Placing still images inside the safe area

[Mike Kujbida]

If Movie Studio 9 has a feature called Track Motion, use this to shrink the entire track down after all your pictures are in place.
You might want to add another track below this one with something (take one of your images and apply a gaussian blur to it) to fill the edges so that the viewer doesn’t see a black outline around everything.

[John Rofrano]

You should understand that the “Safe Zone” is from an era of cathode ray tubes where TV sets had an area around the tube which may be covered by the cabinet it is placed in. It is an aproximate guideline and not very exact as all CRT TV’s will differ in how large this zone is. This is actually an Action Safe Zone and you would make sure that all of the critical action in your movie stay within this area.

All modern LCD, Plasma, SD and HD TV’s no longer have a safe zone and can display images right to the edge. Personally, I would not resize images to be within the safe zone unless there is critical information right at the edge of the picture that must be seen and you know the montage will be viewed on older CRT TV’s. Note that anyone viewing your video on a modern TV will see a black border around the entire frame. This may or may not be what you want.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Steve Rhoden]

Also Josh,
When you are working with still images…its best you tweak
or reduce their size/resolution (if they are hi-rez)in an image
editing software prior to importing them into your NLE.

Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Creative Arts Director and Film Maker.
Portfolio at:
http://www.youtube.com/hentys

[Mike Kujbida]

[John Rofrano] “All modern LCD, Plasma, SD and HD TV’s no longer have a safe zone and can display images right to the edge.”

John, I’m going to disagree with you on this point.
I’ve spoken to a number of different users, read about this issue on a number of forums and seen it for myself that, unfortunately, the overscan issue is far from being dead.
I concede that modern sets don’t suffer from it like CRTs did but overscan still does occur.

[Josh Hamington]

Thank you everyone for your help. I am very impressed with the speed and quality of the feedback I’ve gotten from this forum!

[John Rofrano]

Mike, I believe you if you say it’s still there. I thought it only happened with CRT’s. Ya’ learn something new every day. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ralph Hajik]

Hi Guys,

I’m presently putting together a DVD with lots of pictures & video. I’m glad there is a safe zone. It gives me a general safe area to stay within when I’m placing my titles and scripts either at the lower or upper third. Josh, I’m using Photoshop CS2, setting up an action to my specs of the size picture I want and format, either Jpeg or PNG. The action saves me a lot of time.

Best of luck,

Ralph Hajik

[John Rofrano]

> I’m glad there is a safe zone. It gives me a general safe area to stay within when I’m placing my titles and scripts either at the lower or upper third.

There are two safe zones. One is the Action Safe Zone and the other is the Title Safe Zone which is actually smaller (inside the other). Yes, you want to keep your titles within the title safe zone and action within the action safe zone.

The point I was making was in response to resizing media so that it ONLY fills the action safe zone. This is almost always a bad idea unless you want to have a black border around your picture on some TV sets and almost all LCD’s.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[David Shirey]

As someone who spends way too much time putting together montages of photographs in Vegas, I think the real lesson to be learned here is for people to stop putting the subjects of photographs right up to the edge of the picture. If people pretended there was a “title safe zone” in their still camera and simply took one step backwards so that everyone fit in frame, we wouldn’t have this problem 😛

And while you’re at it, explain to all those corporate yahoos who want their powerpoint presentations converted to DVD to stop cramming the text up to the edge of the frame. Okay I’m done ranting!

[John Frey]

Good point, David!

John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.

Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore