I'm not sure if this is the same issue or not, but I discovered that the menu thumbnails rigidly enforce the TV Safe Zone. What I mean is that your video is cropped down to the TV Safe Zone, and then what's left is used for the thumbnail.

I was getting a lot more than 1/4 of the original, but I was working in 4x3; so your problem might be different. Perhaps the resolution enters into it somehow. Jerry Schwartz

Thanks for chiming in Jerry.

You're right. Less of the image is lost in 4:3 menus.

In the test I just did, the thumbnails were about (very roughly) 40% of the original image... so the aspect ratio does have an impact.



Cheers - Tony


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This is something CL should correct, again, another issue raised for many years, many release, many patches. The issue first appeared for me in PD7 and was sent to CL in 2008. With a little menu knowledge one can correct, however, I'd think CL should correct the issue for all users.

My example is a simple menu created with the PD12 examples in the timeline (tropical and shade), two chapters defined, one at the beginning of each pic, I used Menu Designer and the basic two button layout chosen from the "Button Layout" menu. By default I get the zoomed in or cropped images shown in menu1.png. You can see the tropical thumbnail is cropped as well as the shade thumbnail. These are the thumbnails I get by default on my system.

menu2.png shows the same menu after a minor user tweak to the menu to correct what appears to be a menu deficiency or at least an anomaly.

I don't believe it really has anything to do with aspect ratio, other than 16x9 or 4x3 does affect it, CL would have to provide the real specifics, I'm just guessing based on knowing what corrects the issue.

Push the issue to CL so it gets corrected.

Jeff

What happens if you change the aspect ratio of the thumbnails? To they include more of the image, or do they just stretch it? Jerry Schwartz

Tony,

You are correct : this is getting rather primitive ! I no longer use menus as I've swayed away from DVD to pure video files that do not require menus. But it remains to say that this should have been corrected a long time ago.

It seems that the marketing guys are running the show and dictating what "new" item to add in order to sell more versions. Win 10, i7

JL_JL,
In your post you said, "menu2.png shows the same menu after a minor user tweak to the menu to correct what appears to be a menu deficiency or at least an anomaly."
What did you do to get the entire thumbnail to be visible? I have no idea how to do that minor user tweak!
Thanks,
John

Also, is it possible to do this with a motion video thumbnail that's about 20 seconds long? Windows 7 64-bit 8 GB RAM, x64
AMD Phenom, IIx4 925 Processor
2800 Mhz, 4 Core, 4 Logical Processors
Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Phys. Memory 7.99 GB
Available Phys. Memory 5.70 GB
Total Virtual Memory 16.0 GB
Available Virtual Memory 12.3 GB

Quote: JL_JL,
In your post you said, "menu2.png shows the same menu after a minor user tweak to the menu to correct what appears to be a menu deficiency or at least an anomaly."
What did you do to get the entire thumbnail to be visible? I have no idea how to do that minor user tweak!
Thanks,
John

Also, is it possible to do this with a motion video thumbnail that's about 20 seconds long?

I only know how to correct the issue by editing a file in one of the PD menu created folders and then reloading the menu in PD and burning my project. Since I was told by another forum member that a menu I had created with no thumbnails apparently caused an issue for some, I'll refrain from posting this minor edit so as to not cause further menu issues. Instead, I'd suggest you contact CL technical support with your issue and have them address the problem in a future patch for the rest of you. Maybe once enough complaints since PD7 are voiced they will take note.

Yes, you can have a motion thumbnail that's 20seconds, that duration is controlled in the "Create Disc" > Icon near lower left corner "Set your disc's playback mode" > and in the lower left corner of the popup settings window is a "Duration:". A number of 20 should give you what you want on the chapters page video thumbnail motion.

Jeff

I use full thumbnails on the menus on all my new projects as most TV's are capable of no overscan when using the auxillary inputs such as hdmi. With PowerDVD, just set it for a small underscan if needed.

Full thumbnails are possible on any menu. All you need to do is to open Menu Designer and remove the frame around the thumbnails. In many cases you will get a square. You can then resize it to 4x3 or 16x9 using the freehand tool. You can also create a custom thin line frame around the thumbnail if you wish. Did not see any documentation in the user manual or PT toots on this but all the tools are there.

Found a few menus in the directorzone particularly the older ones that are full thumbnails. Have a list. If someone is interested then start a new thread and I can post it.

No TV safe zone menu thumbnails needed for me.

Quote: Full thumbnails are possible on any menu. All you need to do is to open Menu Designer and remove the frame around the thumbnails. In many cases you will get a square. You can then resize it to 4x3 or 16x9 using the freehand tool.

That works! ★★★★★

No frame or mask & re-proportion the square! I haven't played with creating a "thin line custome frame" yet, but the guts of it works.

Great stuff tomasc.

I wonder if that effectively does what Jeff's tweak does. We'll probably never know.

Anyway - yes - post the list! That might help to clarify it further.

Cheers - Tony
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Quote: Full thumbnails are possible on any menu. All you need to do is to open Menu Designer and remove the frame around the thumbnails. In many cases you will get a square. You can then resize it to 4x3 or 16x9 using the freehand tool. You can also create a custom thin line frame around the thumbnail if you wish. Did not see any documentation in the user manual or PT toots on this but all the tools are there.

Thanks, I'll have to have a look, it's definitely in the right area.

Jeff

Maybe someone needs to create or start a new thread.
Have to be creative with menus. Want to have full thumbnails and have long chapter names without overlapping in the chapter nenu pages. There are some great ones in Directorzone which have been modified for both and still keep the original designer's art. You can still see the original titling at the bottom of the scenes on the chapter thumbnails.

Cinema1 has full chapter thumbnails and allow longer chapter names. Original was Cinema.
DVDm956a has both full root thumbnail and full chapter thumbnails and allows long chapter names. Original was DVD Menu 956.

T4delete is my creation which has full chapters thumbnail with a thin translucent frame. To properly use this menu you need to use Menu Designer to change the example titling to whatever you want and change the background pictures to your own. You can remove the translucent frame if desired.

All these menus are available in Directorzone for downloading and modifying.

Unable to upload the last two menus to the Directorzone. See my new thread:
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/31886.page
Hope someone can help!

Post removed, I resolved my issue.

Jeff

In september 2015 PD version 14, this insane bug is still not fixed. it is only thanks to guys like you that a luser like me can have normal, full sized thumbnails in his dvd menus, and basically only GloNew12 really works (I still can't see the lower part of the video, but acceptable compared to what I paid for to Cyberlink). Then I had to replace the "glow" highlight thumbnail selection, which also took me closer to the verge of insanity and does not work either through the GUI, must tweak some xml files directly... http://www.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/0/9786.page
Same again for the arrows in the root menu, this is reversed logic (don't provide white on transparent as shown in result, you must provide black on white (WTH?!)
I have been using Pinnacle and Premiere for a few years, and moved to PD to be able to at last have good looking DVD/BD menus, and... oops to bad, nothing works.

It is absolutely unbelievable that basically there is NOT A SINGLE software out there that can edit your video and make a half decent dvd/blue ray menu.

John - Glad that you got started with PD14. You will find many things are limited only by your imagination. Many users here are able to circumvent what seems to be limitations in any software, in any version. There are many good menus in the DZ that you can modify to suit your needs.

You mentioned the pinnacle menus. Back 10 years ago, I created and start using a root along with the single chapters menus supplied because I along with others wanted a more professional looking menu like those on a commercial dvd, not a simple home menu. This is something that a young moderator there didn't think it could be done. Many users and I were successful with multilevel menus. Beleive those moderators there work with tech support as many users knew more than them and posted correct solutions.

PowerDirector has many advantages and you can find users with lots of experiences in this forum. Good luck in your pursuit of video editing and creating menus.

Quote I use full thumbnails on the menus on all my new projects as most TV's are capable of no overscan when using the auxillary inputs such as hdmi. With PowerDVD, just set it for a small underscan if needed.

Full thumbnails are possible on any menu. All you need to do is to open Menu Designer and remove the frame around the thumbnails. In many cases you will get a square. You can then resize it to 4x3 or 16x9 using the freehand tool. You can also create a custom thin line frame around the thumbnail if you wish. Did not see any documentation in the user manual or PT toots on this but all the tools are there.

So I ran up against cropped thumbnails in DVD menus too. (PD15.) I opened Menu Designer, but I don't see a way to remove the frame around a thumbnail. It seems the best I can do is to delete the thumbnail. (Frustraitingly I get a hand icon, implying that I could click and do something. But nothing happens.)

Nor do I see anythingin the Menu Designer called a "Freehand tool."

If I change to single thumbnail, I get a full thumbnail, but distorted due to 16:9 aspect ratio. I can't unlock the thumb's aspect ratio to get the thumb to look right.

And even if I could, that's ony one thumb in a menu. Whereas I need three.

Update: As a partial workaround, I changed the "thumbnail" to "Text Only." Then I inserted images where the thumbails went.

That gives me uncropped "thumbnails." But of course, you can't click on them to get to a video. You have to click on the text. (Might not be obvious to the non-technical user I'm making this DVD for.)

Update #2: I came up with a work around for the faux thumbnails not being clickable.

I added some Carriage Returns (i.e. Line Feeds or Enters) to add a few lines ahead of the text I wanted for the videos. Then I moved up the whole text frame so that the blank part of the text frame overlaid the images.

So now I can get the menu to do what I want.

This is a very cumbersome work around. But as someone above in this thread said, we hardly make DVD's anymore. (This is only second one is a year.)

I hope I'm not being an idiot here and totally missing something obvious.

In the end I ended up using a freeware DVD Menu Styler type app. I used PD to take images of the thumbnails I wanted to use from the videos.

The only thing I could have done better would have been to use my photo app to resize the thumbs so that there weren't jaggies in the Menu.