I understand your frustration but dont blame me when the software does odd things.
Thanks for your help.

No blame apportioned. Anyone who works with PDR's Menu Designer knows its occasional unpredictability.

Not only that, you've only been using PDR a short while and you're challenging yourself with a reasonably complex task.

To my knowledge, there are no TRIAL restrictions on the functions of Menu Designer and what has been suggested SHOULD be working for you.

Good luck for the remaining couple of days of the trial.

Cheers - Tony
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Thanks

i kept it simple, just wanted the six menu things item 1 etc, that you see i created. but the next pic shows what happened.

one last favor.

our TV is 35 inches wide and is the standard 1920x1080.

i made a video that is 1920x1080. (not in cyber)

but it is fuzzy. see the carriers rotating radar, on our TV it is barely visible.

how is it on yours.

the whole file would be way to about 7meg, so i cut out some of the stuff to make it about 2 1/2 meg.

thanks

But did the menu work as you wanted?

Is the fuzziness in the original produced file? You said 1920x1080 but you didn't mention format or bitrate. Critical factors.

Are you burning to DVD or BR? If it's DVD, you should expect some fuzziness from motion graphics because they're burned at low bitrate - ~8MBps.

Is the TV 1920x1080 resolution? When you burn discs and playback through a player, there are more variables tha viewing the produced file directly.

Tony
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I gave up on the menu.

What bit rate is best?

Any other settings that might help?

It was made at 29.97 for america

It is an avi file that would go in the menu.

Were you able to view it?

Thanks for your help

We're back in communication difficulty mode

You didn't answer the questions I asked, so I can't answer YOUR questions because MY answers depend very much on YOUR answers to the previous questions.

► Are you burning to DVD or BR? The answer will determine the question about bitrate

► When you watched the video on your TV, were you watching a produced file or a DVD/BR via a player?

Where did that AVI file come from? Is it a screen capture? Produced in other software? Yes - I could view it. It didn't look particularly fuzzy. The VBR is only about 3MBps.

I'm not sure why you're bothering with producing AVIs. They're not suitable for what you're doing...

Cheers - Tony
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I am burning to DVD later I will also do bluray
on tv it was from a DVD
the AVI is not screen capture it is a moving video. as hopefully you can see.

it was made in Blender software.
if AVIs are wrong. what is right?
thanks

OK -

I understand. You created the animation in Blender and rendered it to AVI. That's why you're using AVIs - fair enough. AVI would be the preferred Blender output option.

When you put that AVI onto a DVD it becomes MPEG-2 720x480 @ ~8MBps... then your player upscales it for the TV. All of that will result in some fuzziness. Unavoidable.

If you put that AVI into PDR & rendered it as Full HD MPEG-4, and watched it on your TV via USB or HDMI it would be crisp & clean.

Cheers - Tony
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So there is no way of making a blender video (types other than avi ARE available) putting it into the menu and it being sharp? when on a DVD
thanks Tony

I'm not a Blender user's bootlace, but I'd probably render the animation as a series of .png files, rather than as a "movie". That way you're not compressing then recompressing in PDR (which is PowerDirector). In other words, maximising quality.

Burning to DVD is about the opposite of that - minimising quality! Attached is a comparison of DVD resolution to Full HD. That's why it looks fuzzy on your TV. Burning to DVD downscales it, then your player upscales it again.

Cheers - Tony
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got the simplified menu working.
thanks
now we need the sharp video background!
I assume PDR puts a watermark on it.

EDIT can i put the png files as the background video in the menu?

HOW!!!

BTW the spacing of the text earlier did not work because it does not work on all fonts.

made a BR disc. didn't work right.

put all the .png files into a mpeg-2 file. hope I chose the right one.