Help with choosing a render template

bbcdrum wrote on 2/19/2009, 8:15 AM
I have an instructional video that I purchased and downloaded. It is a .mov and Vegas 8.0c shows these attributes:

1260x788x24 30.000 fps progressive 01:12:54:22 H.264
44,100 Hz 16 bit 01:12:12:01 16-bit Big Endian

I want to render this mov so that I can watch it on my TV (Vizio 37" 1080i) via a Philips DVD player that will play WMV files from the USB port. The DVD player is connected with an HDMI cable.

I have tried several of the WMV render templates in Vegas but I just can't seem to find one that does not chop off varying amounts of the sides of the picture when displayed on my TV. I have tried choosing different resolutions in the HDMI setup of the DVD player which results in various versions of the same "cropping."

Is there a way to render this so that I can get the full width and have any letterboxing on the top and bottom only?

Thanks.

Kevin

Note: I have the same issue when playing video from an iPod via either the composite or S-Video inputs.

Comments

bStro wrote on 2/19/2009, 12:11 PM
The content that's being chopped off -- is it important? Meaning, is any of it text that you need to read or actions that, if you don't see them, hinder your ability to follow the instructional video?

If not, don't worry about it.

Nearly all televisions "chop off" the outer 10% or so of all video displayed on them. This is called overscan, and it is something that people who produce videos (from the moment the camera man sets up his shot all the way through to the guy putting together a DVD) for television keep in mind during their work. They understand that part of the image will be lost on most displays (other than computers since computer monitors don't do this), and they simply keep the important stuff within what's called "safe zones."

(Your Vegas preview window displays safe zones as dotted lines. Note that these are guides only. The amount that gets cut off varies from one television to the next -- there are no exact numbers here, but the default settings in Vegas are usually good.)

If you absolutely must see every pixel of this video, there are a couple things you can do. First is just check your TV's manual to see if you can zoom out on the image. Most widescreen TV have functions for aspect ratio / zoom, though generally for zooming in only. But it's worth a shot.

The other is to resize the video so that it fits within the safe zones. You can use either track motion or Pan / Crop to zoom out from the image. Keep in mind that some televisions (maybe even the one you're watching) may end up now showing the video with a big black border around it. You might want to pretty it up by putting a solid color, looping background, or image on a track below.

Rob
bbcdrum wrote on 2/20/2009, 11:28 AM
Rob,

Thanks for the info. The video is for a software product, so I kinda wanted to see the whole screen. I did not know about the overscan, thanks.

My TV does have a zoom option that will give me 1/2 and 1/4 zooms but even those views are "cropped. I don't want to spend the time resizing with track motion or Pan/Crop (big learning curve for me!) so I will just watch the video on my computer.

Thanks so much for the help!

Kevin