DVD authoring will try any man's patience and decency. Could be a problem with the overlay graphic itself? Other than that I'm out of ideas. Been a while since I worked on DVDs.

On Oct 3, 2012 12:57 PM, "Jonathan Penzner" <sureal@charter.net> wrote:

Thanks for the reply, Teddy.

To answer the last question first: I use a square pixel file to create everything, then scale to 720 X 480 and flatten into a Photoshop Background.

The DVD plays exactly the same in a player as it does on the computer – some buttons showing up, others not. 

It would be nice if I could figure this out. I'd like to get some work done today. At least I've reached a stage of, what, maturity? jadedness? cynicism? that I stay relatively sane in these situations. 

Jonathan

On Oct 3, 2012, at 9:43 AM, Teddy Gage wrote:

A computer is not a good testbed dvd player. Too many variables with the software. What happens in an actual DVD player? And are you sure your menus are created using non-square pixels in PS?

On Oct 3, 2012 12:29 PM, "Jonathan Penzner" <sureal@charter.net> wrote:

Apologies for the off-topic, and for a Mac specific question as well, but perhaps the brain trust can help me out.

Working in DVDSPRO, ver 4

OS 10.6.8

Quicktime 7.6.6

MacPro Tower 3,1 and a MacBook Pro 8,3

DVD Player 5.4.2

Step 1 - I Create a menu in Photoshop. The text layers become buttons. Load the selections for the text layers. Save as an alpha channel. Reverse the alpha.

Step 2 - Save the flattened menu without the alpha in a 720 X 480 file. Save a separate flattened file of just the alpha. Also 720 X 480.

Step 3 - In DVDSPRO, import both files. Set the menu as the background. Set the file with the alpha channel as the overlay. Drag to create the buttons in order, covering the areas of the text and the corresponding alpha channel. There is no overlap on the areas covered by the buttons.

Step 4 - Import an M2V and audio file, drag to a track. Set the buttons to go to the track. Set the track to go back to the menu.

Step 5 - Test in Simulator and everything works perfectly. I can step through the buttons, they all highlight correctly, displaying all the states of all the buttons: normal, selected, activated.

Very simple stuff, and something I've been doing for ages. I don't think that I've anything different lately.

The problem is, when I test the build in the DVD player, or, if I burn a disk and put it in a player, the buttons don't show up correctly. Some buttons do not highlight in the active or selected state, but  play if you hit enter on the keyboard if you can figure out which button you're on. You can't select the unhighlighting buttons with a mouse. This has been happening on two computers – a tower and a laptop.

On top of that – this is a side issue and not as crucial – the DVD Player on the tower sometimes forgets to put up the dialog box that asks whether I want to start the DVD from Last Time Played or the Beginning of the Disk and jumps into where I was when I quit the Disk, in other words, opting for Last Time Played.

I've trashed Prefs for DVDSPRO and the Player, run AppleJack a few dozen times, repaired Disk Permissions for the Boot Drive, verified the disk – nothing changes the behavior.

If anyone has any experience with this, I would be thrilled to hear about it, and, hopefully, what can be done to fix it. This is seriously killing my productivity.

Many thanks in advance.

Jonathan

JONATHAN PENZNER

SUNDANCE/REALTIME

VIDEO EDITING • MOTION GRAPHICS • DESIGN

| STUDIO 626 345-0285 |

| CELL 818 321-2890 |

SUREAL@CHARTER.NET