Cropping in ms3 not the same when viewed on TV

GizmoGorilla wrote on 3/11/2004, 9:54 AM
Im converting old vhs tapes to dvd. Some of them have horizontal video distortion across the bottom of the screen. Its very noticable when capturing in ms3. This is obviously from the vhs tape itself, theyre very old. I've also noticed on some tapes a small black vertical bar on one side of the screen beyond the actual video. It would appear to me that when capturing, one actually "sees" more, or beyond the video, in the capture preview, than one would on tv . When I view the final dvd on my tv it appears that I have over cropped. Does that sound right? Im wondering, if I even need to crop at all, maybe I wouldnt see the distortion anyway. How can I get a more accurate view of what should and shouldnt be cropped?

tia
Norm

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 3/11/2004, 6:22 PM
Your observations are correct. What you can capture is larger than your TV can display so you shouldn’t do anything to crop this noise around the edges because it will never been seen on your TV. Vegas has an overlay that shows you the safe areas for both video and titles but I guess Screenblast doesn’t have this. (I only have VideoFactory 2 and Vegas 4 so I can’t check). In general you should leave 10% as a safe area for video and 20% as a safe area for titles. i.e., don’t let your titles get within 20% of the edges of the preview otherwise they may get clipped when viewed on a TV.

~jr
GizmoGorilla wrote on 3/12/2004, 4:31 AM
Great, that clears that up. Yea it would have been nice to have some sort of guide on screen to show the "safe" tv area. Thanks!

Norm
csantelman wrote on 3/12/2004, 5:14 AM
Not that it helps you, but DVD-Lab has these guidelines on the screen when you are working on menu pages. It really helps alot!

You could pull the DVD-Lab demo down and run it, then you could get a feel for what these areas are!
GizmoGorilla wrote on 3/12/2004, 7:05 AM
Actually I have dvdlab...
Funny, I have run into the same problem with dvdlab even with the guide lines. I've laid out titles that were close to but within the lined boundary. When I finished creating the dvd and viewed it on tv, the titles were clipped on the right and left edges. When I do the cropping in ms it expands the cropped view to fit full screen. Somehow I wonder if thats what is clipping my titles in the end. Im within boundary in dvdlab but because I have cropped and expanded the video my titles are clipped [!?]

Norm
merkelck wrote on 3/12/2004, 8:36 AM
Here is a quote from a previous post

"The part of the picture that will be shown is called the "safe area". In order to make sure that something is seen on the screen, it must fall within this safe area. Download this picture: chienworks.com/media/safeareas.jpg and open it up on your timeline. You will see two rectangles. The inner one is the guarnteed safe area and anything within here will be visible on the TV. Anything outside the outer rectacgle probably won't be visible on any TV. You can use this image as a guide for positioning your text. "

Thanks to Chienworks...

Kent
GizmoGorilla wrote on 3/12/2004, 9:50 AM
Thanks! I'll check it out.

Norm
Chienworks wrote on 3/16/2004, 10:47 AM
Better yet, i've added the following transparent .gif files:

http://www.chienworks.com/media/safeareas-ntsc.gif
http://www.chienworks.com/media/safeareas-pal.gif
http://www.chienworks.com/media/safeareas-169-ntsc.gif
http://www.chienworks.com/media/safeareas-169-pal.gif

You can place the appropriate graphic in the top track, stretch it out as long as you need, and the rest of your video will be visible through it. Once you've got everything sized and positioned appropriately you can mute the top track or delete the graphic.