Action Safe Area

Hello,
I'm a "newbie" who is very eager to learn everthing I can about post-production using Final Cut Studio . . . I was going to reply to an archived post but not sure if anyone would stil be viewing that topic. Sorry if this is a well weathered question!
I've inversted in Apple Pro Training Text Books; Final Cut Pro 5; Soundtrack; Soundtrack Pro; Motion and DVD Studio Pro 4.
I'd like to learn as much as possible for myself, however any help from anybody would be appreciated.
Creating my project in FCP > Exporting to Quicktime > then Authoring in DVDSP.
Viewing in the simulator is exactly what I'm after!!
When I burn the project and play though the set top DVD player the images are cropped. I researched the issue on this forum and found posts explaining that the signal received by the TV was not the entire signal and that it was the TV that was the issue (I could be wrong, but that's the way it read to me) . . . I tested this theory by conecting my Powerbook to a projector via S-Video and selected - Digital Cinema Desktop Preview in the Simulator Preferences in DVDSP. Then I conected both the Yamaha DVD player (1 Year old) and the Pioneer DVD player (5 years old) and toggled between them to find out if my project would be successfully transmitted from both the laptop and a burnt DVD.
The result has lead me to believe the signal was not sent properly from the DVD players as both DVD players produced cropped results even though I was using a projector. The signal sent from the laptop was %100 and what I'd like to achieve from my DVD players. Weather in be a CRT, Plasma or Projector.
Are there any ways to compensate for the cropping eg: measurements or methods?
Hope this all makes sense.
Thanking you - JayMac

Welcome to the forums, JayMac.
The title of your message, "Action Safe Area," leads me to believe you've read about your action-safe and title-safe borders, and that you realize that all TVs "overscan" images. It might not be ideal, but they all do it, and you need to adjust for it. That's why Final Cut, Motion, and DVD Studio Pro all include the option of displaying "action safe" and "title safe" borders. Going past those borders will risk images getting cut off on a TV set due to overscan.
Your test with the video output from a PowerBook was not a valid test, unfortunately. If I hook my PowerBook to a TV set, I absolutely need the entire screen to display on the set, particularly the top of the screen--otherwise I wouldn't be able to see the menu bar to make selections. Therefore, computers with TV-out are designed to compensate for overscan, so that the entire desktop is visible.
The bottom line is that every TV overscans, and every TV overscans by a different amount. By using your active-safe and title-safe borders, you'll be assured that those parts of your video or menu will be visible. This is the best way of handling things, rather than trying to "fight the power" and somehow compensate for overscan.

Similar Messages

Is there a quick way to fit everything in the Title/Action Safe Areas ?

Hi,
(sorry in advance for my english, I'm a french canadian)
I built a complete DVD without realizing that I should consider the "Safe Areas" (see my first post : "Formatting in 4:3 but image is still stretched on a 4:3 TV. What the... ?"), so now I'm stuck with a 12 hours project that show only some part on TV.
Something strange too is that I first thought what was shown corresponded to the "Action Safe Area", but I just realized that both sides are cut like the "Title Safe Area" and top/bottom are cut like the "Action Safe Area". It's not one or the other, it's a mix of both. What causes that ?
What I need to know now is if there is a way to compress all the DVD or make everything to fit quickly in the viewable area so I will not have to fit everything one by one.
Thanks for your help.
P.S.
The 4:3 simulation mode should specifiate the overscanning process in the application when we use it, so it would solve a lot of problem in the first place.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9695813#9695813
x

Title Safe Area and Action Safe Area

I understand the recomandations about the Title Safe Area and Action Safe Area (PDF p215).
I am wondering if this is still acurate today, considering many people in the U.S have widescreen TVs. I`m just wondering if anybody still have a TV that only shows the Title safe area?
Also, on a Widescreen TV, is there any chance to have only the Action safe area?
Thanks.

I very much doubt anyone has a TV that only displays title safe area and nothing outside of it... the Title Safe area is a percentage reduction from the outer edge of the image. If a TV is showing in the 4:3 aspect ratio, any image will be sized appropriately to fit, and the title safe will be proportional... 10% in from the outer edge.
The title safe area originally existed to allow for text to be showing without too much distortion on a curved TV screen. The Action safe area simply extended beyond this to the edge of the screen, and is 5% in from the edge of the footage.
In the days of CRT sets, the glass screen has a plastic bezel which masks the very edge of the screen, meaning the image disappears neatly behind it. Action safe areas are just those that will appear beyond the bezel and be visible, but which might distort sightly due to the curvature of the glass.
On a computer screen the entire image is seen regardless, as the geometry of the screen is adjusted to appear within the entire display, and so AS and TS areas don't really apply.
Whether or not your screen is widescreen doesn't matter, it's all about pixel aspect ratios. The image is displayed proportionately, and the visible areas are the same from screen to screen. When setting up photoshop images with guides to show AS and TS, you'll find that the TV image is 720px wide, and the guides are set at 36px from the left and right for the AS, and 72px in for the TS. The vertical size differs between NTSC and PAL, and thus the guides are positioned differently, but still 5 and 10% respectively.

Title & Action Safe Areas

In Ken Stone's tutorial at:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/idvd_6stone.html
he has an image:
http://www.kenstone5.net/fcphomepage/images_idvd_6_stone/05_idvd_6stone.jpg
which shows these areas much smaller than the overlays in FCE's canvas, and one "Standard Crop Area" does not crop any of the top. How come? Which is correct?
Thanks
G5/2.0 GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1 GB RAM, 150 GB HD, Sony DCR-HC96 mini DV, FCE HD 3.0

FCE. The standard crop area shows 4:3 for pan and scan in widescreen material.

What is outside the Title Safe Area?

I am a bit confused b y the explanation (in the manual) of the Title Safe Area and Action Safe Area (p.215). The manual states that these settings indicate, "... portions of the menu that may not be viewable on most consumer monitors." Is there any way to determine that on the computer screen, or is it pot luck depending on the individual TV? Does it also depend on whether the TV is a rear projection, plasma, or LCD?
Since I am using one of my images as the background for the menu, I'd like to know how much of the image might be cropped.
Barry

My experience is confined to PAL. Image sizes for NTSC are different. As I understand it, Title Safe and Action Safe areas do not exist in, and are irrelevant to, the widescreen (16:9) format when displayed on a 16:9 TV. This is because every pixel of a widescreen video is always shown on a widescreen TV (assuming that the DVD player has been set to 16:9, see below). Title/Action Safe areas are only necessary for displaying widescreen video on 4:3 format TVs. This is because the Powers That Be decided that widescreem video should be shown slightly enlarged on a 4:3 TV. This gives a larger and therefore clearer image compared to full Letterboxing where the full width of the widescreen image is shown but with inevitably wider black bars at top and bottom. However, this enlargement causes parts of the widescreen image at left and right to be cropped on most TVs, which is usually no great loss.
On the display settings, for movies in widescreen (16:9), I set the display options in the following places:
1. DVD SP > Preferences > Encoding Set "Aspect Ratio" to 16:9
2. DVD SP > Preferences > Simulator Set "Aspect" to 16:9
3. In the Menu Inspector for each menu, Menu Tab, set "Aspect Ratio" to 16:9, and do this before setting the Menu Background image and its Overlay file (otherwise the Overlay file will not register accurately with the Menu Background image, at least that is the case with my outfit - DVD SP 3.0
4. Set each Video Track to 16:9 To do that, activate the Graphical Tab in the window at top left of the screen, select the track, and in the now-visible Track Inspector (General Tab) I set "Mode" to "16:9 (Letterbox)" because my TV is 4:3. (It is tempting to assume that if the TV is widescreen, you would set it to "16:9", but with my setting of "16:9 (Letterbox)" the DVD also displayed correctly on two widescreen TVs available to me (ie., it filled the whole screen). I don't know what display setting the owners had on their DVD players.
5. Finally, the DVD player needs to be set to 16:9 (if the TV is physically 16:9), or to 4:3L if the TV is 4:3 (at least, that works for me).
So there is quite a lot of setting to do to get the correct display. I am surprised that Apple did not offer a single setting in Preferences to cover all this. Perhaps DVD SP 4 or 5 does.
G5/2.0 GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1 GB RAM, 150 GB HD, Sony DCR-HC96 mini DV, FCE HD 3.0 DVD SP 3

Does "Safe Area" apply to flat screens?

Hi, can anyone tell me the importance of "Safe Area" these days (e.g. denoted by rectangles on screen when adding titles)? When viewing videos on 16:9 flat screens, are details outside the internal rectangle likely to be lost, or is this only likely when viewers forget to set the correct aspect ratio? Was "Safe Area" more relevant when viewing old TV screens pre-dating the LCD/LED flat screens of today? If detail is critical on flat screens, should I be considering the external rectangle rather than the internal one when adding titles for viewing on flat screens? I am putting together a slide show of old family photos and shrinking them enough within frame to add titles over black space beneath the photos so that clean names can be read more quickly than if superimposed. I like the classy look of gold lettering on black background beneath old black and white photos. When heads are close to top of frame in the photos, the images must be shrunk a little more than perhaps desirable to fit lettering beneath the photos within the internal rectangle when adding titles. The photos won't have to be shrunk so much if it is OK to fit all within the external rectangle for flat screen viewing.
Using PE10, Windows 7 64 bit, i7 377ok, 16Gb RAM, Geforce GTX 650, ASUS 21 inch 16:9 LED screen.

The Title Safe, and Action Safe Areas were designed for the overscan, that existed in older CRT TV screens - unless the TV was a calibrated "studio monitor," which showed 100% of the raster. The amount of overscan differed make to make, and even model to model, so a "worst-case scenario" was chosen.
With current flat screen TV's, there is still often some overscan, but it is much less, in most cases, than with the CRT tubes. Many producers have changed from the old Title Safe of 20% to about 10%, and for Action Safe, from the old 10% to about 5%.
As there can still be some overscan, going out to 100% of raster can create cutoffs, and that is obviously not wanted.
Taking into account the vast number of TV types available today, LED, LCD, Plasma, etc., and the number of screen mfgrs., I would not overlook overscan, but think that you would be safe going to the 10% for the Title Safe (shown as the outer Action Safe recangle) for your Titles - unless some family members still have 4:3 CRT TV's. If they do, then stick with the old Title Safe Area.
Good luck,
Hunt

'Title Safe' and 'Action Safe' boundaries

I assume that the 'Title Safe' area is the boundaries where the Title should not exceed, and that the Action Safe' area is a boundary that the action should not exceed. However, does this mean that nothing will show beyond those boundaries, or that you might run the risk of cutoff if they are exceeded?
Thanks!

Hi(Bonjour)!
All material that is outside the action safe zone cannot be viewed on a TV set, but will be seen on a computer screen.
+Broadcast monitors+ are designed to display this area too.
Try your camcorder by frame the action very close the edges and look the clip in viewer. You should see the extra area. Some pro camcorders do offer an showing overscan feature to monitor this area upon shooting.
Michel Boissonneault

How do I get most of my movie within the TV safe area?

Have projects in 4:3 and widescreen and match up the project settings with the correct theme settings in iDVD but a very large amount of the footage in both simply does not appear when played on my TV (actually a Plasma computer screen - no tuner - multi viewing options). The full detail is making it onto the disc as when I play back on a computer it shows fine. When on a TV a very large amount of the picture is lost to the extent where the standard titles from imovie don't all show. As my DVD's are all recorded for viewers to use on TV;s how can I scale the whole of the picture to sit within the the Red TV safe box showing on IDVD?

Generally, you don't. You just keep it all there when filming. If for instance you are asking how to change a 720x480 movie to a 650x400 or so to keep it all in the action safe area, then you would be making a video which is not allowed on a DVD. So you do this at the camera; or, if you are editing in something like Final Cut Pro you can crop and zoom. But then you are blowing up part of the picture, and you will see visual artifacts.
If you have a flat-panel TV, then it has no area it cuts off (called "overscan"). But TVs have a setting to create overscan for various reasons. So look in your TV menus for an option to turn overscan off.
Now, you certainly can scale video and put a black mask around it. But that means that many other people would see the black border with a small picture in the middle. The preferred way is to film properly for a variety of TV sets. TVs all have different amounts of overscan, including no overscan for flat-panel TVs, unless an option to create an artificial overscan.
Jeremy

How to i get my menu picture in the action/title safe area in dvd sp

??

To the extent that you are designing in Final Cut, Motion or even DVD SP itself (depedning on the workflow) they also have title/action safe overlays to view.
For still stuff, I do what Eric says - Photoshop and guides

Action/Title Safe Areas

I am having problems setting up guides for safe areas and I wondered if
anyone else had some advice or tips.
In the Preferences under Grids & Guides the Action Safe and Title Safe are
preset to 10% and 20% respectively. But this relates to the size of the
comp, I am working in HD so my comp is 1920 x 1080 and the Title/Action safe
guides are set proportional to that. However in reality I have to set my
Title Safe area to be Title Safe for 4:3 within a 16:9 HD comp for
international sales to countries still using 4:3 TV.
If I change the value for the Title Safe area in the Preferences to say 30%
to show a guide closer to the 4:3 safe area I need to adhere to it changes
BOTH the width and the height so the width might be accurate but the height
is way out. On top of that I also have to work with 14:9 Title Safe areas
for some projects too so I'd like to see those.
I can drag guidelines to sit over the correct areas but this a pain as the
guides are just for each individual comp not all the nested comps I work
with when making the animation so I have to make them anew for every comp
and project to make sure text is safe, I can't just click on the Action/Safe
when I want to see it.
I downloaded a Photoshop comp from the BBC in the UK and have been importing
that as an overlay to check my Title safe but I really wanted to know if I
am missing something. Avid Media Composer for example shows guides for
widescreen comps 14:9 Action Safe, 14:9 Title Safe, 4:3 Action Safe and 4:3
Title Safe, is there nothing I can do in After Effects to have the guides
permanently set to multiple safe areas or even just the correct height and
width for 4:3 safe within a 16:9 comp?
Thanks in advance.
BBC links if anyone is interested:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tvbranding/picturesize.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tvbranding/artwork1.shtml

Many thanks for those links silversurfer. When I compare them to the ones I
got from the BBC they don't match up though; your Action Safe is their 3:4
picture area and your Title Safe is wider than their Action Safe. This is
the other issue I have run into, that different broadcasters have different
specifications.
The guides the BBC give as safe margins for 4:3 Title Safe within a 16:9
widescreen frame are 10% top and bottom and 20.5% left and right. Doing the
math for an HD 16:9 frame makes a box 1132 pixels wide by 864 high with the
margins set at 394px left, 1526px right, 108px bottom and 972px top. (Their
4:3 Action Safe is 5% top and bottom and 17% left and right.)
It would be great in CS4 to be able to set templates that can quickly be
called up across comps and projects, the single percentage option they have
right now for both width and height is pretty useless. I have been importing
a Photoshop template but it's an inelegant kludge.
I was hoping I was being dumb and had missed a vital feature, but it seems
not! :-(

Action safe...

Hello -
I am editing a dance project in Final Cut Studio - I have the title/action safe on, and notice that some of the dancers dance right outside of the lines. When I compressed to a Quicktime video, it shows the exact same thing that my project in FCP is showing, meaning that all of the dancers are seen. My question is, those dancers that are outside of the lines get cut out when burning to DVD? They don't seem to be getting cut out on the Quicktime video. Ok, thank you!

Kristina--
Do a search on this forum dealing with TV safe area. A lot of good information.
Basically...If pertinent action falls "outside the lines" (certain dancers in your case), there is the possibility that on certain TV's your dancers may be cut off. By keeping action "inside" the lines you basically insure that everything will show up on all TV's.
T.

How to hide title safe area?

hi - quick q - i created a project in cs5 using the new video settings - how do i hide the title/action safe guides?

Hi
The toolbar should say 'artboard' - after the input box labelled: Name, there are some small icons, the second along says "Display options" if you hover over it. Hidden under that icon are various options to show and hide the different aspects of the video grid if I'm correct in understanding what you're asking for.

TV safe area

why is there a TV safe area that is so small, even on wide screen settings. I don't understand why you can't burn your project to a DVD and have it look like or be close to the same size the project is. In other words I checked the "show TV safe area" and the box showing the area shaded a 1/4 of the screen. It also cuts off parts of videos and pictures from drop zones that can't be moved or resized.
how can I fix this so my TV safe area fits around my project
Am I doing something wrong, and does my ? make sense

Hi
As I get it TV-safe area only apply to old time CRT TV-sets where a bit of the picture
is lost (wrapped) due to overscann as standard to all of them.
To ensure that texts and action was visibly one truned on TV-safe area and moved
eg text inside this to secure it's readability.
On Mac or flat screens this should be totally obsolete - they as I understands it
shows 100% of movie area.
Old CRT TV-screens could be adjusted to show 100% and a black frame but this just
applied to that special set and a movie often were to be playable on any TV however
it was adjusted.
Turn it off - If Your movie is not to be playbacked on an old TV-set.
Yours Bengt W

Why don't still images scale to fit the safe areas of the frame?

Why doesn't Encore offer offer more flexibility for scaling images in slideshows. Yeah, I know it's very cool that it does a scale, but I want everybody who watches my dvd to be able to see ALL of my image. For those who own standard televisions, they won't be able to see the whole image unless I pan and zoom, and even then I have to time the pan correctly.
Programmers, please add a feature so that users have more control over scaling.
Thanks,
Laz!

Said this dozens of times, and will doubtless say it dozens of times more.
There are 2 issues at play here.
1 - Encore is an authoring app, not an editor, and as such it is down to you to prepare your assets correctly.
2 - a standard TV will always crop the images - they overscan. the same image in a progressive scan system will display fully.
So, what you need to do is decide what you need to create your images at, and if you use Photoshop, After Effects or Premiere, then you can use the title safe/Action safe overlays to scale things yourself.
It has to be done this way, as not all TV sets overscan to the same degree - as I just said, Progressive Scan systems and LCD/Plasma screens don't overscan at all.
This is what the safe areas are for.

Seemingly simple question regarding safe areas

I can't seem to find a simple fix to this anywhere, though it seems to me like
there should be one.
When I shoot, I compose my shots in camera so that they look the same when played on a TV. Because of the nature of television, some portion is always cut off.
Is there an easy way to size the image down to fit the title safe grid so the entire IMAGE is safe on screen?
Please help me I am freaking out!

downtownjunkie wrote:
is there no happy medium for those of us who just want to make one
disc that will play well and will show the proper image on a range
of televisions as well as projector screens?
The use of safe areas is that happy medium.
Because I'm in a verbose mood, let's talk about movies for just a second. If you've ever had the chance to look at a strip of 35mm film, you'll notice that the exposed area isn't actually the same shape as a movie screen. Theatrical features are shown in a variety of aspect ratios, but they're almost always of a shape that's wider than a 35mm frame. Many movies are shot "full frame," meaning the whole 35mm film area is exposed when the camera rolls. Some of these movies are "soft-matted" in the projector at your local cinema; the film print actually has the whole exposed image on it, but it's projected through a rectangular plate that obscures the top and bottom.
(Not all movies are done this way. Some are hard-matted, and some are printed to be shown through anamorphic lenses, and so forth. I'm just drawing an analogy here, so don't harsh my mellow.)
Because you're showing the film through a little piece of metal with a hole cut in it, +no two projections of the same soft-matted spherical-lensed film will ever be framed exactly the same way.+
Not only that, but next time you go to the movies, look really closely at the edges of the screen. Odds are you'll see that the projected image actually spills over slightly, by up to a foot or so. Between soft matting and differences in projection, the extreme edges of a motion-picture frame are basically a no-man's-land. Anything right at the edge of the image is not guaranteed to be visible on the screen.
TV works the same way. Different sets handle overscan different ways. The solution — that happy medium you asked for — is to compose your shots with a "safe area" in mind. As noted above, a lot of cameras will show you safe-area guides right in the viewfinder; use them.
But the dirty little secret is that there are actually two "safe areas." There's "action safe," which is that area of the frame in which you can reasonably expect your audience to see +stuff happening.+ And then there's "title safe," which is the area of the frame which you can reasonably expect won't butt right up against the edge of the screen. That's why when you turn on safe areas in Final Cut, for example, you see two rectangles. The outer one is action safe; the inner one is title safe. On-screen titles, as the name implies, should always be kept entirely inside the title-safe area.
If you have any experience with print at all, consider the area outside action safe to be your "bleed." It's there to ensure that the image extends all the way to the edge of the screen, but you can never be sure precisely where the edge is going to fall.
In this particular case, maybe you should go back and look at your show while asking yourself if it really matters all that much whether what you see on the TV is precisely what you tried to film. Losing a little bit on the sides might offend your artistic sensibilities — that's not sarcasm; we're all here because we have artistic sensibilities — but it really might not make that much difference.

Action Safe Area

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