User Guide

ADOBE ENCORE DVD 2.0
User Guide
115
Button size Create buttons at least 70 x 60 pixels to guarantee their visibility on a television.
Number of buttons Include no more than 36 buttons for a fullscreen (4:3 aspect ratio) menu or 18 buttons for a
widescreen (16:9) aspect ratio.
Graphic elements Use vector shapes and masks, rather than bitmap, where possible, because scaling these elements
does not affect their quality. If creating pixelated content, such as buttons and logos, make sure that you create them
at the largest size needed for the DVD. If you need to resize some elements, it is better to scale a pixelated object
down, rather than up. (Scaling images up can cause quality loss; scaling images down does not.)
RGB color Create your images using RGB color. Convert any CMYK images to RGB before importing them into
Adobe Encore DVD.
NTSC colors Use only NTSC-safe colors if your DVD is to be played on an NTSC television display. You can create
colors in your graphics application that may be beyond the color range that NTSC televisions can display. These
colors can cause an unwanted halo effect. Use RGB values between 16 and 235.
Horizontal lines Set lines at 3 pixels or greater. Horizontal lines thinner than 3 pixels flicker when displayed on a
television screen.
Font size Use a font size of 20 points or greater to ensure that the viewer can comfortably read titles and button text.
For a tutorial on editing menus in Photoshop, go to Resource Center on the Adobe website.
Understanding layer name prefixes for Photoshop menus
ForAdobeEncoreDVDtorecognizethecomponentsofamenufromPhotoshop,youmustaddpredefinedprefixes
to the layer names. The prefixes identify the layers as button sets, video thumbnails, replacement layers, and button
subpictures. This lets you import a finished menu that is ready to use in the project. You can also manipulate and
change elements from within Adobe Encore DVD.
Instead of creating menus from scratch in Photoshop and adding all the prefixes manually, you may want to open a
menu template that’s similar to the one you want to create, save it as a Photoshop file, and then edit the exported file
in Photoshop.
Menu Size using Rectangular
Pixels
Menu Size using Square Pixels
NTSC Fullscreen (standard) 720 x 480 720 x 534
NTSC Widescreen 720 x 480 854 x 480
PAL Fullscreen (standard) 720 x 576 768 x 576
PAL Widescreen 720 x 576 1024 x 576