DVD Menu Creation

Creating DVD menus is a complex and misunderstood process. For the designer, it is very different from creating artwork for print or the web. We have included instructions and samples to help your menu creation go smoothly.

A DVD menu is typically a 2-layer Adobe® Photoshop® file. It can also be created as 2 separate files, but it is much more complicated to do it that way. The first layer is the "background" layer. As its name implies, the background layer contains the background of the menu, the part that doesn't change. The second layer is the "subpicture" layer. The subpicture contains the button highlights that will change depending on which item is selected. The most important thing to remember with the subpicture layer is that it is NON-ALIASED! This means that using text in the subpicture is NOT going to look good. From a design standpoint, the simpler the subpicture images, the better the menu will look. Menus can develop a lot of problems with aliasing and knockouts that are easily corrected with a simpler design. The other thing to remember when designing your menu is that the subpicture is ALWAYS ON TOP of the background. Multimedia designers may be used to easily having a button beneath some text change color, this can be quite difficult to do on a DVD menu.

The background can be up to a full 24-bit image. The subpicture image will use ONLY 4 COLORS. These 4 colors are mapped to any color you want during the DVD authoring process. The 4 colors you may use are white (R:255,G:255,B:255), black (0,0,0), red (255,0,0) and blue (0,0,255). Since one of the 4 colors will be the background of the subpicture layer, you really only have 3 colors to work with.

Do NOT make the subpicture layer the color you want it to be when it is highlighted. It MUST be composed of only the 4 specified colors. Let us know which colors you want the subpicture to map to and it will be done in the authoring. You can specify the default color, a color when the button is highlighted and an action color when the button is pressed. Specify colors using RGB values.

For more DVD menu examples, click here.

The background image should fill the entire document, but text and buttons should be kept within the safe area. Video displays have an overscan area and images within the safe area might get cut off.

The white rectangle in this image is the safe area.

Use our safe area template when designing your menus.

The directions presented here are for creation of static menus only. If you are working on motion menus, the background will be the video segment and the subpicture will be a single layer document following these instructions.

  • Final image size is 720 x 480 pixels (more details about this).
  • Subpicture layer must be black, white, red and blue ONLY.
  • Create images using NTSC-safe RGB colors (use Photoshop's NTSC Colors filter).
  • Keep RGB values below 230.
  • Text should be 14-point minimum. Use sans serif fonts.
  • Keep all text and buttons within the safe area. (Use the template)
  • Avoid thin lines and objects with small details.
  • Keep it simple.

Menu creation can be the most time consuming part of a DVD project. If you are working on a DVD menu, please let us see it before you complete the work. This can save a lot of time later if there are any corrections that need to be made.

Safe area template (70k) Adobe Photoshop file

Example files and safe area template (1.0M - Stuffed) Mac

Example files and safe area template (1.3M - Zipped) Windows