Even on widescreen letterbox 16:9, still losing some edges

Question

O.K. here's the deal. I'm burning a DVD of footage that's a 720p, converted to SD. I think all the settings are correct for 16 by 9 Widescreen Letterbox, but when I watch the DVD back on the player I notice that some of the image is still being cropped a little on the sides. The reason this is unacceptable is that I have a shot where a character walks to the edge of the frame, but stays there on the screen. In the DVD they disappear off the screen. Is there a way to control the aspect ratio even more so that I can shrink the size of the footage on the screen to a point where I can see everything?

Answer 1

What you guys are running into has nothing to do with a software problem. It is what is known as overscan in video. Every television will project the image beyond the edge of the viewable area of the screen. This has always been a bit of an issue, but knowing that it happens is the key to success.
Final Cut and any other NLE will show you this area if you activate the Title Safe indicator in the canvas. It will show you two green boxes at the edge of the screen. The inner box is the title safe; where you should keep titles within. The outer box is the Action Safe, or Overscan area. This tells you where most televisions will cut the image off at. This is meant as a guide to help you know where you can place things. The problem is that videos or DVD on a computer monitor ignores this little fact and shows you the entire edge. I have know idea why this was done because it's such a huge discrepancy with what has been an established standard.
Unfortunately for your film where you have your actor at the edge of the screen there's not a lot you can do. the only way to really correct for this is to shoot with overscan in mind in the first place or you might try to shrink the entire film in the frame a bit - which will give you black space on either side.
Look up overscan on Wikipedia for a ton about what is going on.
Hope this helps.