Visualising DVDA masks in PS

farss wrote on 2/1/2006, 4:26 AM
I've been creating some OK looking highlight masks for DVDA so I end up with the "cursor" look in my DVDA menus. Managed with much fiddling around to get some good results but I feel i should be able to make the process much easier, at the moment it's all a bit hit and miss. Here's my problem.

The DVD spec permits overlays of only 4 bits and DVDA maps either intensity, color or transparency to the specified color set. Now when I create the highlight mask in say PS I'd like to be able to see how it's going to look with the mapping in DVDA, at the moment I'm sort of guessing say a greyscale design in PS, taking the mask into DVDA, fiddling with the color sets and if I cannot get it to look right going back into PS, very tedious work. Anyone know of a way to emulate how it'll look within PS?
Should mention I only have PS6.
Just to perhaps explain a bit better. I take a still photo, comvert to greyscale and then use Levels in PS along with the Histogram to sort of make certain that I've got something in each region that DVDA maps from but even if I could just get PS to show that part of the greyscale image that's in the upper 1/4 of the range would be a start.
Bob.

Comments

jkrepner wrote on 2/1/2006, 7:57 AM
Not sure I follow you all the way, Bob. I've just started using PS6 to make highlight masks for DVDA and the problem I run into is that DVDA treats each PS layer as being square even though the highlight I want is just a small shape within that square. I wish I had a screen grab of the project I'm working on to describe my issue, but I'll explain it anyway.

I make a motion background with text (that will eventually serve as buttons in DVDA) in Vegas. I go into DVDA and grab a snap shot of the background with the text. I open PS and paste the image and then create layers on top of the background that I create my masks on. In this case, I have a human skull on the left side of the frame and I have three lines that run over to the right that point to the text. I'm going for that human anatomy look and the text and pointer lines serve as descriptions of the skull.

My idea was to create a highlight mask of the text and it's corresponding line and the corresponding part of the skull that it describes. It goes great in PS, but back in DVDA - it starts to get odd. I obviously keep both PS and DVDA open to bounce back and forth to see the before and after. Sometimes things don't really update all that well so I tend to do a "save as" in PS then reopen it in DVDA to see how the masks look. The problem I have is that my skull and my text are organic shaped and DVDA treats all of the highlight layers as square. Since my skull is large and the text is over to the right and sort of close together, I can't make a highlight mask without touching the button directly above or below it. It's super frustrating and I bagged the who highlight mask on skull concepts and just made some little read Xs to show which button in highlighted.

Not sure this helped Bob, and sorry for the long rambling post, but I had a late night dealing with this. Any thoughts are welcomed as always.
farss wrote on 2/1/2006, 1:41 PM
I think if you make the mask the size of the entire frame will solve your problem.
Bob.
busterkeaton wrote on 2/1/2006, 1:58 PM
for DVDA, what size is the entire frame? The size of a frame of video?
jkrepner wrote on 2/1/2006, 2:23 PM
It's in the manual, I think NTSC is 655 x 480 for creating a menu in separate paint program.

Bob, I'll try your suggestion, but I remember that when I tried that *I think* that I couldn't navigate correctly, or the other highlight masks remained highlighted. I'll try it again.

Edit:
4:3 NTSC (720x480) is 655x480 .9091 aspect ratio
4:3 PAL (720x576) is 787x576 1.0926
Steve Mann wrote on 2/1/2006, 11:49 PM
From what I can determine, DVDA remaps the mask to fit the button - regardless of the size of the mask layer.

That is completely counterintuitive to using layers for the button, mask and highlights.

Steve Mann