I am making back ground images for my menus for a widescreen dvd. What dimensions and Pixel Aspect ratio should I use in photoshop so they display correctly after being burned to the DVD? Also is there a template for this with safe margins? Thanks :)

You don't state what authoring program you're using. In Encore there are some HD templates that I use after I kick them around in Photoshop. I never stopped to look at the size and aspect ratio but if I had to guess, I'd say 1920x1080 with a PAR of 1.

If your software has template files, open one of them in Photoshop and look at size and PAR.

He said "widescreen DVD". I assume that means Standard Def, not High Def.

I think the number is 720x586, but I can't remember for sure. It's 720 x something.

Oops... My bad. I shouldn't post late at night.

If you're using Encore or another tool with menu templates, my advice still applies. That said, I have made menus in Photoshop for WS SD DVDs from scratch. What I did was take the dimensions of NTSC SD video, 720x480, and multiply the horizontal resolution by the WS PAR which for SD is 1.2, I think. As I recollect, I came up with 864x480, which is what used. It all worked.

Encore may do some processing to adjust menus to the right size for WS projects, but it will not take 4x3 menus and automatically scale them to 16x9 because I've created WS projects with 4x3 menus and the menus retained their aspect ratio. I cannot speak to other authoring software since my world is all Encore.

Easy stuff... open Photoshop, click on NEW, then in custom sizes, there are a whole heap of templates for you to choose from.

When you work on a project that you would like to use as an transparent overlay, such as logo (or bug) or lower third, then keep it as a .PSD file, making the base layer transparent.


Ben