As it OVERscans you cannot put a safe area marker or edge of frame marker on the screen. It'd have to be outside the screen.

I agree, it is a right pain in the butt.

"Look Around" sounds like a great idea but I can't recall any digital camera having it. The SI-2K does if you shoot 2K and crop to 1080. It's standard on film camera through the optical viewfinder.
The idea is because you can see MORE than gets recorded you don't get booms and lights in shot so easily.

Bob.

@Bob, if it overscans, and I know by how much, then I could create a suitable safe area indicator. Unless it overscans by more than the safe area!

@Grazie, other than a 17" 4:3 PC monitor (that is crap) I have no reliable display into which to feed a signal. My television, alas, overscans, and by unequal amounts on all sides.

It's not a major issue, but it would be useful to know.

I always do what Uncle Grazie says. I didn't want to spend any time, so the alignment on this is awful. The camera is on the desk and I just propped up some graph paper, zoomed in, put the pen into the frame and then backed out to one of the corners, and made a mark. Did that for the other three corners, and then drew a horizontal and vertical line from those points to show the frame edge. I then captured a few frames into Vegas and took a snap from that. Here it is:



Like I said, I spent zero time aligning things, so nothing is perpendicular. However, I think you get the general idea. Looks like there is more overscan on the sides than on the top and bottom (this is an NTSC FX1).

This took me less than three minutes, so I assume you could do a more accurate test, with your own camera, in perhaps ten minutes. You definitely do not want to analyze this on a monitor or anything else, because THAT device will have its own overscan. However, if you put it in Vegas and then take a snap, you will get every single pixel that the FX1 delivers.

You definitely do not want to analyze this

I always do what Uncle Grazie says.

John, thanks for setting up - your paper - the essence of what I badly described. I am fortunate to have a monitor - JVC TM-H150C - that shows ALL that my camera sees.

1) Monitor as a verb - as in "Monitor what you see"

2) Monitor as a noun - as in "Using A Monitor"

Grazie

Safe area markers aren't much of a help at all. There is no such thing as a safe area. There's certain standards that are generally agreed upon but they's no guarantee that things inside them are safe.
More to the point with HD pretty well every pixel could be visible and with a monitor on a camera that overscans it's hard to see if something that you don't want in the shot is. This becomes even more of a problem with HD being 16:9 where you tend to frame with things at the sides of the frame rather than the middle of the frame.

What you can add to your overscanning monitor are 4:3 markers, centre markers etc. What to use to mark it with is a good question. 3M Magic Tape is one thing I've heard suggested, could be worth a try. Just the edge of the tape will create a line. The other option is PDA screen protectors cut to size and marked with fine lines, scoring it lightly with a sharp blade might be enought. Other thought is ink jet printable OHP film.

To work out where markers should go there's a number of standard charts around, print one out and frame it up. You'll need another monitor, preferably one with underscan, so you can see the whole frame to get things centred though.

There's a guide to using a very handy chart here:
http://www.lemac.com.au/tech/TUTS/FOCUS.html

I have a couple of these around somewhere. What I can't find is a link to where you can download them. I'd send you one but they're kind of hard to mail as they're quite rigid thanks to the heavy laminating. I'll ask the guys if they've got a copy of it hidden away on their website somewhere on Monday.

Bob.

Safe area markers aren't much of a help at all. There is no such thing as a safe area.
Please explain? And in context with what exact item above you are referring to?

TIA,

Grazie

The context is safe area markers in a camera's viewfinder.
The assumption is that anything inside the markers will be seen but there's no way to know for certain given how various makes and models of TVs are made and adjusted.

More specifically I was concerned that TLG felt his framing problems could be solved by safe area markers. That still seems unlikely to me given that the topic says "FX1 - LCD overscan?"

I think this topic was also covered in the context of the safe area markers in Vegas some time ago and the same conclusion was reached.

In the same context though the 4:3 safe area markers in a 16:9 camera are useful in that if the frame is correctly centre cutout to 4:3 everything inside the safe area maker will remain. Subject of course to the same problem of TVs in general.

Safe area markers are vital in some scenarios and camera feeds with them burnt in are recorded as a record of what was shot.

In general markers can be very handy but they can be anywhere. We get monitors back with all forms of tape stuck to the screen or things drawn on it as aids to framing during the shoot. That wasn't much of a problem with CRTs as the glass would withstand most things I'd use to clean the gunk off. Don't know what I'll do if an LCD monitor comes back with permanant marker marks on it.

Bob.

I recognise that different televisions overscan in by different amounts (mine is abominable in this respect; my parents-in-law's is just as bad but in a different way).

What I want to ensure is that any footage I take does not contain unwanted objects at the periphery.

Knowing by how much the FX-1 overscans will help me avoid this problem. It won't eliminate it, but at least I'll have some idea by how much to change the framing.

Very useful responses to this thread, and I'll be investigating them over the weekend or after Christmas....

"What I want to ensure is that any footage I take does not contain unwanted objects at the periphery."

Thanks, thought I'd had to much egg nog for a minute.
Let me make an observation and a suggestion.
It's tricky. What you see in the viewfinder changes with focal length, by that I mean there's a shift due to the change in field of view or the perspective changes. Sorry to be a bit vague there but I don't quite have the correct technical term. As I see it this makes it hard to judge how far from the edge of what you see in the finder things in the real world are.

My suggestion is forget measurements. If you can, beg, borrow or steal a monitor with underscan so you can see the full frame. Set that up next to your camera. Look at the monitor with the full frame and then compare it to your camera's monitor while standing a bit back from the camera. At the same time look up at the real scene.
Now zoom in and out. As the focal length and FOV changes you can train your eyes to work like that zoom but extend the FOV based on what you see in the viewfinder. It'll take a bit of practice. What you're trying to get your eyes / mind to see is the real angle, a cone, that starts form your eye, through the edge of the viewfinder and onto the actual scene. Now the edge of the real frame, what the camera is recording is a bit larger than that but that's easier to judge thinking this way than just by looking at the monitor.

Bob.

Taking in the point that TV displays vary considerably, it always seemed to me that the FX1 LCD pretty much shows you what you will see. If a mike can be seen in the LCD it will be seen on the TV. The difficulty comes in editing when you're seeing the full frame and do not have the "safe area" mask activated. So you get the opposite problem: things seen in editing are not visible on display.