Audio head and tail for DVDs

[Kevin Triplett]

I'm producing a DVD that needs to be accessible for viewers who are blind or visually impaired. (There's a great article/guide at the WGBH website http://ncam.wgbh.org/resources/talkingmenus/dvd.html).

Briefly, accessible DVDs have audio navigation for the menus. Each menu selection plays an audio clip, announcing the selection. This is done by creating a menu for each selection and attaching a different audio clip to each menu.

But some DVD players will truncate an audio clip's head, tail or both.

So ... does anyone know what's a good rule of thumb for head and tail on DVD audio clips? I don't have a lot of DVD players to test this on. I assume 1 or 2 seconds is sufficient head and tail but I'd like to make each clip as short as possible.

Another way to do this -- since I'll be authoring more DVDs -- does someone have a recommendation for a DVD player that exhibits this truncation? A good reference DVD player that responds slowly to menu changes?

Thanks for your help! -- Kevin Triplett, Austin, TX