Funky Flicker in DVD Menu
 

I created a menu background image in Photoshop for a wedding DVD, and the preview looked fine in DVD Studio Pro. After burning the disc I find that there is flickering in the pixels all over the image, except where the concrete wall is darker and in the bride's veil. It looks like the artifacts you get when you compress video for the web. I don't understand how DVD Studio Pro would have a hard time compressing a still image, though. I mean, the pixels don't change at all.

I've used Photoshop in the past to create menu backgrounds for DVD Studio Pro, and I've never had this issue. I just created one last week and used the same template file for this one. Any ideas?

try a 1 or 2 pixel blur - that often removes flicker?

(and 1 or 2 pixel blur will be all but unnoticeable)

If blurring doesn't help, and assuming you have a little space on the DVD left, you could turn the still into a 30 second or so movie and compress that into an MPEG-2 using Compressor. I've had good results doing that in cases where still images look strange. You could use a shorter duration, but then the menu will "stutter" (i.e. respond slowly to remote control buttons) each time it loops.

- Martin

Maybe that's it. I used unsharp mask in Photoshop to give the image a little more pop, but that also increased the detail level in the image. I hate to blur the image at all, but maybe a 2 pixel blur will fix it and won't be noticeable. Thanks for the tip, guys.

Oh, and the menu loop is already set for 30 seconds.

I performed a gausian blur of .4 on the still image and it fixed the problem. It didn't blur the image a lot, but I have to say it's pretty annoying that I have a professional DVD program that can't handle a nice-looking sharp image.

Thanks for the tip, though, I'm really glad it worked!

it's nothing to do with the professional DVD program. It's to do with the 1950's technology CRT-based television that you're showing it on.

TV's don't have to be interlaced nowadays, but they are, in order to be backwardly compatible with the original televisions.

For the record, it was flickering on my LCD computer monitor as well as my LCD HDTV. I wasn't previewing it on a CRT monitor or television.

Also, for the record, the .4 gausian blur didn't remove all flicker. On my 2nd inspection I noticed just a few slight area where there was still flicker. Apparently DVD Studio Pro can't handle areas of high contrast in still images very well.

I've never seen dancing pixels on a still, unless it was during a fade or something. I would have thought that the dvd would be able to display a psd without turning it into a moving picture. Are you adding music and/or a dissolve? Have you tried bringing the image in both as a psd and as video?
I don't believe that studio pro would have trouble with high contrast. But video in general has trouble with gradients, and that pic is one big gradient.

Yeah, I was quite surprised that it had trouble compressing a still image, considering the pixels aren't changing from one frame to the next. I did bring the still into Final Cut Pro and export to Quicktime and brought it into DVDSP, but the image lost resolution along the way, which wasn't what I wanted.

The majority of the pixel flickering was in the concrete wall above the couple's heads. I'm guessing that the detail and high contrast there is what gave DVDSP's compression process trouble, though again, I don't understand why a professional program like this would have trouble with compressing a still image whose pixels don't change from one frame to the next. Frustrating.

There are a lot of little spots in that wall, and it's a big gradient so I can see it being a problem. Maybe you could mask the people out in photoshop and just blur the background wall by at least 2%. I've had this problem with scanned images from books which were made up of fine dots, so I just had to blur it.

Yeah, I understand that it's the extreme contrast in the detail on the wall that's the problem, but I guess I don't understand why. I mean, it's a still image right? So when DVDSP goes to compress it why wouldn't it recognize that the pixels don't change at all from one frame to the next? The compression placed on one frame should just repeat to the next frame. I don't get why it doesn't.

If this was a video shot, in motion, then I could understand the problem, because there would be some movement in the shot and therefore you'd have a difference in pixels from one frame to the next.

try a 30 second video for the still backdrop. Drop the still pic in a 24p (23.98) then export from your editor to your DVD creator program. It should work just fine.

Well, when I brought the image in to FCP it lost resolution immediately. I noticed it looked soft. Would that change by bringing it onto a 24P timeline vs. a 29.97fps timeline?

Maybe your problem is with the white flecks in the bricks.

if they're 1 pixel high, and your video is interlaced, then every frame, they'll be disappearing and reappearing 25/30 times a second...

I don't think it's that, because it looks like the flicker happens about every second or so. Also, I should specify that the flicker is composed of small clumps of "artifacts", as you would see with poor compression in a video. Maybe I didn't describe the "flicker" well enough earlier. It's not just a flicker in the image, it's a flicker of artifacts or "small clumps of pixels".

Hey Travis,

I've had flicker on stills in my HD DVD videos. This is untested, but a friend told me to bring the still into a new project, set the field dominance to none and import it into the original project. This doesn't have anything to do with menus, but perhaps 'field dominance' is the magic word.

BTW, I cannot stand DVD Studio Pro. I need to produce Blu-Ray now anyway, so I'm going to get Roxio and try to work with their cheezy menus. I cannot find anything that suggests Apple/FCP is even working on Blu-Ray output. Rrr.

I also notice immediate loss in resolution when bringing images into FCP. It may help if your field dominance is set to none, and your canvas has to be at 100% in size for you to really judge. It still has to bring the quality down for SD in any case.
So the flicker is pulsing, not every other frame or so?
Have you tried blurring just the wall by masking out the people? And have you tried it as video instead of a PSD -the quality will be lowered in DVDSP anyway, so don't let quality loss in FCP concern you.

I forgot about setting the canvas back to 100%. I'll have to try this again with the field dominance set to none and the canvas at 100%, and see how things look.

I haven't tried blurring just the wall yet because I had some flicker around the text too, which isn't set against the wall.

As for the "flicker", I wish I had a better word to describe it. Basically, you know the artifact blocks you can see when video gets compressed (like clumps of pixels)? Well, with this image there are quite a few little "clumps of pixels", or artifacts, and they change in appearance about every second. It's definitely not changing frame by frame. One second you see a certain pattern of artifacts, and the next second it shifts to a slightly different look, creating a pulsing of these artifact clumps.

Okay, tried bringing the image back into FCP and set the canvas to 100%. The image looked much better. Can't believe I forgot about that.

However, after exporting a 30-second Quicktime of the still and bringing it into DVDSP the image did not look sharp at all. Lots of jaggies.

I'm trying a new export via the "Quicktime Conversion" option with DV/DVCPRO compression and no field dominance.

No dice. The image looked the same. Lower resolution and lots of jagginess. There has to be a better way to get a nice looking still into DVDSP for use as a background image.

I've decided that this image is just not a good fit for DVDSP. In fact, it seems any image with lots of detail and high contrast does not compress well. I experimented with several other images and determined that high contrast alone doesn't seem to be an issue. But when you combine high contrast with an image that has lots of fine detail (like the pits in the concrete wall in the image I posted), DVDSP does a poor job of compressing it.

I use encore cs3 and noticed the same problem when I applied an effect to an image, I think I used the texturizer filter in photoshop to make the image look like it was painted on a canvas but when looked at it on a tv there was also noticeable flickering. Once I took the filter away I the problem disappeared as well.

Interesting. Well, that's too bad because it's a limitation on creativity, but at least now I know about the limitation.

Is that image 4x3? I was doing a video that was all thin red line drawings. I made a 4x3 version by mistake and it looked a lot worse. The 16x9 version wasn't so hot either though. You get a weird vibration when lines are thin -because they are between interlace lines and shifting (atleast that's what I think.)
Your text has that thin black outline, which I would definately try taking away.
But this is not what's happening to you I guess, you said it's more the compression blocks. Maybe it's the gradient that's the real problem, even HD doesn't do great with smooth gradients.

Yes, it was a 4:3 image. I wasn't having any trouble with the lines around the text, just mostly the concrete wall above and around the couple.