Help! My footage isn’t title safe!

[J. Tad newberry]

how ’bout white bars?

: )

seriously, the only way i would know of to “fix” it would be to shrink it, put a nice purdy frame around it, or a “Digital Juice”-type background behind it and tell the client that was the look you were going for. you could shrink it even further (say to 50-60%) put it on the left or right side of the frame, and balance the other side with some snappy word/graphics that emphasize what your talent is saying…that is, IF all this works for the style of the project you’re doing.

other than that, i think you’re stuck with minimal headroom.

thanks again!

mh

[Walter Biscardi]

Scale down the footage in your timeline and add a motion graphic to fill in the area around the video.

That’s the only thing I can think of short of re-shooting. There’s no way to “magically fix this in post” for something like this.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

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[David Roth weiss]

[Smileswearily] “I have footage I’ve shot with a DVX100B in 4:3 mode, but I didn’t think about TV “title safe” when I was shooting . . . so my subject’s head is cut off at the top of the television.”

If it makes you feel any better, I worked with a very expensive (and very arrogant) French cameraman who shot an entire film with all of the tops of people’s heads cut off. When, as the editor, I brought this fact to his attention, he told me that it was “artistic composition.”

BTW, the tops of heads you cut off are outside “action safe.” “title safe” is even farther inside the frame.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY

[Bret Williams]

There’s no magic amount of headroom necessary, if any at all. If there was anything to go by, it would be the eyes. They should be at the 1/3 mark. If you zoom way in the head would be cut off.

[Charles Michael fulton]

So, I magically fixed it in post. Okay, it wasn’t magic – it was a lot of hard work: I was shooting stand-up comics, and there was a silhouette of a skyline in the back ground and during the shoot I made sure to keep my master shoot as steady as possible. At the end of the performances, I zoomed out to get the crowd leaving – which was the key.

I took the messed-up shots and lowered the top edge underneath the action safe line, and then took a still from the zoom of the background’s top 10% and matched it up underneath the footage. I then feathered the top edge of the footage to minimize the line between the two layers.

There were maybe 100 frames out of a 5 minute shoot where a head or a hand would disappear into the top of the frame. For this stuff I made a matte of a head or a hand as necessary and slipped it in between the footage and the still frame, changing it or repositioning it frame by frame. There are some rough moments, but they are only like 10 frames long a piece, so it’s hard to notice. Plus, the only way you’d notice is if you watched the Quicktime file – because, of course, a television monitor cuts off the top 10% of the frame! So as long as my client doesn’t request a QT copy of the footage, I’m golden.

I’ve only shot for internet vids, so never had to think about action/title safe when shooting. Boy did I learn my lesson!

Lot of hard work, but I learned a thing or two and that’s what life is all about. I hope no one else encounters this problem, but if you do, there is a solution. Just make sure you have a few frames of a wider shot and a few pots of coffee on hand!