Sizing Tool Border Adjustment?

BillyBoy wrote on 11/13/2003, 9:46 AM
When you first drag a file into the work area or click on a object with the sizing tool the border drawn with the handles always is far beyond the actual limits of what you clicked on. Anyone fine some adjustment or setting to control this?

I'm not talking about sizing the thumbnail itself, that's easy to do, rather controlling the size of box that surrounds it. Its way too crude.

Comments

Udi wrote on 11/13/2003, 10:10 AM
I think the size is a few pixels (fixed number) bigger than the shape (text or icon). The size is based on the icon shape WITHOUT the object frame.
This might be the proble, if the frame is smaller, the box size remain the same and the icon looks much smaller.

Hope it helps,

Udi
BillyBoy wrote on 11/13/2003, 12:05 PM
Actaully its MUCH more than a few pixels. I could live with the border only being a few pixels beyond the actual image. Here is how I tested, I'm curious if others see the same thing or maybe I messed some setting up. My display is set to 1280x1024

1. I drag a video source to the DVD-A workspace. I do NOT touch it other than this dragging it there and letting go.

2. I use a screen capture utility to take a snapshot of a portion of the work area including the sizing box and thumbnail inside it.

3. I open in Photoshop so I can use the information window to see the difference between where the actual video border ends verses where the placehold border drawn by the resizing tool begins. Photoshop is very accurace in this regard where you can zoom in and very precisely positon tools, for example the eye dropper then get a accurate readout of the true X, Y positon you are at within the image.

The different between when the top edge of the thumbnail ends and the bottom edge of the bottom of the sizing tool boundy box is a ridiculous 174 pixels! That's insane. There's no reason for the border to be so far beyond the actual image
Udi wrote on 11/13/2003, 12:47 PM
Before transferring to Photoshop, remove the frame from the object - in the object tab, clear the frame checkbox - and than check the size.

Udi
BillyBoy wrote on 11/13/2003, 1:37 PM
Your not following. I'm not doing anything to it in Photoshop except for checking how far the border is from the image. This kind of issue becomes more a problem when you're using smaller thumbnails and have far less wiggle room to work with

In such a situation the placeholders can overlap and interfer with each other so that in a worse case condition clicking on thumbnail A if it overlaps B could result in B being triggered as oppossed to the correct A.

kameronj wrote on 11/13/2003, 1:50 PM
BB...I know exactly what you are saying.

I don't like this little feature either. I always have to resize everything. That pretty much sux.

I don't think there is a feature to turn this off (or down), but I'm not in front of my PC with DVDA on it. When I get there, I'll take a quick hunt for a fix -but I wouldn't hold my breath on it if I were in your shoes.

Ciao for now
kameronj wrote on 11/13/2003, 8:09 PM
Billy....it is sort of what you are looking for - but not quite.

I found the "maintain aspect ration" button - right under the menu where you change the text (bold, italics, font, etc) It is by where you can set the peramiters by numbers.

When I unclicked this box, the text took on the shape of the entire box. Then stays inside the box when having to resize.

Not exaclty what you are looking for but it is a start.
Udi wrote on 11/14/2003, 12:41 AM
BB,

My point is - the thumbnail you see is a framed - there is an option to specify the frame type on the object tab.
If you remove the frame, you will see the actual size of the thumbnail.

The frame is masking the object and make it a lot smaller, unfortunatley, dvda calculate the box based on the total size of the object, not the visible size of the frame-mask. For example, the default button mask has 12.5% mask area aroud the visible size (which means that 25% of the object is masked!).

I know it does not solve the problem.
You can try to create your own frame or remove the frame.

Udi
kameronj wrote on 11/14/2003, 7:10 AM
BB....I really don't think that Udi is grasping the issue.

The "maintain aspect ration" works the same way for text objects as does image thumbnails - but there is still an "internal margin" that can't be gotten around (as best I can tell).
BillyBoy wrote on 11/14/2003, 9:14 AM
For sure its an interesting "feature" of version one. Let me provide more details as to why this is bad.

Because the object boundry (the white box with handles that surrounds objects) extends so far beyond the actual limits of the object when using the sizing tool especially, when you select multiple objects they can overlap where they really shouldn't and you don't want them to forcing you to do a lot of manual andjustments you shouldn't need to defeating much of the purpose of the sizing tool.

When they overlap, this can interfer with which object gets selected when clicked on during previewing or after the fact once you burn a DVD. It also can result in a slew of "warnings" that DVD-A nags about if you look at your project under the Optimize area.

Just to see what happends. I have deliberately ignored such warnings and went ahead to burn a DVD that had overlaping object boundries, just to see what the result would be on my set top player.

For example visualaize a menu page with a simple non linked text title across the top with two rows of thumbnails below. Even if one or more of the thumbnails below extends into the boundry of the title above it doe not interfer with you being able to click anywhere within the range of where the thumbnail objects below may overlap the title boundry. This would be expected.

However if any of the clickable thumbnail objects have overlaping boundries, this can result in a situation where you click on object "B" and because object's "A" boundry extends so far beyond its true size the result can be it interfers with "B" and even though you really intended to click "B", the result is "A" gets triggered if you click far enought to the left edge of "B" that "A" boundry (which you of course can't see) is extended on it's right size into "B's" space. THAT is why I brought up the original topic, that the boundry box extends too far beyond the object within and there seems to be no way to adjust it.

Normally of course with regular spacing it isn't a problem. However when space is tight this for sure can be a big annoyance forcing you to alter your design to avoid the problem I just explained.