True Screen sizing

wayoutwest wrote on 10/4/2003, 2:36 PM
I am developing my first DVD for a friend of mine and I wanted to know exactly what is the boundry for "safe area" visuals? I mean, exaclty where will a TV cut off my video and text? I know it has a default safe area but not sure how accurate that is.

I dont want to burn dvd, check, burn again, check, burn again, etc....

Thanks!

Comments

vitalforces wrote on 10/4/2003, 2:45 PM
The "safe area" buttons in both the DVDA and Vegas GUI's are meant to cover all scenarios. Some TVs, mainly newer ones, expose a bit more screen surface than older ones, but the safe-area boundaries which appear on the DVDA and Vegas preview screens are meant to cover even the thickest screen boundaries.
Former user wrote on 10/4/2003, 7:06 PM
There is no EXACT area of cutoff. It will vary from TV to TV, even among the same model of TV. There is not a standard. The safe areas on Vegas will cover most TV's but some people might find them too stringent or too loose. You have to experiment.

Build a graphic with lines and numbers at different distances from the edge. Render this and watch it on different TV's making note of what is cutoff. This is about the only way to tell.

Dave T2
rmack350 wrote on 10/5/2003, 1:31 AM
Regardless of how much the TV is actually showing you, I think the maximum it could show you is 704 pixels wide by 480 tall. That's the portion of the DV frame that makes a 4:3 image.

Even if you are seeing that much of the frame it's fairly random where on the 720x480 frame your 704x480 window will fall.

By the time it reaches your TV it's probably not pixels anymore anyway but what the heck.

Rob Mack
vonhosen wrote on 10/5/2003, 4:24 AM
I read somewhere very early on when I started doing DVDs to allow
5% in from edges for "Action Safe" where your important footage will be visible on MOST TVs &
10% in from edges for "Title Safe" where all your graphics/buttons will be safe on ALL TVs.
rmack350 wrote on 10/5/2003, 7:29 PM
Vegas defaults to 10 and 20 but that could be reset in prefs on the video tab.

I'd search the web for action safe to get a consensus. It looks to me as if 5% makes for a credible viewing area and that this ought to cover what a normal TV sees in undescan.

The question would be where does that 5% area start? Imagine your 5% action safe area as a window of video. The fact is that that window could be skewed left or right or up or down and if you compose tightly to those lines you could end up really close to the edge of frame and really far from the edge on the opposite side. setting your marks to 10 and 20% is very safe and conservative.

I think that the Vegas defaults are "compositionally safe" in that things will generally look good if composed to these lines. And given the penchant of the Vegas team to do things "by the book" I'll bet these lines are right.

Rob Mack