Safe area question

thomaskay wrote on 6/2/2004, 9:03 PM
Discovering the safe area will really make me think the next time I shoot something. In many recent shots, I have the subject's head too close to the top of the frame and it too far out of the safe area.

So what I did was use the crop/pan tool and resize the video to fit the safe area. Is that okay to do that or is there something I should know when doing that.

Thanks,

Thomas

Comments

Jessariah67 wrote on 6/2/2004, 9:19 PM
Safe areas are proximations only -- they vary from set to set, screen to screen. If you "zoom out" so that the border of your video is in line with the "action" safe zone (outer line), you might end up with black on one or more of the sides on any given TV. I have four sets in my house, and all four have different amounts of cut off on each side. If you try to "make it perfect," you're asking for a headache.

I keep the safe zones in mind when shooting. I probably tend to over compensate, but I'd rather have a bit extra head room than cut-off the top of the head.

A trick to compensate: raise the bottom of the picture in pan/crop by dragging a "widescreen" crop and then raising the area up, so that the top of the viewable image is still the top of the video. Then go into the track motion and "lower" the whole works, creating a slight "widescreen effect. You'll maintain the "true" top of your image, lose some of the bottom, but the resulting top and bottom bands will take the safe zone hit, rather than your image.

HTH
guns1inger wrote on 6/2/2004, 9:22 PM
The problem with the safe areas is that there are no absolutes. The safe areas are there to ensure that the main elements are visible on a TV screen, however the amount of screen obscured by the cowling varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. Therefore there is a risk that someone viewing one TV will see what you intended, but another person on a different TV may see the border you have created by the resize. Someone watching on a PC will see everything.
thomaskay wrote on 6/2/2004, 9:31 PM
Seems like I need a few output sources to check the picture. I thought audio was expensive.

Good tip about cutting the bottom.

Thanks for the input.

Thomas
Grazie wrote on 6/2/2004, 9:40 PM
"I thought audio was expensive. " - Er . . . take some samples, VHS or DVD, to your BIG local TV store! HAHA works for me .. he he he . .. Did this with my first load of SVCDs and VCDs I wanted to "check-out" if the stores Phillips, Panasonics, Grundigs, Sonys etc etc would play them. Salesman was more than helpful . .. . he loved my holiday in Holland too!

I've got another problem. I bought a circular polarizer - it came with a rubber sun hood .. now this hood "just" appears on wide angle - tiny curved shadows in each of the 4 corners of the frame - YUCK ! ! Luckily this was NOT a paid job! Gonna take this back to store . . .

Grazie
Nathan_Shane wrote on 6/2/2004, 9:54 PM
Here's what I recently did just to further educate myself about the safe areas. I captured many different video clips from several different cable channels...you know, CNN, Home Shopping, TV Ads, etc. Especially those which had Lower Thirds and other text, graphics, logos in corners, etc.

Then I went through each clip and saved a Snapshot to File, then arranged all these individual snapshots across the timeline, then turned on the Safe Area parameter and looked at exactly how everything fit with the safe lines. This will give you really good visual examples of where to place things on the screen to make more certain they will be seen.

This also gave me many different templates for creating my own lower thirds on, by using the image as a lower layer in Vegas (or photo editing software).

One thing I've begun to notice too is how some TV's will actually cut off a portion of a "ticker-tape" scrolling across the very bottom of the screen. So it really is amazing to see just how much video information is actually not being seen on some TV sets...but then again, it's mostly useless information falling outside of the safe areas anyway.
guns1inger wrote on 6/2/2004, 9:57 PM
Keep watching - you'll start to see audio cables, boom mics and other bits and pieces. Those few percent can be used to cover a multitude of sins.
thomaskay wrote on 6/2/2004, 10:00 PM
"I captured many different video clips from several different cable channels..."

Good idea.
farss wrote on 6/2/2004, 10:46 PM
Just to complicate matters even more it seems you don't just have to worry about what's inside the safe area but the whole of the frame. I've found that a DVD player hooked up to a LCD screen will show almost the entire frame when I start from analogue captured video.
So although the video is supposed to be 720x576 the setups is displaying the whole 787x 576. Not a big issuse except when you've mixed stills with the video you see the black bars jumping in and out.
Grazie wrote on 6/2/2004, 10:59 PM
Good point farss . . good point ..

Grazie