Anyone Adding Overscan Space? On Purpose?

[homerpez]

I need to...

I've made up almost a whole SVCD of Flash animation transfers (of amazing quality)... except I forgot completely about overscan.

Does anyone, anywhere, happen to know about how many pixels I can add to each side (ideally squeezing the viewable area towards the center evenly), when the source is 480x480? NTSC?

To make matters worse, on my TV and Apex 500W, I've noticed pretty quickly that it cuts more off from the RIGHT side than the rest. This is fatal on Flash movie conversions, as you can't even read the first letter of a title sometimes, because it's on the Right side (even when the rest is out of the overscan area)... Anyone else have this problem with thiers? Or is it the TV?

Please tell me there's a method to use every time, not "use your judgement"... What program would I use to accomplish this?

[kinneera]

Unfortunately, overscan varies from TV to TV...your best bet is to run a couple of tests using a CD-RW. 1 or 2 macroblocks is usually your best bet (16 or 32 pixels).

If you can get it in AVI form first, you can squeeze (resize) and add the borders fairly easily using AVISynth, much the same way many people correct DVD rips for overscan.

[homerpez]

OH NO! ANYTHING BUT AVISYNTH! (Thought I was rid of that forever)!

I was afraid it did vary from TV to TV, but I'll just experiment with it...

I don't suppose there's a way to accomplish this using TMPGEnc? (this is what I use to do resizing, as it's much quicker to see what I'm doing, and make a project file)...

Thanks again...

[Truman]

I prefer Avisynth, but of course you can use TMPG to resize as well.
Use FitCD to calculate how to resize and use video arrange method: "center[custom size]".

[homerpez]

That's better!

So I would use FitCD/TMPGEnc mix then... seems to do exaclty what I'm looking for!

Thanks, Truman... that's what I was going for, though I'm sure AVISYNTH is fine too...

[kinneera]

If I understand your problem correctly, I would have to disagree and say that you will still need to use Avisynth.

You have a video file that is already at 480x480, correct? And that video is getting clipped on the edges by overscan, correct? So what you are really needing to do is resize, and add borders to preserve the correct resolution, correct? If so, I am unaware as to how one can accomplish this only with TMPGEnc, since it does not have any mechanism for adding those borders.

AVISynth really isn't so terribly hard to use to accomplish what you need to do, just ask if you want to know what the script should look like.

[$$$]

No need for Avisynth. As long as your target video size set in TMPG's Video tab is larger than the size entered together with the arrange method 'Center (custom Size)' you will get borders. Check this in the preview which you can get to see by going through 'Clip frame' and pressing the 'Arrange setting' button.

If you can manage to get your video source already in the target size of let's say 448x448 (in case you are the producer or use a frameserver for instance) then you would just need to set the video size to 480x480 in the Video tab and choose 'Center' as arrange method (without 'custom size'). That will give you a 16 pixel wide black border around your video.

If you don't need Avisynth's filters and are happy with TMPG's resize stay with it, it's much faster.

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