What is "Perfect Size" to scan for TV??

[Gritz]

Since the sides of a scanned picture are sometimes cut off as they disappear into the edges of the monitor frame I've often wondered what the EXACT SIZE of the scan should be? I've heard that 800 x 600 will do it .... but it doesn't. I then tried 768 x 586 .... and that wasn't it either. Now I read in Maximum PC that most American sets will only display 440 x 480?? If that's true then why is it recommended to encode at 720 x 480 for the best quality? Seems confusing to me ... if someone can shed a little more light on this it would be appreciated.

[SLK001]

Now I read in Maximum PC that most American sets will only display 440 x 480??

They are incorrect.

If you are really concerned with the overscan, then scan your photos at very high resolutions, then resize to 680x460, then add a 20 pixel black bar on the right and left, and a 10 pixel black bar on the top and bottom. However, you might want to adjust these numbers to your particular TV.

[Gritz]

I am concerned because text I apply to slideshows in Pictureshow2 is at times missing at the outer edges. There is no "Title Safe" area in Pictureshow2 so it becomes a guessing game. Knowing the precise pixel dimensions would allow me to be a little more generous in the use of text and would require less "re-editing". Many of my vertical pictures have the black bars on each side .... and in order to keep the text in these bars readable with contrast I need to keep within this area. Knowing where to start the text would help ............ therefore my question.

[Rogue3]

If you have photoshop you can do what I do which works quite well...

after you crop all of your pictures open them up in photoshop, chose 'canvas size' and you can increase it by a certain percentage. I usually increase mine by 5% (with black) and that does quite well to eliminate the overscan problem. Then, when you import into pictureshow just don't put text in the black areas. You can play around with the percentage to see what works best for your tv.

[Gritz]

SLK001,
Since I'm not worried about printing my scanned pictures and want to save hard disk space I try to scan at the resolution that will most likely fill the tv screen, since that will be the final application. I have always before scanned for 800 x 600, but I often lose a little on the horizonal scale. That is, if I have a 2" picture I scan at 300 dpi if it's important to capture all of the vertical components, or I scan at 400 dpi if it's important to capture all of the horizontal detail. From your answer would I be correct in assuming that the correct size to scan for would be 720 x 480? NTSC that is?

[ImaWeTodd]

scan your photos at very high resolutions, then resize to 680x460

I thought I read 10 & 20 % not pixels. Misinformation duely deleted.

Hopefully I've added some value, but I don't really do this, so I have no practical experience. Let me know and I'll delete my misinformation.

[SLK001]

680x460 I think slk ment 640x480 or 720x540 or ....

Notice that I said to add borders (around the outside edges, of course) that will bring the final resolution to 720x480 - perfect for NTSC.

[lordsmurf]

Now I read in Maximum PC that most American sets will only display 440 x 480??

They are incorrect.

No, that's correct. But the confusion comes from source resolution vs playback resolution.

Most television sets, depending on the age and size, can only playback somewhere between 300x480 and 500x480. Now, you can surely feed it a DVD that has 720x480, but all that extra resolution will be lost.

I like to compare it to my photo work. Pick up any newspaper. The image was printed at 2400 dpi. However, the source JPEG is only 160-250 dpi in the news industry. The outcome resolution and source resolution don't have to match.

In fact, broadcast/cable is only 336x480 and VHS is only 220-240x480. Most of this info, and lots more, will appear on lordsmurf.com very soon.

Yeah, month-old post, but I was in the neighborhood.