Widescreen Issues

Dolfinz wrote on 7/13/2004, 4:42 PM
I'm currently trying to format my DVD to play, without being stretched, on a widescreen TV. The images are all set to 720x480, as is the DVD (NTSC Widescreen 720x480 option), but when I play it on a widescreen TV part of all the menus are cut off, stretching the menu as well as images I have in picture compilations. It looks fine on a non-widescreen TV, so I'm guessing something is formatted wrong? Please help quickly!!

oh and I already tried setting the title and action safe zones to 0%...didn't work! or maybe this is the problem? I hate having to wait 4 hours every time I change something just to see if it's going to work correctly. The preview always shows things how they should be, bu tnever how they are ;P

i also just noticed that the TV is cutting the picture off where the defualt safe zones (title-20% and action-10%) would be set. why aren't they changing?!?!

Comments

ghosty6 wrote on 7/13/2004, 10:45 PM
Still images need to be cropped to 16:9(1.77) ratio to be able to fill a widescreen TV correctly

This is a complex issue and it took a lot of research for me to be able to produce correct widescreen slide shows.
bStro wrote on 7/14/2004, 9:58 AM
The outer 10% of any television content is not visible on the screen. It's projected onto the screen, but is hidden by the TV's outer casing. On top of this, there are some televisions (especially smaller ones and older ones) where even more of the screen is hidden.

Safe areas are guides to help you design your video (in Vegas) and DVD (in DVDA) so that anything you absolutely want the viewer to see is where it will not get cut off. Changing the safe areas won't change anything in your video/DVD anymore than changing your grid size will. They're just guides.

As for your picture compilation, different image/video formats have differently sized pixels. For example, computer images use squre pixels -- they are as wide as they are tall. Digital video, however, uses rectangular pixels -- they are taller than they are wide. Widescreen video uses even wider pixels.

For a still image to be used in a widescreen DVD, the size you want is 872x480. This takes into account the move from still image to DVD as well as the move from 4x3 aspect to 16x9 aspect.

Rob