DVD rendering & safe areas

yirm wrote on 10/26/2002, 3:19 AM

Okay. First time I rendered a project to MPEG2, burned to DVD and tested on television, I quickly realized that the Safe Areas in the Vegas preview window are no joke.

So what I have been doing is enlarging the box in the Event Pan/Crop window until the proper amount of letterboxing appears in the preview window. Then when I render and burn to DVD and play on TV, it looks fine.

I'm just not sure this is the way I'm "supposed" to be doing it. For one thing, when I play the DVD on a computer, I see the letterbox. Not a big deal, but I don't see this with commercial DVDs, and I'm wondering if there's a better way to handle this.

Another thing I find puzzling is why in the Event Pan/Crop window, there is a preset for 4:3 Standard TV Aspect Ratio But when I apply it, there is only horizontal letterboxing. In other words, if I were to render like this, the top and bottom would get cut off when viewing on TV.

Thanks in advance.

-Jeremy

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 10/26/2002, 6:25 AM

Probably the biggest use of the safe areas markings is to help you make sure that any titling you do is within them. Most commercial productions are made with eventual television viewing in mind and extra padding around the edges is usually included when filming. This way the theater view is a full screen, and the television view looses very little of anything important.

I've been sorely tempted to mark off safe areas on my camcorder's LCD viewfinder to help remind me to keep the important action in that space!

riredale wrote on 10/26/2002, 10:22 AM

Shoot and protect your raw video knowing that the edges will be cut off by current TVs.

In my own case, I have had to resort to the "Track Motion" FX several times when I realized that I had not left enough room on the left and right sides of a choir shot, cutting off a couple of singers. They were bass singers, too, and this choir was short of bass singers to start with...

Only problem, of course, is that your video will now look a little funny on PC playback, or on future TV sets that (hopefully) won't overscan. But if you bring in the borders slowly and gracefully, people won't complain, and probably won't even notice.

Finally, the 4:3 framing that you refer to had nothing to do with your overscan issue. It is simply a convenient aspect ratio default, much like 16:9. The most amazing thing I learned about DV from this forum a few months back is that DV is NOT 4:3, but a little bit wider than that. Thus, the narrow black bars on the left and right when you insist on a 4:3 presentation.

Incidentally, my Sony TRV8 camcorder is a wonderful camera, but one quirk I only recently corrected is that the big LCD flip-out display crops the top, bottom, and right sides of the image (about the amount that you will lose on a TV set) but inexplicably shows the full left edge of the image. As a result, if you frame using the LCD, you will be off when seeing the results on a TV. My solution was to apply a 4mm wide strip of black electrical tape to the LCD screen along the left side. Now, what I see is what I get.

yirm wrote on 10/28/2002, 1:55 PM

Thanks for the responses.

Tape on the LCD screen seems like the thing to do. Too bad my screen is only 2.5" as it is.

-Jeremy

JonnyMac wrote on 10/28/2002, 2:25 PM

I used a sheet of clear plastic (like for overhead projectors) to create a guide for my external LCD monitor (I shoot on a VX-1000 that has only a viewfinder). This works well because I can see when the microphone is about to dip into frame and usually save a take. The guide lets me see what I'm going to get when I letterbox my video so simulate widescreen.