User Guide

130 Chapter 9, Creating Menu Tracks
16:9 Menu Tracks
When 16:9 Widescreen content is played, DVD players automatically resize them for viewing
on standard 4:3 televisions. In doing so, black bars are added at the top and bottom of the
screen, so the image’s aspect ratio is retained. This display mode is called Letterbox.
However, subpicture layers are not automatically resized for 4:3 display during playback,
which would likely cause the subpicture text to lose its clarity when scaled. This means that
two subpicture layers are required when creating 16:9 menus—one for Wide display and
one for Letterbox display.
Preparing 16:9 Subpictures
To prepare subpicture assets for 16:9 menus:
1 Create the Wide subpicture image at 720 x 480 for NTSC (or 720 x 576 for PAL).
2 Name and save the Wide subpicture so it is easily identified as the Wide version.
3 Create the Letterbox subpicture image by resizing the Wide version to 720 x 360 for
NTSC (or 720 x 432 for PAL).
4 Add canvas to the Letterbox subpicture to recreate the original (Wide) size. Make sure
the subpicture content is centered vertically.
5 Name and save the Letterbox subpicture so it is easily identified as the Letterbox version.
Creating 16:9 Menu Tracks
When adding subpicture streams to 16:9 projects, two versions of the subpicture must be
added, and you must specify which is for Wide display and which is for Letterbox.
Note: Subpicture streams can only be set to Pan-Scan when the video or still stream is
registered as 4:3 Pan-Scan.