anybody use dvd architect?

i have completed my kill bill project and upon making the dvd in dvd architect i hit a minor annoyance. the film will be a 16:9 dar as usual meaning it will be widescreen with proper letterbox bars on top and bottom. i have set the project settings to 16:9 in dvd architect and the movie displays just right. however the menus also display with letterbox bars on top and bottom on my tv. it is a 720p hdtv.  strangely enough the menu displays properly in windows media player with no black bars. and the movie also plays as it should with the bars. weird anomaly though i think it must be the tv. i believe it will display properly on most tv,s since it does in wmp. anybody else have a 720p tv that does this? or use dvd architect and seen this issue? if i set my screen mode on the tv to "full" it stretches the menu to fill the screen but overscans a little bit and also stretches the movie.  no other settings in dvda seem to affect it. weird but oh well as long as it displays proper on everyone else,s tv i dont mind much. guess my first ot.com downloader with an hdtv will have to be the tester.

take a snapshot of your screen while playing the menus and then post the picture here. I use DVD Architect and it sounds to me like your menus are 4:3 and the 720p tv will be set to widescreen (16:9) which will add the black borders at top & bottom on a 4:3 video

ok but no not 4:3 i have for sure set everything in dvda to 16:9. i was  going to keep the menu a secret till the release but alas it is time to release it. so here it is looks fine in vlc and wmp. only letterboxes on my tv. i am resizing it to 720x480 to fit here but can upload the full 1280x720 if thats better.

see no black bars in vlc. this tv is just weird i think. its a 4 year old 720p sylvania. not the best brand. i played with all the screen modes i.e. stretch,full,cinema,widescreen,ect  the only one that does not overscan is "widescreen" and it shows the menu with letterbox and the movie as it should be with letterbox no overscan. what do ya think? time for a new tv? here is the full 1280x720 snap.

Well it can't be the TV if it is displaying the movie correctly. it has to be something to do with the menu. What i really need to see is a snapshot of your menu in DVDArchitect. So if you can snapshot the whole screen, not just the menu picture, i may be able to help.

sure no problem. here are the menu,properties,and stretch type.

also the main menu is a video if that matters i rendered the video out of after effects @1280x720 16:9. here is what it looks like with the properties set to 4:3. and the preview window in 16:9. and then the movie in the preview window. the movie clearly has the proper letterbox. its strange that in the preview window i see no black bars for any of the menu's only on my tv have i seen this. not in dvda or vlc or wmp. so i am really curious to see it on another tv. i want to release this thing today so if there is a problem i need to fix it.

OK, everything looks fine in dvda. now the only other thing i would ned to see is if you can take 2 photo of your tv with the video playing. 1 with the menu and then 1 with the main movie playing

when playing the menu on the tv do the button selection highlights still match their placement that you set in dvda or have they shifted place significantly?

well sorry but the only cam i have is my phone and you cant tell much in the pics. but i clearly see that i have a problem here. in screen mode wide the menu shows with black bars. and the movie is not as tall as it should be. the bars are too thick. i didnt notice it before because i watched the movie in cinema mode which stretches the menu to much and overscans and the movie looked like it should. wow this really sucks because now i fear i will be redoing something major. heres the 2 pics but you cant tell much in them. the menu buttons stay where they should.

actually i may have just figured it out. i never thought to check the display mode on the dvd player which was recently unplugged. it was set to 4:3 letterbox. i changed it to 16:9 and this made the movie look right. however the menu still was overscanning  a little bit. but i think i know why. when i last made the dvd in dvda i chose the stretch type "zoom to fit" thinking this would fix the problem. so now i am remaking it with the "stretch to fit" setting. 1 more burn and i hope it will be fixed. i will post update as soon i play it. thanks adywan for your effort. and btw i loved your starwars edit.

yeh, the dvd player settings was what i thought, which is why i asked to see the menu and movie on your TV. I was a bit confused when you said that the movie displayed fine so i wanted to see if the movie was actually being squashed too, but that you weren't noticing this on the tv because your movie has the black matte bars. Stretch to fit is definitely what you need to use, not zoom, for the menu in DVD architect.

Also, if you have done the menu in photoshop, duplicate the text files as individual separate layers, save the whole image as a psd image file file , then right click on the highlight button on your menu and change the button style to image only, select the highlight tab on the button properties window, then change the style to custom, select the image that contains the layers for mask, then the layer and adjust the image on the menu until the text highlight aligns with the text on the menu. you will now have a nice button highlight instead of using the standard rectangle highlight and it will look more professional

well the dvd player setting mostly fixed the problem. the movie displays right and the menus no longer have black bars however they are still overscanning  a little bit im missing about 3/4" off all sides. i cant imagine why it does this now. i started with a 1280x720 image in photoshop added my graphics and exported as 1280x720.png. i then used the image in aftereffects on a 1280x720 template. i added my videos there and exported as 1280x720 lossless .avi i added it as is to dvda and let dvda recompress it.  but its not just the main menu overscanning either its all of them. all are 1280x720 images. will resizing the images help? perhaps the images need to be 720x480 so that dvda stretches them to fill the 16:9 template.  thanks again adywan. thats a nice trick on the text highlight you mentioned. but is that not the same as choosing "text highlight" in the highlight style menu? or do you just mean it looks better then the text highlight in dvda? i chose text highlight for the main movie button because the underline would not fit under it. and underline for the other 2 menu buttons. personally i do not like the way the built in text highlight looks in dvda so an alternative is welcome. but at this point the overscan problem is paramount. since i wont release it with a glitch like this. if i cant solve it in dvda i would rather author it in another app.

your 720p tv will still have overscanning unless it has a 1:1 pixel setting, which most 720p tvs don't have this capability, so there will be some degree of overscanning. This isn't a problem with your DVD but with your tv. That is why dvda has the safe area markings on the menu screen so you can plan out your menu highlights to compensate for any overscanning.

If you are adding the text in dvda then you don't need to do this, but i prefer to have the text created at the same time i create the menu video so i can have fade in effects etc

oh i see. it was quite a bit of overscan on the sides. the top and bottom not very much. i worked out a solution by shrinking the menu and filling out the edges with a matching color. and got it just right. but now i am confused because i would like for it to look right on other peoples 1080p tvs as well. so now that i have compensated for the overscan is it going to not show right on other hdtv's? guess i cant win on that either way. i will just have to make sure the edges look good for others. thankyou adywan. i will end up with a much cleaner menu thanks to your tips. the new one i am building has the text made in photoshop as you described. i made a couple test coasters getting the overscan right so now i can set my safe zone in dvda.

You always need to compensate for overscan when building menus. Most 1080p TV's now have 1:1 pixel mapping or similar function that eliminates any overscan so you have to keep this in mind when making your menus. adding any borders will show up on non-overscan TVs. make sure you have the overlay markers on in dvda so you can see both the overscan safe area (outer marker lines) and the object safe area (inner marker lines). All you would need to do to your menu is shrink some of the main objects down a little and reorganise them. something like this (snapshot in dvda so you can see that it works inside the safe areas and will also look good on a non-overscan tv)

just click on the image to view full size

very good then sir i appreciate the knowledge. i honestly thought the item safe lines were useless. now i see the pain turning them off has caused me. but its an easy fix at this point and with these menus i can pretty much just move a few things around  no problem thanks again.

edit: i had a question about button fades. but just found a tutorial on how to do it so disregard.