Comments

Chienworks wrote on 2/6/2006, 4:15 AM
This is normal and always happens. It's called overscan. Most televisions cut off some of the outside edge of the image. Commercial TV broadcasts take this into account and make sure that nothing important is near the edge of the screen. You could fix this by using Pan/Crop to make the image smaller than the frame. However, the amount needed varies from one TV to the next, usually anywhere from 5% to 20%. If you go for a larger amount then when your video is viewed on a TV that doesn't cut off as much you'll end up with an ugly black border around the image. Computer screens and some newer digital TVs don't cut anything off at all so you really should fill the frame completely.

The best thing to do is to keep the overscan in mind when shooting and editing. Fill the entire frame with the image but keep anything important, including titles and menu buttons, away from the edges.
mchael wrote on 2/6/2006, 4:56 AM
Thank you Chienworks. I will keep 5% in mind when composing and editing. Does PanCrop resize and can it be applied to all events at once?

Chienworks wrote on 2/6/2006, 12:02 PM
Pan/Crop does resize. It works backwards from what most people would assume, in that the dashed rectangle represents the outer frame of the finished video and not the event you are cropping. You will drag the rectangle out larger to make the image smaller.

I don't know how or if this works in Vegas Studio, but in the full version you can apply Pan/Crop to the first event, copy that event, right-mouse-button click on the second event, choose select events to end, then right-mouse-button click on the second event again and choose Paste Event Attributes. This will apply the Pan/Crop from the first event to all the others. Beware though that it copies all attributes and overrides anything you may have done to other events. So if you've already cropped some events you will lose the cropping you did on them. Of course, you could always de-select those events before pasting.
Tim L wrote on 2/6/2006, 1:40 PM
A better option for applying a "global" change like this would be to use the "Track Motion" feature of VMS. This way, you can still have individual pan/crops (for still photos, etc.) on the various events.

Assemble everything on the timeline just like normal, and let everything fill the screen as you have been, then apply a Track Motion to the entire video track.

In the track header for each video track at the left side of the screen, there is an icon for "Track Motion". But I'm not at a computer with VMS installed, and I am drawing a total blank regarding what that icon looks like. Anyway, click this mysterious icon, and in one operation you can shrink or zoom the entire track. Note that this is a keyframed function, so make sure your cursor is at the very beginning of the track when you do this. (Maybe Chienworks or somebody else can fill in the details better. Chien -- VMS has 2-d, not 3-d, track motion, so its fairly straightforward.)

Another thing you should do, at least occasionally, is enable the "safe areas" grid in your preview window. There is a white button there -- just above the preview screen, I believe -- that looks like it has a little grid on it. Click this to overlay the safe area outline on the preview window, and click it again to remove the outline. There is a dropdown arrow just to the right of the button that selects what kind of grid or area you overlay. (But again, the button turns it on and off.)

As Chienworks indicated, the overscan area is different from one TV to the next, but on my (ancient) 15 yr old Mitsubishi 27", the safe area shown within the dotted lines in the preview window is remarkably accurate compared to what I see on my TV.

Tim L
Chienworks wrote on 2/6/2006, 2:45 PM
The track motion icon looks like a smaller rectangle in front of a larger one, with an arrow pointing from the corner of the larger rectangle to the corner of the smaller one.

The only issue i have with using track motion for this is that it's resizing is done very crudely. The result may look poorer than using Pan/Crop. Pan/Crop uses more intelligent resizing.
Tim L wrote on 2/6/2006, 2:58 PM
Once again, I humbly defer to the superior knowledge of Chienworks! : )

I didn't know there would be any difference in the resizing algorithms.

(Chien -- I thought that maybe you just weren't aware that VMS has the Track Motion feature now. I think it was just added in version 6.)

Tim L
mchael wrote on 2/6/2006, 8:59 PM
thank you so much Chiemnworks and Tim for the time to share an mazing wealth of knowledge - it has just saved me hours of work!
have a great day