Motion Menu

Darryl · Post by **Darryl** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 11:31 pm

I am playing around with menus. Am I to understand that motion menus only work when burning to DVD? I complete all tasks for burning a project all is fine. The only difference is if I want to burn a vcd the menu has no motion whereas if I select burn a DVD the menu has motion. I have only seen this in preview, I have not actually burned a cd or dvd. Is this normal? Thanks

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 11:44 pm

VCDs are such old technology that they hadn't invented motion menus for it... The video on them is (lower quality) mpeg-1 (as opposed to DVDs which use mpeg-2). And the file structure when burning a VCD is also totally different to a DVD (apart from being burned to a more limited size CD).

Darryl · Post by **Darryl** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 12:59 am

Thanks, I did not know that it was lower quality, I only knew cd blanks were cheaper.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 1:37 am

Interestingly enough, here in Australia, CD blanks are now more expensive than DVDs! Not by much, but nonetheless, more... And if you go by storage size, they have been much more expensive than DVDs for quite some time -- given that a CD can only hold a maximum of 800 MB; while single layer DVDs can hold 4.3 GB... I buy my favourite Ritek 8x printable DVDs for A$14 for 50, whereas I pay around $16 for 50 printable CDs... I get them from a regular computer fair, and of course you pay more inthe shops. But the differential in pricing is still there...

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 4:15 am

There is a practical reason why VCD / SVCD / XVCD and other variations of the old formats cannot have motion menus - size.
When you have a non motion menu it is a picture. superimposed upon that single image are various hotspots which react to the pressing of buttons on the remote control - Play, fast forward, Rewind etc. Therefore the amount of disc space consumed by the menu is fairly small.

Introduce motion and the menu is no longer a simple picture but is converted into a video lasting the duration of the motion effect - typically up to 30 seconds. Once again superimposed upon that video are hotspots which react to the remote control - Play, fast forward, Rewind etc.
Obviously this eats up more of that precious disc space leaving less available for the actual video itself.

A CD has between 650-700 Megabytes of space for you to squeeze in that video and any menus you create and so space is very limited.

A Single layer DVD disc holds 4.3 Gigabytes (roughly 6 times a typical CD) and so there is more space available enabling you to create motion menus and still have room for the actual video.