Burning DVD with safe area

[Norfolkman6]

I know there are questions everywhere about video safe areas and aspect ratios but my problem is slightly different.
I have been given a slideshow video in mpg4 format 16:9 ratio and asked to make into a looping DVD. No problem, this was done and works OK.
However, the original person has put the photos and captions right to the edges and top and bottom of the frame, consequently, after having burned the DVD, everything is visible on a PC but when played on a TV, either the side or top are cut off, obviously because it is outside of the safe area.
Now, I don't have access to the original images in order to resize them, so is there a way that I can Resize/Crop/Clip or whatever, the Mpg video so that it will be within the safe area? I've tried fit to width, fit to height etc but they make no difference I'm guessing that somehow I need to be able to put a small frame around the video in order to reduce just the content size.
Any ideas how to do this please, (A nice piece of freeware would be great !!!) At the moment I am using AVC any video converter free.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Geoff

[LMotlow]

Are they viewing this mpeg on a CRT or something? Probably not, or the 16:9 nvideo would be letterboxed.
Most HDTV's have an setting that disables overscan. I disable mine all the time. Otherwise, you have some work to do to get about 10% smaller video o and re-encode it. Any Video Converter is likely not the best choice, even if it works.

[Norfolkman6]

No, the viewing is on a modern Sony Bravia HD TV but the problem is with the viewing of the DVD not the Mpeg. Also it needs to be able to be shown on other peoples TVs and they may not be able to switch off overscan .
It is being able to reduce the content area to be within the safe area that I was asking about.

[LMotlow]

No, the viewing is on a modern Sony Bravia HD TV but the problem is with the viewing of the DVD not the MPEG.

An authored DVD is MPEG without added encoding. If you played that MPEG off a hard drive with a set top player that can read USB input and feed it to a TV, the MPEG and the DVD would play the same video. Every Bravia TV I ever saw had overscan controls, along with LG, Samsung, Panasonic. But maybe some of those models or others don't have it. Are these users aware that HD cable is also being affected the same way? If you notice some HD movies being broadcast with a slight border visible on some edges, you'll know how they sometimes handle it.

I would rework the MPEG using Avisynth and separate encoders/authoring software. I don't use free encoders, never liked the results and they don't offer enough control over procedures, so I can't advise about them.

[jagabo]

Add black borders of about 2 to 5 percent of the frame size to all four sides, resize to DVD resolution (720x576 for PAL DVD). Encode. Of course, anybody viewing on a TV without overscan will see those borders.

Different TVs overscan by different amounts. Most modern TVs overscan by 2 or 3 percent. Older CRTs by 5 percent or more.

[Norfolkman6]

Thanks for all the advice.
I've just discovered that my Sony Vegas allows me to scale rather than crop so I can now add a border easily

[LMotlow]

Scale it to what size? Resizing to a smaller frame in itself won't work as DVD, which for PAL must be 720x576 -- which gives you what you started with. You'd have to use Vegas to downscale a few pixels each side, then center that smaller frame in a black background to fill in the rest and have a 720x576 frame. No one said anything about cropping.