Where exactly is the television safe area?

[Zeiker]

I'm Authoring a DVD but I have gone and made the video files too large, they run off the displayable area, so I'm going to resize the video size with TMPGEnc the automatic sizes aren't outputting to the right size so I need to choose a custom ratio. So basically what is the ###x### that I should be setting the size of the image to within a 4:3 NTSC video with resolution settings 720x480.

[mpiper]

This is a little hard to answer.

The correct video size is 720X480, but TVs have part of the screen covered by the housing. If you re-size the image, then the image will just stretch until it fills the same size. 352x240, 704x480 and 720x480 all look same size on TV, different levels of detail.

The best thing to do is create a 720X480 black matte, then lay the actual video on top.

The best size (according to Adobe Premiere Pro) is 652X436 for action, and 577X385 for titles

The idea is action can be cut off on some low quality monitors, so the larger area, but titles and text must be fully visible no matter what brand or quality a TV is, so the text area is smaller.

Hope this helps!!

Mike

[edDV]

Here is a techie graphical answer. Practical 4:3 aspect rule of thumb,

Keep critical action inside a 7% border and titles inside a 10-12% border.

http://www.itfc.com/assets/safeareas.pdf

Here's another good ref for 4:3 aspect ratio.

http://www.uwsp.edu/it/telecomm/utdlr/tutorials/tvgraphics/fortv.htm

[Zeiker]

That's exactly what I needed thanks, and laying over a black matte was effectively exactly what I was doing, I see now that it must vary with the specific television, I'll try the sizes you suggested and see how it turns out.

[junkmalle]

Yes, it varies from TV to TV. TV's usually do not have good linearity, they can't center the picture well, and there's often junk at the edges of the picture (look at a VHS cap). Overscan hides all these ills.