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Author Topic: I don't like motion menus  (Read 2042 times)

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Offline dklein

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I don't like motion menus
« on: March 24, 2005, 10:31:12 PM »
They suck up a ton of space and...has anyone noticed that the video quality is not nearly as good?  Wondering if it's just TMPGDVD Author or all of them.  When I put some video in as a motion menu thing, it spends a ton of time rendering (I guess generating the file that overlays the menu on the video) and the video looks like it's only about half the resolution as the same piece of video without the menu (i.e. on the disc).

Did that make sense?  I used a song as the motion menu and it looks considerably worse in the menu than it does when you see it in the DVD.
KM 184 > V2 > R4
older recording gear: UA-5  / emagic A62 / laptop / JB3 / CSB / AD20 / Sharp MT-90 / Sony MDS-JE510
Playback: Pioneer DV-578 > Lucid DA 9624 >many funny little british boxes > Linn Isobarik PMS

Offline hyperplane

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Re: I don't like motion menus
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2005, 01:49:59 AM »
dumb question(s), but....

1- in your motion menu, is the video clip set to fill the *entire* background screen (720x480, or 720x576)? if so, it's not really a grand idea to do this (unless the original video is excellent quality to begin with).

in my own experience, after having authored a few hundred (yes, hundreds) DVDs, on the rare occasion when i do a menu with motion, i have the video clip fit on a small portion of the menu background. that way, even if it's not a great quality video (but in my situation it is, otherwise i wil not spend time on ultra-fancy menus), it still looks okay because the video clip only takes up one-fourth or less of the background screen.


2- from your post, it appears you're having TMPG DVD Author "render"/encode the motion menu... again, if you can use a different encoder, i'd definitely suggest it. on the DVD i just made, i used a 5 minute clip (full song), and encoded it at 4 MB/s (which is low for a DVD video bitrate), the size is right at 173 MB for that menu, and the quality is fantastic... of course, the original source was an excellent digital camcorder (masters > firewire > DV .AVI), and i used 10-pass encoding in CCE.

i don't know if TMPG DVD Author will let you simply import an already-encoded MPEG-2 video for the motion background (and not re-encode it), but if it will let you, definitely try it out. i'm sure you can get much better quality.

a similar thing had happened to me years ago when i was using Ulead DVD Workshop, and i had let it use its MPEG encoder to encode the background video. big mistake. MUCH better quality when i figured out how to import an already-encoded clip.

if you have Premiere or Vegas (or Final Cut, etc.), you can actually create the entire background for menus - complete with song titles, and then encode it to MPEG-2 (with nice quality). then with a decent authoring software, you can simply import that MPEG-2 video as the menu and add buttons or a subpicture (to highlight the song title text, for example).

Offline dklein

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Re: I don't like motion menus
« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2005, 11:17:55 AM »

dumb question(s), but....

1- in your motion menu, is the video clip set to fill the *entire* background screen (720x480, or 720x576)? if so, it's not really a grand idea to do this (unless the original video is excellent quality to begin with).


It did fill the entire screen but it's the same content as the actual DVD and the original quality is very good.  You can watch the clip on the menu and then jump to the same clip in the DVD.  The quality difference is shocking.

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2- from your post, it appears you're having TMPG DVD Author "render"/encode the motion menu... again, if you can use a different encoder, i'd definitely suggest it. on the DVD i just made, i used a 5 minute clip (full song), and encoded it at 4 MB/s (which is low for a DVD video bitrate), the size is right at 173 MB for that menu, and the quality is fantastic... of course, the original source was an excellent digital camcorder (masters > firewire > DV .AVI), and i used 10-pass encoding in CCE.

i don't know if TMPG DVD Author will let you simply import an already-encoded MPEG-2 video for the motion background (and not re-encode it), but if it will let you, definitely try it out. i'm sure you can get much better quality.


Actually, I did just that because when I attempted to use elemental streams for the menu, the simple interface would only let me choose the *.m2v so I ended up with a silent menu.  So I went back to the original, encoded the clip for the menu and muxed back to an MPEG-2 and selected that for the menu. 
But still, there is more going on here - it takes a much longer time for the authoring program to generate the VOB files (compared to no motion menu).  I assumed it was busy overlaying the menu text on the MPEG-2 menu clip.

Quote

a similar thing had happened to me years ago when i was using Ulead DVD Workshop, and i had let it use its MPEG encoder to encode the background video. big mistake. MUCH better quality when i figured out how to import an already-encoded clip.


Yeah, been there.  It sucks.

Quote

if you have Premiere or Vegas (or Final Cut, etc.), you can actually create the entire background for menus - complete with song titles, and then encode it to MPEG-2 (with nice quality). then with a decent authoring software, you can simply import that MPEG-2 video as the menu and add buttons or a subpicture (to highlight the song title text, for example).


That sounds like what I did except for the text part - I'll need some new software to do the button/subpicture tricks.

This project has tapped me out.  I think I'm gonna close it off with a static menu because I've already put stupid hours into it.  But I am interested in learning a few tricks for the next one.  We'll chat offline!
KM 184 > V2 > R4
older recording gear: UA-5  / emagic A62 / laptop / JB3 / CSB / AD20 / Sharp MT-90 / Sony MDS-JE510
Playback: Pioneer DV-578 > Lucid DA 9624 >many funny little british boxes > Linn Isobarik PMS

Offline NewHomebrew

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Re: I don't like motion menus
« Reply #3 on: July 03, 2005, 01:06:45 AM »
I think the problem is the DVD author program.

If you want to make a true "motion menu", you can build one as an mpeg in a program like Sony Vegas.  Place a background and overlay and resize whatever videoclips you want.  Then import that mpeg to a dvd authoring program (not TMPGEnc products) and add buttons as you like.  Quality will be much better.

 

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