lost an inch on each side of my vcds

[klumbz]

I made a menu in photoshop (704x480) saved it as .bmp then opened it with TMPGEnc and added the.wav and converted w/the vcd ntsc template (352x240) 4:3 ntsc 525.
but when it plays on my television the sides of the menu are cut off about 1" on each side.

I try'd different sorce aspect ratios, and arrange methods but that did'nt help at all.

any ideas?
thx
klumbz

[Sefy]

Did you try the 4:3 DIsplay ? (it's not the same as 4:3 NTSC 525)

[klumbz]

yea i try'd that too

[Freshman]

This might depend on how your TV displays VCDs/DVDs - you might be missing a small part of the picture all the time without noticing. Is the menu complete if you play the VCD back on your PC?

BTW, since you're starting with a 704*480 image, I would suggest keeping this resolution when you encode it to MPEG, since VCDs do support high resolution still images, and they look much better than menus at 352*240.

[Rtm]

The Issue of TV Cropping
Another issue that people often don't realise is that essentially ALL television sets cannot fully display the entire screen. On playback, the TV can crop up to 10% off all sides of the picture (especially at the corners). More realistically, most TV sets will crop about 5% on most sides.

The importance of this is to be aware of this phenomenon. That is, if you place visual data on a MPEG still or clip on a VCD that is too close to the edges, there is a chance that it would be cropped. This is often a trap for young players so be aware of:

menu labels placed too close the edges
photos of people with the head too close to the upper edge
subtitles placed too low on the screen
etc.


From VCDImager Guides:

http://www.geocities.com/medinotes/vcd/mpeg_still_images.html

There's also a very good explanation on Aspect Rations, so go read it

[Truman]

Rtm is absolutely right. Neither the TV displays the full 704x480 nor the 352x240 image. Resize to a smaller image and add borders to the TV overscan area if you want to see the whole image.
Search the forum for "overscan".