Pat Horridge, Technical Director
When designing menu buttons, keep things simple. The DVD specification only allows for 4 colours in the menu overlay and one of these is background, so, effectively you only have 3 tones available for buttons.
This rules out any fancy feathering effects and gradients. Simple methods of highlighting buttons include; coloured blocks, boxing, underlining or placing a token next to a menu item.
Changing the colour of text is also another effective method as long as you keep the text purely in the overlay. How well the overlay registers with the background varies between DVD players. If you try to cover text on a background with an overlay then you may get bits peeking out with variable results on different players. You will not be able to anti-alias the font because of this.
If you really must have elaborate buttons then you will have to fake it by jumping between multiple menus. Do not expect this to play back smoothly.