Background

[curt y]

My backrgound jpegs are too big, they overrun the guidelines so clipping occurs on the DVD.

I have tried to reduce the image size that all that does is change the resolution at some point.

How does one shrink the jpeg to fit the screen?

[Chuck Engels]

Curt are you talking about DVD Architect or Premiere Elements?
You are in the DVD Architect forum but I don't think this is a feature of that software.
I am pretty sure you need to resize the images with photo editing software like Photoshop Elements before you start putting your slideshow together.
Premiere Elements has Safe Margins that help tell you what part of the photo is in the viewable area and what isn't.

This is pretty basic stuff Curt, have you seriously read any books or watched any of the tutorials?

[curt y]

I am talking about DVD Architect, but resized the image in Photoshop CS5. It is clipping the top, bottom, and both sides. I can change the image from 1172 X 720 pixels down to 640 x 400. No change in the size displayed on the screen.

So what concept am I missing? What do you have to change to make the displayed image smaller? Changing the pixel size changes the canvas size, so what else is left?

The question remains how do you change a jpeg image to fit inside the safe boundary of DVD Arch. I am using the jpeg as a background.

[Bob]

Is the picture you are going to use for the background the same aspect ratio as the DVD menu? It should be the same aspect ratio as the DVD project -- 16:9 or 4:3. The pixel dimensions of the image should be at least as large as the DVD project.

After you add the picture to the menu as a background, go to the menu page properties panel and click on the Background Media tab. There will be a property called "stretch type" that controls how the background image is scaled to fit the menu. It has three possible values: Letterbox, zoom to fit, and stretch to fit.

Letterbox will scale the background image so that the entire photo is shown on the screen as large as it can be without cropping. If the aspect ration of the dvd and the picture don't match there will be black along two of the edges.

Zoom to fit will scale the background image so that the black areas in the letterbox view are no longer there. Since the horizontal and vertical size is scaled by the same amount the image is not distorted, but some of the image will be cut off.

Stretch to fit will scale the background image so that the picture fills the screen, but the horizontal and vertical dimensions are scaled independently. This will introduce distortion. If the difference is large, the distortion will be noticible. However, none of the image will be cut off.

From your description, it sounds like you may have this parameter set to "zoom to fit".

[curt y]

Bob,

Though you had the key there. Went to background media and changed the stretch type from stretch to fit, to zoom to fit, and then to letter box. They did not change anything. Image remains the same.

Have included a screen shot to show you my problem. I need to get the background jpeg shrunk down so it fits within the inner dotted line. Otherwise the graph is truncated playing on TV.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[curt y]

One way I could see to shrink the chart would be to create a jpeg of black of a certain size and then paste the chart on top. The chart would be smaller than the black pic. Then when inserted as a background it would expand to the larger black border size.

This could be done trial and error, but seems like there should be a more precise way to do it.

[Dave McElderry]

Don't use the jpg as a background. Use the Insert > Graphic function to place your graphic on a menu page. Once you've placed the graphic on the menu page you can click on it to select it. Once it's selected it will have resizing handles on each corner. Click and drag any resizing handle to make the graphic the size you need. After resizing it may then be necessary to drag the graphic back into the exact position that you want.

[curt y]

David,

Thanks so much. That was the trick I was looking for. Inserting as a graphic worked perfect.

[Bob]

Now that I see what you were trying to do, I agree with Dave on using the Insert Graphic function. That was definitely the way to go with those images.

Just for future reference, backgrounds are intended to fill the entire screen area and the background image is normally created in the same frame aspect ratio as the DVD project. The stretch type is intended to address how to treat the image when it does not match the DVD project aspect ratio. At least one dimension will always be scaled to the full size of the frame. Because it will always be scaled to full frame, it is the image designer's responsibility to make sure that any text or other important detail within the background image will fall within the safe margins. The image you had would have needed modification to provide larger border areas in order for the detail to stay within the safe margins.