Question about the "safe area"

SonicClang wrote on 1/19/2005, 12:45 PM
So I'm fairly new to making videos on the computer and putting them on DVD to watch on the TV. I made a training video for work, because I do have some experience and I'm quick to learn, and the video looks great on the computer, but then when I watch it on the TV off the DVD it's as though it's zoomed in 10%. It cuts off each edge a little bit. What I'm planning on doing is, go back into Vegas Video, use pan/crop to zoom out 10% (or whatever you tell me is correct), re-render it, and burn it to DVD. But then if you watch it on a computer you'll have black all around the video, which isn't a big deal, and then on a TV hopefully it won't cut off any of the image.

Can anyone give me any advice on this? I seem to remember an option to show the safe area in Vegas Video in the preview window. If I turn that on will it show me the way?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 1/19/2005, 12:50 PM
Yes. And then again, No.

Every TV will have a different amount of safe area. Choose 10%, and you'll find a TV that crops 12%. Choose 12%, and you'll eventually find one that crops 15%, or 18%, or 20%. If you want to be completely safe, zoom out to about 50% and then you'll be pretty much guaranteed of it showing completely on all screens. This may be a bit extreme, but it's really about the only way to be safe.

The best thing to do is to fill the screen, but keep anything important that needs to be seen near the center.
rs170a wrote on 1/19/2005, 12:53 PM
If I turn that on (safe area) will it show me the way?

Most definitely. Just ensure that any titles stay inside of the inner (safe title) markings. Be advised that the defaults for safe action & safe title are 10% and 20% resepctively but the standard only calls for 5% & 10%. I've left it at the default simply because I've had the odd TV that is severly overscanned (or stretched which is what happens as a TV ages) and the extra margin has saved me.

Mike
SonicClang wrote on 1/19/2005, 12:58 PM
Wow, nice quick responces, thanks guys. I think I had the 10% number in my head because I've been using DVDA like crazy lately and I must have seen that number somewhere.

As for keeping important items in the center of the screen... that doesn't really work for this situation. The video is made up mostly of screenshots of a program I made for controlling machinery and I absolutely need the person watching to see the entire screen. The narrative describes things that, as of right now, are off-screen because of the TV cropping the image. I made awesome use of the pan/crop tool in Vegas to move around the screenshots as the narrative describes different parts. Tim's, the owner of the campany, jaw dropped open when I showed him some of what I was working on. He said, "That looks really professional." I told him I let Vegas do all the work... :D

Thanks for the advice!
Chienworks wrote on 1/19/2005, 2:53 PM
No no no!!!! Wrong wrong wrong!!!

Don't tell him Vegas does all the work. Tell him that Vegas lets YOU work better! :)

Yeah, that's the right thing to say.
SonicClang wrote on 1/19/2005, 4:29 PM
Haha. Good point. He knows the program isn't actually doing all the work. I think he actually really appreciates what I put together. Man, I still can't believe he finally gave me the go ahead to do training videos. I've been bugging him since I started over 7 years ago to let me do videos. Hell, that was before I knew you could do it on computers, I was still doing it between two VCR's and a title maker. My how far we've come.
Orcatek wrote on 1/19/2005, 5:23 PM
Using the Vegas defaults for title safe and action safe I made a short video with 3 colors, title safe, action safe and full screen. Generated media for each "layer" using pan and crop to size it. I then burned this out to a DVD to check out the sets I would be playing the videos on. It was very interesting to see the view area size, but also the shift. A few cheap TVs where off center besides zoomed.