Strange Bezier Mask Behavior

cworld29 wrote on 10/29/2004, 12:11 PM
DVDA 2 latest build

I have created an MPEG for my main menu back ground. I used bezier masking during the creation of this MPEG to mask out some people in motion over a .PNG background that includes all of the link text. No matter what I have tried this video looks like crap in the final rendered DVD files viewing them both in a software player and after burning them and playing them in a few set top players.

Along the edge of the mask and also along the edges of any text added to the background .PNG there is horizontal banding, blockiness etc..

I have made some test projects using this back ground media to see if I could isolate it. What is interesting is that if I make a project using this MPEG as the background then add the same MPEG as an event, it will play fine as the project video. Go back to the menu and the same video looks like crap.

So what is DVDA doing to this clip when set as a background that it doesn't do to clips that are video events?

Comments

ScottW wrote on 10/29/2004, 12:30 PM
If you have anything on your menu, then DVDA will recompress the mpeg.

--Scott
GaryKleiner wrote on 10/29/2004, 4:21 PM
>>If you have anything on your menu, then DVDA will recompress the mpeg.<<

That was true of DVDA1, but DVDA2 is not supposed to.


I am Gary Kleiner, and I approved this message.
cworld29 wrote on 10/29/2004, 5:49 PM
I figured it might be my mask overlay for the menu page so I set up another menu without any buttons test or overlays, just the MPEG running in the back ground and I get the same results.

I also rendered to .AVI and let DVDA compress it while creating the DVD files. This actually helped a little bit. A noticeable improvement. So maybe the truth is that DVDA 2 is re-rendering the menus.

Now I'm ripping all the text off my .PNGs and will just do it in DVDA. Hopefully I can get these menus to look a little better. I spent a LOT of time masking these clips. I would hate to have to throw them out.

Thanks for the replies, by the way, I am about 3 hours into your DVDs Gary. I got them on Tuesday, looks like they will end up being worth the wait.
ScottW wrote on 10/29/2004, 6:24 PM
I ran a test with 2.0 earlier before I posted that message. If there was *anything* on the menu besides the background video, DVDA recompressed.
ScottW wrote on 10/29/2004, 6:26 PM
You might want to consider downloading the trial version of DVD Lab Pro and seeing how it does with this.

--Scott
bStro wrote on 10/31/2004, 1:41 AM
>>If you have anything on your menu, then DVDA will recompress the mpeg.<<

Why not? If you add text and / or images to your menu, then DVDA has to combine the new material with the background to create the final menu, right? If your background is an MPEG, how could DVDA possibly do that without recompressing?

Rob
cworld29 wrote on 11/1/2004, 9:29 AM
Good point. I noticed over the weekend that during file creation it does say that it is rendering the menus. Coupled with the fact that feeding it AVIs improves the results leads me to believe that using MPEGs for menus may not get us the results we would like when there is video involved.

I do not recall anyone nailing down the default settings DVDA uses when rendering to MPEG but in this case it looks like garbage. It would be nice to have a little more control over this in the future.
cworld29 wrote on 11/2/2004, 6:30 PM
I have rendered my menus as DV NTSC AVI. at HIGH quality and let DVDA render them. This gives me much better results.