Demo DVD Impressions
 

Attached are some images from the Flashback: Demos1

I Would like some feedback please

Nice. Is the text as readable in motion as it is in screenshots or are these still images?

These are still menu images

Basically from the main menu you come here, then there are 3 selectable buttons on the pages (The Demo Group Logo - Goes to a slideshow of their logo's) the others are self explanatory.

Perhaps that gigantic -green amiga alien's watch demo button- could be simpler. :D

I don't think the text would be readable in a TV. It's too small! It would blend all over the place, depending on how you got your DVD deck connected to the tely.
And it's got like too many colors, can lead to more unreadability (and annoyingness of the eyeballs :D)

If you still want to use those presentation texts, write your text in a square colored background on 1/4 of the screen :)

Looks fine on my TV, I have written a test to DVD to check but....

Okay I'll use a semi-transparant colour background for the boxes, and then I'll use the same colour for the text.

How about the following? Which looks better?

Second one but be careful while aligning the left side. The simpler the better. And I'm serious about the radioactive watch demo text :D

Attach the txt you mean Burseg..

The allignment was fixed as soon as I posted, it is now alligned, actually I'll replace the image :) look again in 2 mins

watch out with the colors. And the "Watch Demo" button looks horrible with its radioactive green glow :D

I would notch up the font size a bit, to the expense of maybe using a medium-type typeface instead of a bold-type typeface. Having the semi-transparent background is cool.

I noticed in some of the upper text you used a "negative" or "addition" or "substraction" layer or something. This looks bad. If you need to make text not blending with the BG you better: 1) relocate it or 2) add a black outline to it. I'd chose 2 :)

Akira points taken on board, the reason the font is small is to fit more comments on, and it is perfectly readable on my 28" tv and my monitor, though I'll try something else..

As for the Watch Demo.. I will change it shortly!

I have attached 2 more pics, I have removed the bold typface and increased the size by 1 point (Not much, bot it is noticable)

Also do I have it left alligned or centred?

Tell you what, post here a mockup screenie of the BIGGEST comment you have, let's see how much space you need and how much you have to compromise font size to make it balanced between readable/content

About the border, I didn't mean that you add a smeary shadow, I actually was thinking about a 1 point thick black border around it with no blending. Want me to give this a go?

Another idea... This DVD is about ye olde Amiga demos, which have big pixels and all... why is the background picture resampled then? it looks smeary as well ;)

The TXT can't be read on a portable tv, it just blurs and blends, so I will need a bigger font :(

The biggest comment varies (as I am waiting for some comments from users on here!) all the comments I have atm I took form A.D.A, I am thinking of having a separate comments page for each demo, will have to see!

The image looks blurry because they have been taken from the actual mpeg2 movies, these are obviously blurred when processed, in the finished article all the images will be crisp and taken from the demos themselves :D

I also thought about having part of the demo (say 60 seconds worth) actually be running instead of a still image, I can provide an avi of this if you wish to see what I mean :)

edit: The avi of what I mean is in the zone, its less than 1mb in size.. comments please

I don't think having a small AVI would be good, I mean, I think it would be a waste of time. If you want to watch it, watch it, why do you have the demos otherwise?

I don't know if you should give much space to comments, most times they will be biased comments that mean pish all to the viewer. do you really need them? I can say "X demo is SHIT! and Y demo is R0X!" and it would mean fuck all, because maybe you think X rocks and Y blows! so if you need to remove all that text just to make it viewable in ANY TV, it would be A-OK with me.

I think I'll have a very quick go at this to show you what I mean, it would be easier ;)

If you will include these comments, try to have them all occupying the same text box. In the last pic the textbox from above is narrower than the one below.

I'll try and post a piccy .

Okay, just look at the avi I uploaded to see what I mean, Oh and it uses XVID codec, the resultant mpg is only a few mb so it isn't that much hassle, trust me :)

Checking now, I'm on bandwidth, I don't give a rat's arse :D

That looks great but it's just that demo! What if all the otehrs don't have such a suitable animation? Obviously if they all have, do use it, for it's cool :)

Okay basically for the background I will use 10-30 secs or whatever from each demo, I am sure I can find something..

If not then.. well I'll figure something out :)

Creating those menus is difficult in some respects because I have to have the entire menu created first BEFORE I put the animations in, then I have to render the new motion-menu which then replaces the existing menu..

Once done it looks really good, I just have to have something to fill those gaps, hence the comments :)

I really am open to suggestions here, I can upload any example images etc for somebody to try their own ideas etc..

I knw it's hard to create this shit, we've been recently strugglimg with DVD Studio Pro 2 on the Mac and it's a bitch! so pickY! I thought it was easier to author DVDs :(

I'll give it a go this weekend or something. OK? no time rigt now , unfortunately :(

Cheers Akira.. I will try and beaver on with what I have, if you require any of the gfx gimme a pm and I'll sort it for you :D