Poor menu background video

VA_Buckeye wrote on 8/5/2006, 12:59 PM
I created a slideshow from still photos and inserted it as background video on my menu. I noticed the pictures are a bit blocky and pixelated. I read through some post about reducing the flicker, compressing photos prior to insertion into Vegas, etc. but none of these worked. But here's the kicker, I ran a test and inserted the same video as a media in my menu. When the video runs as my background it is blocky but when I select the video from my menu it looks great....SAME VIDEO! I did notice that when I paused the video (good one) it appeared blocky just like the background video.

Bottom line: How can the same video file appear great and poor on the same DVD and how can I fix this problem?

Using DVDA 3.0.

Allen

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/5/2006, 1:57 PM
Did you render it to MPEG to use it as the background? This could be the problem. DVDA has to add your menu on top of the video and rerender it. That would involve an MPEG to MPEG render which is nearly guaranteed to give poor results. You should always use an AVI file for video backgrounds behind menus and titles.
VA_Buckeye wrote on 8/5/2006, 3:49 PM
I originally rendered it as a MPEG. I just tried you suggestion with no success.
plasmavideo wrote on 8/7/2006, 1:21 PM
Contrary to some of the recommendations in the manual, I always turn off progressive rendering and flicker reduction for the menus, especially if I'm using a video as the background. In my case, it improves the look immensely.

I tend to stay away from thin lined fonts to minimize flicker, and therefore I don't turn the anti-flicker filter on.

If I use a still in the background, sometimes I use a tiny bit of gaussian blur on the still before bringing it into DVDA to minimize flicker. I also make absolutely certain the still has been made NTSC legal and then some.

Try turning off progressive render in the preferences and the flicker reduction in the menu settings and see if that helps. I know tthe progressive render is supposed to help some DVD players menu presentation, but so far I haven't found a problem.