Can I resize the safe areas as seen on the preview screen (overlay) in Vegas and DVD Architect? Does that mean that those borders will be cut off?
Thanks for taking time to respond!

C'mon folks, no one to helpme with this "question"?
THKS...

You could make up any safe areas you wish, but that doesn't alter the size of the image on a television screen. The safe areas are there to guide you in making sure that what you put into your video will be visible on a TV screen. You can use the rectangles, change them, ignore them completely, but it won't change the physical size of your television display.

Just a thought, when you set up your keyframes for panning and zooming, did you set the smoothness values to 0% or did you leave them at 100%? While the smoothness is often usable, it sometimes leads to odd things happening with text placement. With smoothness on sometimes text moves past where you intend it to when it moves and then kinda bounces back.

Thanks for taking time to respond. You may laugh at me but, the correct name for the plug-in is Cross Effect (no smooth values, then)! Pls note that the effect is to make the text fades in and then, while it zooms into the audience direction; it fades out. I know it's difficult to describe it in just a few words, but I'll try to do it. Now, please look at the preview screen in Vegas. Ok. There are the left and the right sides. Pls open a project and then press play. Do u see those thin black lines on both left and right sides of the screen? OK. Here, the text at the end (with this effect), doesn't "invades" those thin black edges when I render as MPEG1. It's all OK for viewing in Windows Media Player (which off course doesn't have the same size of a tv screen). The problem is to render as MPEG2 or AVI (the text "invades" a bit those black edges while it zooms and fades out). Did u get it?????? Did I made myself clear? I was just wondering if this coud be viewed in a tv monitor because in Windows Media Player is perfectly noticeable.

Cunhambebe, can you upload your .veg file so that we can take a look at it? You can upload it at http://www.vegasusers.com/vegshare/

If we can see what you're doing it will help us to understand the problem a lot more.

Sorry, but I tried 2 times.....nothing seems to happen. How can I upload the Vegas Project File? Why to compress as 256 kbps as I read there? Thanks a lot. One more question: I've tried to resize the video screen to fit the safe areas through the track motion button. Is that correct or the right way is to click the blue button event pan/crop and choose for instance, standard tv ratio? Thnks again.

I'll try but it's getting kinda late over here.

The safe areas rectangles are there to show you where it's likely the average TV will mask the frame to. The outer one is typically referred to as Action Safe, the inner one Title Safe. The idea being that you could usually afford to loose a little bit of the action but not the titles. The defaults at 10% and 20% are pretty conservative.

You need to keep your text inside the inner rectangle.

The issue you need to grasp is that Vegas and WMP will show you pretty well all of the frame, a TV doesn't. There's nothing you can do about that. When you create any video either with a camera or by generating media you have to ensure there's nothing anywhere on the whole frame that you don't wnat seen and that everything that you do want seen is inside the safe area.

Thanks for trying to help me, farss.
Chienworks, I've already sent the file as wmv, but that doesn't do any good since the left and right edges within this kind of file are cut. I'll try to send an MPEG2 file (the end of the effect) so as u can take a look at it. Thanks, Kelly.
By the way the file is named as Ubatuba Intro Effect.

Cunhambebe, your file uploaded fine. It doesn't appear on the site until i review it. It's there now available for others to look at.

http://www.vegasusers.com/vegshare/textdisp?cunhambebe-ubatuba_intro_2

I don't see the thin black edges you're referring to, sorry. On my screen the title fills out the entire frame all the way to the edges. I'm still using Vegas 4.0d though so i suppose it's possible that 4.0e might have changed something in this respect.

The right way is to leave your video filling the entire frame that you see in the preview window and then plan your video to have the important parts not fill the screen past the safe areas. Unfortunately this can take a lot more effort and planning. If you're trying to keep the text from zooming outside of the safe areas during the transition at the end then the Cross Effect is probably the wrong transition to use. I would instead use Pan/Crop to only zoom in as far as you want to and combine this with a fade out. That way you have precise control over exactly what happens as compared to Cross Effect which is pretty much a canned transition that doesn't allow a lot of tweaking.

Cunhambebe, i've watched your .wmv file both on the computer screen and on a television. To be honest, i think it works out very well just the way it is. Having the text go off the edges of the screen as it fades out is very dramatic. I wouldn't change a thing.

http://www.vegasusers.com/vidshare/textdisp?cunhambebe-ubatuba_intro_effect

Thanks again for your help, Chienworks. I've just sent another file to your "site", an MPEG2 with just the end of the same video. The thing is: when I watch it on Vegas Preview Screen as well as with the Win Media Player, the text crosses the left (specially this one) and right edges of the screen. This happens when I render a project as MPEG2 or AVI (not with wmv files as u could see it). I know the screen shown in Vegas and the Media Player does not have the same size of that of the Standard TV. I just wanna make sure I'm doing the right thing. I'd just like to ask one ore BIG favor. Could u please try to open this MPEG2 file with DVD Architect? I'm having some trouble trying to do so. If u can do it that means I have a problem with my platform.
Thank you again.

OK, now i finally see what the problem is. You have black edges on the sides of the background image because it doesn't completely fill the frame. However, the text does fill the frame so it overlaps the black edges.

http://www.vegasusers.com/testbench/files/cunhambebe-ubatuba_intro_effect_mpeg2.png
still frame from the video showing this overlap

http://www.vegasusers.com/testbench/files/cunhambebe-ubatuba_intro_effect_mpeg2.mpg
entire 2.5MB MPEG2 clip

There are a couple of very easy solutions to this and both involve Pan/Crop. Open up the Pan/Crop window for the background image. You can check "Stretch to fill frame" and uncheck "Maintain aspect ratio". This will stretch the image to fill the frame and is probably the easiest fix. If you'd rather not stretch the image, then leave Maintain aspect ratio checked, right-mouse-button click on the image itself, and choose "Match output aspect ratio". This will magnify the picture enough so that it fits side to side while cropping off a tiny bit of the top and bottom so it fills the whole frame and isn't distorted. You may want to try both and see which looks better.

*whew*

And yes, your MPEG2 file opens up perfectly in DVDA on my system.

I wrote this before reading your answer. Anyway, I don't know what to say and how to thank you....
Thank you very much Chienworks! Now I've got the text problem fixed. Don't know if this is the correct way, but it works (enven if it can't be shown on standard tv monitors). Let's see what I've done: In the video track (on the left) that leads the text file in timeline, I've clicked the track motion button, selecting Standard TV and later adjusted the graphic edges so as to find the correct parameter in order not to let the text crosses the right and left borders of the screen. In the timeine, I've clicked the event pan/crop button (both, for the text and for the JPEG file), only selecting Standard TV. That's it. By the way, I'm very glad to have found out your site. I hope you have seen the MPEG2 excerpt I sent. I'm sending the complete and fixed MPEG2 file. I'd also like to thank you for your help with the MPEG2 file and the DVD Architect.
Thanks again for the valuable help.
(NOW I'M GOING TO TRY YOUR WAY)...;)

Ok, thanks again. I've tried both ways and I guess the first one works better (checking the box "Stretch to fill frame" and unchecking "Maintain aspect ratio"). The second way, as you told me to (....you'd rather not stretch the image, then leave Maintain aspect ratio checked, right-mouse-button click on the image itself, and choose "Match output aspect ratio"), showed some black edges, top; bottom and both sides. Anyway, I'll render both projects as MPEG2 and send them to ya, along with the one I fixed myself.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Thank u Chienworks. I've already sent 3 files for ya. Here's the explanation.
File 1
1st way: Pan/Crop, "Stretch to fill frame" checked and "Maintain aspect ratio" uncheck.
Result: Perfect!

File 2
2nd way: Pan/Crop, "Stretch to fill frame" unchecked and "Maintain aspect ratio" checked; right-mouse-button click on the image itself and "Match output aspect ratio" chosen from the menu.
Result: Screen with black edges; text overlaps them.

File3

My way: Pan/Crop, Standard TV; on the Track List leading the text file, click on Track Motion Button, then left-mouse-button click on the image itself, and adjust the text.
Result: Black edges; text does not overlap them.

Thank u very much. That'd be nice if we could talk about the second way.

I stuck your files in the testbench directory.

http://www.vegasusers.com/testbench/files/

Glad we finally got this solved for you. :)

Thanks again Kelly, for your help and for the excellent job.

By the way Kelly, I was just wondering how did you take this pic:

http://www.vegasusers.com/testbench/files/cunhambebe-ubatuba_intro_effect_mpeg2.png

I'm sure u haven't used "print screen', have you?
Thanks again.

Looks like he just used the "Save Snapshot" button above the preview window.

Edward (jetdv) is correct, i used the save snapshot function in Vegas.

PrintScreen isn't very useful because Windows Media Player uses the overlay function of the video card to display the video and this isn't picked up by PrintScreen. What is *REALLY* odd is that if you do use PrintScreen and paste the image into a photo editing program, the spot where the video frame was becomes a hole in the program's window. You can see whatever is on the desktop behind the photo editor through this rectangle. It's *VERY* odd!