DVDA motion menu text looks bad on DVD!

[James Binder]

I’ve created a motion background (rendered to mpeg2 out of Vegas) for my main menu that contains a slowly moving grid and some static text (title of the DVD). On top of that sits my two navigation buttons (created in DVDA) – both animated buttons of the video sections to which they lead.

Now then, the mpeg2 background looks fine in DVDA when previewed at ‘best’ (both the moving graphic and static text), but after creating a DVD and viewing on a television -- the TEXT looks horrible! It’s very jagged and fuzzy looking.

I did notice that when I begin the burn process, one of the first processes DVDA says it is executing is ‘rendering the menu.’ Does DVDA automatically re-render the entire menu, including the motion background – even if it is mpeg2 compliant?

I’m wondering if because I have motion buttons, it is automatically re-rendering the entire menu (including my motion menu) and not doing a very good job at it.

Or is there a setting somewhere I am missing to keep the quality of my motion menu background (that again contains text) at high quality?

Any thoughts would be appreciated –

Vegas 7.0d
DVDA 4.0

[David Jimerson]

It's possible that the text (or the detail of parts of the text) is too small for good reproduction on a TV. If there are parts of the letters which are smaller than two scan lines on a TV screen, you're going to get flickering and aliasing.

[Edward Troxel]

For your menus, always render from Vegas as DV-AVI as DVD A will recompress your menus. If you start with DV-AVI for the menu, it will simply be converted to MPEG2. If you start with MPEG2, it will be decompressed and recompressed back to MPEG2.

[Mike Kujbida]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but aren't you supposed to render menu item clips in progressive as opposed to interlaced?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

You do want menus as progressive.
My workflow for menus with motion buttons;
Render menu item in Vegas, to a 4:2:2 YUV format.
Import to DVD Architect
Create buttons/motion
Render/create project.

Starting with the higher resolution file assures you'll have a more clean menu when you're finished.

[James Binder]

Thanks all for the input –

I’ve taken the uncompressed AVI file created in After Effects and imported it back into DVDA – replacing the mpeg2 render.

Now here’s the new problem (when playing back on DVD player): My motion menu is 20 seconds long. The text within the motion menu (rendered as part of the AVI file, not DVDA text) looks great until :03 seconds, the it gets jagged/fuzzy looking until :13 seconds when it appears smooth and nice again. The menu is set to loop, so it happens over and over again – consistently as the exact same spot(s)…

Any thoughts –

Douglas: are you referring to static menu items? To be clear again, my trouble is with the text within my menu background created in After Effects, rendered to AVI uncompressed, then imported in DVDA. Note: the motion buttons (small active video buttons) and their corresponding labels I created in DVDA (which look fine).

Thanks again…

[David Jimerson]

It doesn't really need to be uncompressed. DV would be fine.

But how does the AVI look when played in Windows Media Player?

[James Binder]

David --

It looks great within windows media player or any other source player. The trouble is not with the avi file itself, but something that is happening after DVDA compresses it...

Hummm, again I wonder if all of the motion going on (the moving background avi combined with the active 'video motion' buttons) is too much to ask from DVDA's compression algorithm -- that is, in order to keep the text clean and smooth.

I know that when compressing for web, the image suffers when there is a lot of graphic movement (at variable bit rates). I wonder if that is what is going on here? I suppose I could make the buttons static and see if that helps the fuzzy text problem.

Still -- it's strange that it is only happening between :03 seconds and :13 seconds...!

[David Jimerson]

That IS odd . . . nothing immediately comes to mind as to what might cause that.

Try a re-render and see if the same thing comes up again.