sizing media in menu buttons

klimvid wrote on 3/16/2005, 4:54 PM
When I select media to play in my animated menu buttons, the media is too big, by that I mean that the image extends way beyond the "safe" area that showed in the preview screen in Vegas5.
Thus, I'm getting stuff around the edges that I don't want.

Is there a way to zoom in on the media showing in the menue buttons in order to cut off the edges?

I rendered to mpeg2 in Vegas5 using default template, is there another template I should be using so the media is cropped to the safe area?

klimvid

Comments

bStro wrote on 3/17/2005, 6:10 AM
The safe area is just a guide. It doesn't indicate what you'll see, it indicates what you'll probably see on a standard television. (Standard televisions obscure the outer edges of the video because the tube being projected onto is surrounded by the TV's casing -- it's all there, you just can't see it.)

Your TV shows what it can. The button thumbnails show everything (depending on which frames you use on them). So, if you "crop to the safe area," you're still going to have the same issue because each display (TV vs. Thumbnail) is going to behave just as it did before. Only this time, Vegas will have to resize your media so that it's the proper size for television. What you cropped will be gone, and part of what used to be in the safe area will be outside the safe area. Besides which, cropping a whole video is going to take a long time and possibly have an effect on its quality since you're essentially "blowing it up."

Does this make any sense to you?

Personally, I wouldn't worry about it. So the thumbnail shows more than the media (on most TVs -- advanced televisions and computers show the whole thing). Big deal.

If it really bothers you, though, there are two solutions much better than cropping your video:

A. Use a frame for your buttons. The default theme shows the entire area of the media as a thumbnail. Use the Buttons window to find a button with a frame that you like -- most of them "crop" the thumbnail for you right in DVDA.

Or:

B. Drag your media into Vegas to make your own individual video clips to use as thumbnails. Edit them to a reasonable length (10 - 30 seconds), crop them as you like, and render them to files at a framesize suitable for thumbnails (the default 720 is way too big -- try 90x60 or 120x80. This way you can have thumbnails look as you want, but you won't bother the original media. Make note of where you saved these files, and change your thumbnails' properties in DVDA to point to these instead of to the main media file.

Option A would be simpler, but go with option B if you don't want frames around your thumbnails.

Rob
klimvid wrote on 3/17/2005, 9:04 AM
Thanks for the good info. I went ahead and cropped and rendered separate images for the buttons, as you suggested. Didn't take that long and works fine.
bStro wrote on 3/17/2005, 9:22 AM
Glad it worked out for you. I've never actually used that method (I think of a lot of things that I never actually implement myself) -- I usually just use text buttons. But what I like about that method, should I ever use it, is that it gives you more control over your animated thumbnails. You can use just the bits of video you want, you can apply FX, do whatever you want to personalize it. Makes your project much more unique than just doing what the DVD authoring app will allow you to do.

Rob