Final product missing outer edge.

[Cyntalan]

I'm currently using TMGEnc DVD Author to take a preset MPG (already converted and resized to 720x480) and make it DVD ready. Upon authoring and burning, I replay it in my PC DVD player software. Image looks great, exact size, everything's fine. However, the problem lies when I take the DVD and play it in a standalone player. About 10-20 pixels on either side go off screen. This was on two different DVD players. As long as it's on a PC, it displays fine, but not when it's on a standalone player. Also, the menu display shows up fine on a standalone player. Just the actual video. Any ideas as to why? Is it something I need to go back to the original file to correct? Or is this a problem in the authoring process?

[mats.hogberg]

Look up "overscan" in the glossary left.

/Mats

[Cyntalan]

I would have thought it was overscan, but the fact that the menu displays normally makes me wonder why it would ONLY overscan the video and not the menu.

[ZippyP.]

.. why it would ONLY overscan the video and not the menu.

I use TDA and it shows me where the overscan is so that I can create my menus properly. So what I'm saying is that my menus do overscan and the software can compensate.

[guns1inger]

definately overscan. Search for overscan or borders in the forums and you will find solutions. Most involved FitCD and/or avisynth, and a reencode.

[Cyntalan]

ok, I think I figured it out, but I still am not clear on why. After resizing a few times, I finally did a center into a 720x480 res, and the original file, which started at 512x224, got reencoded to 640x280, which fits perfectly, and on PCs you find a nice black perimeter. Note the width, however. Normal video resolution (pan and scan) would be 640x480 on most TVs. From my experience, DVDs typically run at 720x480 and have no issues with clipping. The fact that 640 was the appropriate width leads me to believe I might have a misconfiguration somewhere, 'causing the image to not properly fit like most other DVDs would (though, being that 480i/p would only normally display 640x480, I'm still not sure why no commercial DVDs fall into this same problem).

To sum it up: videos that are 720x480 are cut, 640x480 aren't. Is there a setting to do whatever most DVDs do to make a 720x480 fit? I guess it's not a big deal now, but more for informational reasons now.

[guns1inger]

You have resize your image and add a border to do this on compliant DVD ersolution files. FitCD can produce a script that calculates this for you.

I hope you understand that all your commercial DVDs and TV shows have stuff that you don't see in the overscan area. You don't miss anything unless you are watching fan0subbed anime, where, for whatever reason, the fan-subbers refuse to work within normal broadcast safe ranges. Obviously they believe no-one ever watches their work on anything but a PC. It is probably the third most asked question here, behind NTSC->PAL/PAL->NTSC conversion, and 'what is the best {insert type of program here}' questions.

[jimmalenko]

... which fits perfectly ...

... on your TV(s).

Different CRT TVs have different "thresholds" of overscan. I have an el-cheapo Centrex that cuts about 15% on each side, whereas my LG is only about 5% each side. I can play the exact same DVD on the exact same DVD Player and observe these differences quite easily.

[kschang]

Yep, my old Emerson cuts off at least 30+ pixels on left and right *sigh* Never noticeable until you play a fansub, when you notice that the subtitles are cutting off.

I felt exactly the same way when I was playing with fansub (Initial D Fourth Stage) and FitCD and my edges were getting cut off and I get black bars when the original code didn't have them. Confused the heck out of me for a while.