This is a problem anyone can duplicate. Take a few frames of your video and capture them as stills. Then select a menu and substitue a captured still for the background.
Add some chapter with stills for thumbnails. Render your project in both Studio 9 and Studio 12 (or 10 for that matter) and compare the quality on your DVD side by side. The Studio 9 menu will look rather nice while the other, (12 or 10 - never seen 11), will look absolutely awful (pixelated). Even the Thumbnails are just as bad while 9 looks rather good.

I just bought 12, a wonderful piece of editing software. However, I must keep a junk computer with 9 on it to render dvd's or find some other software to work with Vista. I thought for sure 12 would improve this problem, but no such luck.

 

 

Yes, I was just about to start this subject when I did a search and found your post.  Identical menus, rendered in 9 look great, but in 12 look pixelated.  I am using XP so it is not a Vista issue for me.  Does anyone know if they plan to fix this with a patch so I can FINALLY remove Studio 9 from my desktops? 

When I use a photo image as a custom menu background, I usualy use a high res image - not a 640 x 480 screen grab from a video as I've found that they aren't very sharp at all.  I'd suggest that perhaps ver. 9 is the anomally here and that the subsequent versions are actually performing properly when displaying a screen grab as a fairly pixilated picture on the TV.  Grabbing a frame, saving it as a .jpg and using it as a background isn't really a good way to set up a custom menu - imho of course.  Check the size of the .jpg file and you'll notice it isn't very large (250 +/- kbs) nor is the resolution (640 x 480) very high.  I don't know what you'd really expect an image like that to look like when played back on a large screen TV... like I said earlier, sounds like version 9 has a 'good' bug, and the later versions don't have it.   

My 2 cents anyway.... 

No, I am finding that this phenomenon exists even when using a solid color as my menu background.  When I make menu links that are words, even the letters are coming out pixelated in Studio 12 as opposed to 9, and I am not talking about on a TV, large screen or otherwise.  I am talking about playing it back on my computer in Windows Media Player.  This cannot be "right" and that Studio 9 doing it nicely was an accident!  I really hope this can be addressed at some point with a patch.  It is totally unacceptable to have such an expensive program that can't render a dvd with a decent menu.

Huvie, 

If it's turning even your solid colours & fonts into crap then yes, there's a problem - but is it with your pc configuration/hardware (video card) or is it a problem with Studio?  I'm not sure, but haven't seen many complaints about this issue...  have you searched the forum for others that are experiencing this?  I haven't experienced that problem in any of the versions I've used - and I started since ver. 8.10 - currently running 12 Ultimate.

Well, yes, when I searched the forum for this problem, I came up with the message by Joe that started this thread.  I don't see why my video card would be a problem.  I have NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT, and an Athlon 64 X2 5200 processor.  And Studio 9 works perfectly.  The fonts look pixelated and there is ghosting all around the fonts, like everything is under water.  Not sure if I am describing it right, but it is like a watery shadow outlining the fonts.

Ok, so just for comparison, I rendered the same 7 minute video at 7000kb/sec, Dolby 2Ch with 4 menu links that are words, in Studio 9, 11 & 12.  The Studio 9 menu was perfect.  The Studio 11 menu was a little worse than the 9 but not terrible.  The Studio 12 menu was the most pixelated around the fonts.  The Studio 11 looked significantly better than the Studio 12 menu.  I would use 11 exclusively except for the fact that I am almost never able to render a complete, full-length dvd in 11 without numerous bugs.  (I won't even discuss Studio 10, it was so bad I had to remove it immediately.)  So getting back to this issue with 12, I've got to believe it's a bug in 12.  Don't you think?

Too bad the old board apparently is not around as there were complaints there about video quality in general of v10 verus v9.  I personally thought v11 was better than v10 but not as good as v9.  I have only rendered one video with v12 but it did not strike me as being worse than v11 but I will take a closer look.

Something did change for the worse along the way, recovered somewhat and is now rearing it's head again!

Jerry 

 

Well, in both 10 and 11 (although to a lesser extent in 11) I didn't have consistent success in ever rendering a dvd at all, so I couldn't judge the quality.  You have to get past the compiling errors, menu link errors, etc.  Studio 12 was the first time since 9 that I was actually able to render a dvd with menu links that work.  On my tiny little dvd, I was finally able to render one in 11 for comparison's sake.  The video quality in 12 is as good as in 9... but the menu quality is enough of a problem that I will not be able to use it until they fix this bug (if I can even convince anyone that the bug exists!)   

I want to SCREAM!  I just lost an hour of my life on live chat with Pinnacle "support" with some clown named Romeo (was he in the CLOWNS video???) who keeps telling me to uninstall and reinstall Studio.  Which I have done.  I will NOT uninstall version 9, the only version I have ever been able to get to work fully.  My other desktop doesn't have 9 on it, only 12.  I still get pixelated menus.  Why won't he listen to me?  He keeps telling me to "follow the procedure."  How many times must I follow his damn procedure?  How can I report this issue of the menus to the developers for the subsequent patches, especially when I can't even get Live chat to listen to me?

He's just following his script...it's up to you to decide if you want to follow along too, or bail out.

You have another desktop that experiences the same problem, with S12 only installed (no S9)?  Then (IMO), concentrate on getting that machine running.  Uninstall/Reinstall on *that* machine (should only take a few tens of minutes--S12 installs *way* faster than S10 and S11, from what I can see).  Test on *that* machine.  If you continue to have failures with *that* machine, then you've followed all procedures, and he pretty much can't give you grief for it.

But saying that you aren't going to do what Support is telling you to do?  No skin off of their nose -- they'll simply close the issue, and then go on to the next call.

IMO.

BittMann

No, you are misunderstanding me.  I told him that I DID do all the uninstall/reinstalls!  Which I DID!  It didn't help.  It is a bug with 12, but why does only Joe (who started this thread) believe me?  The machine that only has 12 on it does the same damn thing with the pixelated menus.  I uninstalled/reinstalled 12 on it already.  The "support" guy wanted me to do it AGAIN!  Now what point is that?  I think that is unreasonable.  Just because I didn't do it AFTER he told me to, but I did do it, before consulting him as a last resort, doesn't mean my first attempts were not valid!  They are just making you chase your tail for no reason and it is unreasonable.  Let him just admit it's a bug and report it to the patch developers! 

I have experienced this too, the menus are really pixelated.  You can fix some things by adding the blurr plug in and moving slider all the way to the left, but I don't think you can blur the menus themselves.  But the blur helps the titles a little. Pinnacle should address this issue.  I was hoping 12 would solve it too, but I haven't tried it out yet in 12.  Kind of disappointed to hear that 12 has not fixed this. 9 works great for me too and I too have to keep it on my old computer to use for menus, etc, because studio 11 is very blurry and pixelated as far as menus and titles.

 

Great!  It's not just me... then, please, can YOU report this too?  I am not even sure where to report it besides to the people in the live support chat, but if they hear it from as many people as are experiencing it, maybe they will do something in the patch.  PLEASE let's get together, those of us who are experiencing these bad menus.  I think it's some sort of plot.  We are stuck with Studio 9 forever, and they refuse to improve it because they want us to sink yet another hundred plus bucks on Studio 13 and 14 and so on, in the hopes that if patches don't help, well, then, maybe the next Studio number will.    I am so fed up with this already!   

Marc P, where are you?

I recently saw several posts from you on a variety of topics.  Can you comment on this?

The Studio box says, "Create professional-caliber movies."

Really now, I don't think blurry and buzzy titles qualify as "professional-caliber."

We've been bitching and moaning about reporting quality degradation relative to S9 for a long, long time now.  S10... S11... S12...

Any comment?

An experiment for you to try...

On the assumption that you are making a standard-def DVD from DV AVI source footage - try changing the BG render codec to DV (Setup | Video & audio preferences). Click to change the radio-button from "Set codec automatically" (Studio's default) to "Use this codec for background rendering", then from the drop-down list choose "DV (best for output to tape)"

I know that this seems a little counter-intuitive when you're making a disc...however after deleting auxiliary files and doing "make disc" if you explore the auxuiliary files folder (for S10 at least...) you will find that the menu images are rendered as DV AVI files with a .DIF extension instead of MPEG-2 with an unknown (and possibly low) bitrate. I have always set my BG render codec to DV (even though I don't actually use background rendering) and don't notice any pixellation in menus in S10 or S11.

HTH
Richard

I don't have a DV camera or anything.  I mostly work with mpeg2 files.  Sometimes I get these files from VHS capture, sometimes from other DVDs that I rip as dvd-quality mpeg2 files to make compilation dvds.  Does this trick of yours work with mpeg2 files that are on my hard drive?

Well, ok, Richard, I held my breath and did your experiment.  I rendered the dvd I was working on before (using mpeg2 files), after changing the settings you specified, but, alas, it did not change my results in Studio 12.  But then, my menus in 11 were never this bad, so I am wondering if you have tried 12?  I was SO hoping this would work!  Oh, well!

No I haven't tried S12 yet - and don't have the desire to until I'm certain that I've read and understood all the necessary processes/workarounds to get all my premium content from S9 10 and 11 transferred successfully into S12. .

The basis of my suggested experiment was in case Studio was MPEG-2 encoding the menu images and choosing a very low bit-rate (DV AVI encoding ought to have avoided that). So back to the drawing board on that one...

Another idea: When you create the disc do you choose the video bitrate as "automatic" or "custom" - if you normally use "automatic" try "custom" and leave the bit rate at whatever Studio chose for you. That would hopefully eliminate any potential bug such as Studio accidentally encoding the menus using the minumum possible bitrate (2500kbps) - with "custom" it should do the whole project at that rate. But it might come at the expense of nobbling "smartrender" so in the worst case you could end up with nice menus but nasty re-encoded video!

 

Added later: Do you use progressive encoding? If so try turning it off (your source material from VHS and imported DVDs is most likely interlaced and not progressive-encoded) - and ISTR progresive encoding could be responsible for image degradation under some conditions.

 

FWIW, I do see image degradation on still images and full-screen/overlay titles - especially when the DVD is long (encoded at a low bitrate) - but the degradation only lasts while something is changing (e.g. a fade-in/out); there is a "fizzing" artifacting around edges of high contrast that goes on for a few frames after the end of the transition; then the image/text is displayed clean.

Regards,
Richard

Is any Pinnacle employee/moderator willing to acknowledge this thread and the quality issues?

This is not just a single person having problems with low-quality output.

Rendering to "wma" format has also been poor - compared to S9 and compared to competitor products.  (I was ooo-ing and ahhh-ing over the fine WMA output on a couple projects, part of the Pinhead competition, and the author said he rendered to AVI and then used a free utility to convert it to WMA and got much better output that way.  That shouldn't be necessary.)

I have done these things already (meaning that I have used a custom bitrate, and I have also stopped progressive encoding).  I have also tried a menu on a sample 7-minute dvd to make sure the quality could be high.  There is no way around the fact that these menus stink and I can't find a workaround.  Thanks for trying though... but why is this being ignored by the people high up?  I am really beginning to feel paranoid, but can't help wondering if it's a conspiracy just to keep stringing us along for the next and next program.

An issue seems to have been found on French board here (4 last posts).

I'll try to sum it up in English later if you need.

Either that, or we're going to have to learn to read French.

Ok, here is a little summary.

Our established facts (2 different users) : the problem only appears with menus from Standards Menus and with still background.

Menus from Premium Contents, or menus with motion backgrounds, or menus with thumbnails or homemade menus have no video quality defects.

The issue I suggest : Edit the menu and substitute a transparent background for the background. Check in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Pinnacle\Content\Backgrounds or Backgrounds 16x9 which .jpg was primary used by the menu as the background.

Insert this .jpg on the Title video track, adjust the lenght to the same menu lenght. Render. The quality should now be good enough to be compared with the one we used to get with Studio 9.

If you compare this last post with the first of this thread, two completely different methods are being used to generate these "poor quality" menus. The OP is taking a still frame grab from his move and using that as a background to the DVD menu. Perhaps the default "Grab Still" setting have changed in S12?

The previous post implies the poor quality only eminated from pre-suppled jpgs.

In order to report bugs, we need to establish we are taking about the same bugs