Illustrator to Photoshop to DVDSP. Image cropped?

Question

I have created graphics for a DVDSP menu in Illustrator. I think I need to export to Photoshop to divide into layers for different button states and then import into DVDSP. When I export a 720 x 480 image from Illustrator to Photoshop it is cropped, in some cases quite severely, down to almost the outside edges of the graphic elements in the image. Could anyone please tell me what I am doing wrong and if what I am doing is really necessary to get the file into DVDSP for use as a menu. I'm quite new to this and may be misunderstanding the manual
TIA
Michael
Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

Answer 1

Michael:
I select the objects in Illustrator, Copy them and Paste in PSD canvas . . . nothing special! But you can learn something about graphic files dimensions and solve the issues. These instructions are straight from DVDSP User Manual Chapter 2 Square Pixels in Graphics:
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Graphics programs use square pixels. If you set the dimensions of a graphic to 720 x 480 pixels (the NTSC frame size), you will notice that the drawing area of the graphic in the graphics program is not a 4:3 aspect ratio (it is a bit short). If you set a graphic to PAL dimensions (720 x 576 pixels), the drawing area you see in your graphics program is taller than 4:3.
Anything you put in the graphic will be distorted (either vertically stretched or
compressed, depending on your video standard) when viewed on a video monitor. If you draw a square, it will look like a rectangle. In some cases, the distortion is not great enough to worry about, but in most cases you should build your graphics with the distortion in mind.
To compensate for pixel differences between graphics and video, you need to build the graphics at one size, and then rescale them to the appropriate video dimensions, ...
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Working in Illustrator or Photoshop, you must start with a rectangle size of 720x534 and do all your design work in such dimension. Finally resize your file to 720x480 and import that resized file into DVDSP. Your graphics will look fine !!
If you prefer make your design in Illustrator, start creating a rectangle of 720x534. Select it and go to menu Object > Crope Area > Make. Make your design inside that area and finally make Export > Photoshop 72 dpi.
Open that file in Photoshop and do the resize.
When you became confortable with all these programs you'll find out your best workflow.
Hope it helps !
  Alberto