Menu picture is very blurry

[Bevan Coles]

How do I improve the menu background picture. It is VERy blurry and would like it to be viewed with the same pixel quality as the original picture

 

Thanks

[darkstarbyte .]

If anything it would be blocky, not blurry. I have had one dvd where I crammed so much stuff on to it, that the menus were really blocky. If I had to guess it would be a quality setting where it uses any left over bytes for the menu.

On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 3:50 AM, Bevan Coles <bevanda...@gmail.com> wrote:

How do I improve the menu background picture. It is VERy blurry and would like it to be viewed with the same pixel quality as the original picture

 

Thanks

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[Frank in Ubuntu]

The picture you're using for the menu background needs to be 720 x 576
px - that's 720 pixels wide, by 576 high. If the dimensions aren't
those, the result can be not as desired, especially if any of those are
smaller than outlined (which would result in the image having to be
stretched, hence blurry or pixelated). If using Linux, GIMP is a good
image editor (plenty of image programs out there for the commercial
OSes) - just load the image, and scale it. Many "wallpaper" style images
will be widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio), so what I do is scale the image
to the correct height, then chop the edges off. To do that, you'd go to
the Image menu and choose "Scale Image", make the height 576px, and once
it has shrunk it, use the Crop tool to get the width to 720px (while
doing so, look at the status bar at the bottom of the program to see the
numbers change as you click-and-drag the mouse, and stop when it says
the width is 720). I would not recommend up-scaling a smaller picture,
but looking for larger pictures to down-scale, and crop if need be (if
you find pictures in 4:3 aspect ratio, like 1024x768, you will only need
to scale down to 720x576, no need to crop anything). Hope that helps.

[darkstarbyte .]

Still not sure how it would be blurry, but it would definitely look disproportional.

On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 6:26 PM, Frank in Ubuntu <ubu...@ozzyfrank.com> wrote:

The picture you're using for the menu background needs to be 720 x 576 px - that's 720 pixels wide, by 576 high. If the dimensions aren't those, the result can be not as desired, especially if any of those are smaller than outlined (which would result in the image having to be stretched, hence blurry or pixelated). If using Linux, GIMP is a good image editor (plenty of image programs out there for the commercial OSes) - just load the image, and scale it. Many "wallpaper" style images will be widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio), so what I do is scale the image to the correct height, then chop the edges off. To do that, you'd go to the Image menu and choose "Scale Image", make the height 576px, and once it has shrunk it, use the Crop tool to get the width to 720px (while doing so, look at the status bar at the bottom of the program to see the numbers change as you click-and-drag the mouse, and stop when it says the width is 720). I would not recommend up-scaling a smaller picture, but looking for larger pictures to down-scale, and crop if need be (if you find pictures in 4:3 aspect ratio, like 1024x768, you will only need to scale down to 720x576, no need to crop anything). Hope that helps.

On 26/04/13 19:50, Bevan Coles wrote:

How do I improve the menu background picture. It is VERy blurry and would like it to be viewed with the same pixel quality as the original picture
Thanks
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[Frank in Ubuntu]

I doubt that has anything to do with it ("quality setting where it uses any left over bytes for the menu"). The quality of the image simply has to do with menu backgrounds needing to be 720x576 pixels. Smaller than that, and the image needs to be stretched; larger than that, and DeVeDe will try to shrink it, or just centre it as is. I ALWAYS create images specifically for background menus, based on those dimensions. Once you get used to doing it (instructions in my first reply on this topic), it only takes a few seconds, and you'll always have great looking menus.

One more thing I will add that I didn't in the first reply is that if you get an image that is widescreen (16:9) but you don't want to crop it to standard 4:3, because you'd be cropping off some actors or part of the title, then Scale Image so the width is 720. Obviously the height will be wrong now (and that WILL make a difference when DeVeDe goes to make the image the menu background - it will stretch only the height) - with widescreen images you'll generally find it is 540px, which is 36px too short - so what you do is look for "Canvas" in your program (in GIMP, I think that is Image > Image Canvas), disable the option to keep the aspect ratio as you expand the size of the canvas (in GIMP you click the little chain near the numbers so it looks like a broken chain), so when you change the 540px (or whatever) to 576px, the 720px width is not affected. You should then be able to reposition the original image before committing to increasing the canvas size (like centre it, so the extra pixels are top and bottom of the original).

In Photoshop-like programs like GIMP, which support "layers", the default is that the extra pixels will be transparent, and I think saving as a JPG (which doesn't support transparencies) will save the image with white bands top and bottom. What I do is create a new layer (which will be the full 720x576px of the new canvas size) in the colour of my choosing, like black or a colour that is prevalent in the original image, then in the Layers bar drag that new layer (which will in GIMP default to being over the original layer) so it is underneath the layer of the original image. So, for example, if the original pic was mainly blue, and you created a new layer that is blue, the final result will be the picture of your choice with blue bands top and bottom.

Hope all that makes sense! Of course, if you're unfamiliar with image editing, you just read a whole bunch of gobbledegook, but keep these instructions handy, open GIMP or some other image editor, and it will all make sense as you proceed to creating your perfect menu background. Cheers!

[Sergio Costas]

Be careful: 720x576 is the size when building a PAL disc; for NTSC
discs, it must be 720x480 (this is set in the main window).

El 27/04/13 02:53, Frank in Ubuntu escribi�:

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