Picture Size

Ted666

Newbie Joined: Dec 25, 2010 11:04 Messages: 3 Offline

Solved by

Dec 25, 2010 11:20

I'm a first time user of Powerdirector 9 and had no trouble producing a movie. It plays fine on any computer but it is oversized when played on a DVD player and our TV. The picture appears to be zoomed in so that all four edges are lost. What have I done wrong? The camcorder it was recorded on is a Cannon FS200.

BarryTheCrab

Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline

Dec 25, 2010 11:39

What aspect is your TV?
What aspect are you producing in?
Does your TV, if newer flat-screen, have an aspect adjustment? It should most likely have several settings. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

jerrys

Senior Contributor Location: New Britain, CT, USA (between New York and Boston) Joined: Feb 10, 2010 21:36 Messages: 1038 Offline

Dec 25, 2010 18:01

Is this what the "TV Safe Zone" is all about? Jerry Schwartz

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Dec 25, 2010 18:18

Quote: Is this what the "TV Safe Zone" is all about?

Most camcorders do "overscan" and actually capture a bit more than you see in the viewfinder or on the LCD. Because of this, some info on the edges (left, right, top, bottom) will not be displayed when played back. This also depends to some degree on what device you playing back on and what format too.

The TV safe zone is exactly that, what you would expect to be visible when burnt to disc and played on a home entertainment system. The "TV Safe Zone" in PD is usually a conservative guage for titles, PIP tracks and so on. In general I've seen that it is always a conservative estimate. I once put items in the 4 corners so I could map out the safe zone manually and found that the TV safe zone was a conservative, 10-15%. However, I also found a difference in safe zone when the same DVD was played on 2 different LCD TV's and 2 different Tube (CRT) TV's so good that it is conservative and one should not just map the exact edge for one device and expect other viewers "see" the same.

Jeff

jerrys

Senior Contributor Location: New Britain, CT, USA (between New York and Boston) Joined: Feb 10, 2010 21:36 Messages: 1038 Offline

Dec 25, 2010 18:58

Quote: I'm a first time user of Powerdirector 9 and had no trouble producing a movie. It plays fine on any computer but it is oversized when played on a DVD player and our TV. The picture appears to be zoomed in so that all four edges are lost. What have I done wrong? The camcorder it was recorded on is a Cannon FS200.

How much is being lost? a smidge? 10%? Jerry Schwartz

jerrys

Senior Contributor Location: New Britain, CT, USA (between New York and Boston) Joined: Feb 10, 2010 21:36 Messages: 1038 Offline

Dec 25, 2010 19:04

Quote:
That's what I assumed, but I've generally ignored it with no noticeable problems. Only in my latest project did this bite me: my navigation buttons were uncomfortably close to the edge of the screen. They were still there, but it didn't look right.

If I'd been paying attention to the previews, I probably would have noticed the problem even without turning on the safe zone markings.

Conversely, my TV has a feature for clipping a few percent off the picture. This eliminates some of the noise you see around the edges of the picture in certain situations. Jerry Schwartz

Ted666

Newbie Joined: Dec 25, 2010 11:04 Messages: 3 Offline

Dec 27, 2010 09:49

I'm losing enough picture so that tops of heads are cut off and people on the left or right edge are cut in half. I'm producing in 16/9 and my tv is flatscreen 16.9. I'm not sure what TV Safe Zone is???

BarryTheCrab

Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline

Dec 27, 2010 10:37

I am sure you thought of this, but did you check what aspect your tv is set at?
My plasma tv has...
4:3
zoom
full
just...this last one is similar to CLPV, which leaves the center of the picture normal, but stretches the edges. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

HalCon

Senior Contributor Location: Charlottetown, PEI Joined: Mar 01, 2008 10:36 Messages: 719 Offline

Dec 27, 2010 10:48

Ted666,

TV Safe Zone is an area you can activate (see attached screen shot) to determine where you might want to place objects in your project. I find most TVs will show more than what is contained within the boundries, so you might want to leave your background a little larger than the indicated zone. You will have to experiment a little to get the feel of using this function.

Once you have the TV zone showing you have the options to resize and/or relocate the image/video to have it show as you wish. This can be time consuming, but the final output will be worth the effort.

Hal


Filename	tvsafe.png	Download
Description	TV Safe Zone
Filesize	370 Kbytes
Downloaded:	146 time(s)

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pjc3

Senior Member Location: Australia Joined: May 29, 2010 19:33 Messages: 247 Offline

Dec 27, 2010 13:58

TV safe zone is pretty irrelevent to most people who now own flat screen panels. It is really a left over from analogue transmission and CRT technology.
That said, many flat screen TVs still have a small degree of scaling as default (mine does which drives me crazy - keep having to toggle to full screen) but it is usually only in the order of 2.5%. Panasonic SD9, Panasonic TM700, Panasonic SD600, GoPro HD Hero.