The default background

When you use dvdwizard fresh from the tarball without any modifications to the config file and without specifying a custom background image at the command line, your menus will somewhat look like this:

 The background behind the button panel (translucent area in the bottom left corner) is made of two parts - a canvas an one of the chapter screenshots of your movie, fading around the edges into the canvas.

The default canvas is a simple gradient from black to white (bottom-top) in the default PAL or NTSC resolution (720x576 or 720x480). The  chapter screenshot will be scaled down to fit into the area defined by $TVSIZE (either specified in the config file with TVSIZE or on the command line with -V or --tvsize, see FAQs) leaving a border of 20 Pixels around the edges. The aspect ratio of the picture remains unchanged.

After scaling, a blurring effect will be applied to the picture, making the edges fade into transparency. On the right, you see the original picture and the result after fading the edges.

As the last step the blurred picture is printed onto the canvas within the $TVSIZE-area but anchored in the top-right corner, 10 Pixels from top and 50 Pixels from right. You see the result in the screenshot at the top.

This is the default creation of the menu background. The actions taken - blurring the edges, printing onto canvas - can't be changed, but you may create different looks to your menus by using other objects for canvas and picture.