The jitter you talk about is an unavoidable artifact that is caused by the interlacing in NTSC video (the type in the USA and Canada).

To avoid this problem, make any lines (like the lines around menus or graphs) a little thicker. If you look at professional titles on sports programs or news broadcasts, you will notice that the text is always thick, and the borders around objects are also thick. They are usually shaded as well. A little bit of shading can help quite a bit.

My backgrounds jitter as well using DVDA when I assign a pictue as a background. Really annoying. However I made it a habit when I was using DVDLab to insert the graphic onto the menu and then arrange it to the back. This effectively makes it a background and you can position it where you want so the sides and bottom aren't cut off because of the safe zone.

For my first DVD using DVDA I did the insert picture method and no jitters. But I just did a DVD where I assigned a picture as a background because I had an intro movie and wanted the last frame to also be my menu so when the movie stopped the menu would show and it would look like the movie froze and added the buttons. For this I had to use the background method in order for the last frame of the movie and the menu background to blend. This is when I noticed the jitters in the menu. I tried inserting the picture like I had done in my first DVD with DVDA and for whatever reason, the menu does not jitter.

So, it seems that assigning a picture will cause jitters, but inserting a picture and resizing it does not. Any clue as to why this is? I agree that it has something to do with interlacing maybe, but it is a still picture. I am tempted to almost use Vegas to make a 30sec clip of a still picture and loop it to see if that works.

Well, something occured to me after my reply that I decided to try. I remember having some wierd stuff happen to me in Movie Studio (before moving up to Vegas) and it had to do with the aspect ration. TV is a 4:3 aspect ratio, yet DVDs are typically 720x480 with is 4.5:3. I was making my background pictures at 720x480 to match the overall project. However, on a computer, 720x480 is not the same as on TV. TV can adjust 720x480 to a 4:3 ratio. So, I tried making my picture into 640x480 which is true 4:3 on a computer. This cut down on the jitter a lot. My guess is that DVDA is resizing the 720x480 because of the 'stretch to fit' option. I have not tried 'zoom to fit' to see if it is any better. Why isn't there a 'leave this alone, don't touch' option? I think the stretch to fit was forcing the 720x480 into a 640x480 format because it was sizing for the 4:3 ratio in the workspace, not the TV and this caused the rendered output to jitter.

Any comments?

I'm also annoyed by "the jitters" in my menus and thumbnails (even with progressive video clips.) It seems to be a re-sizing issue, since, for instance, video resized in Vegas as PIP has it but when played full screen it doesn't. Graphics from Vegas also jitter - even if the line width is thick. I wonder if changing the project properties settings might help (NTSC 720X480 vs. NTSC 704X480)?