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Safe zone necessary for 16:9 HD?
Not sure where to post this, but since I use Sony Vegas for editing, I figured I’d put it here.
Vegas provides for a “safe zone” for certain functions, such as titles. Lately I’ve been asking myself if the safe zone really serves any purpose. I know that traditional broadcast television used overscanning to fill the screen of CRT television sets with the image, which meant that the edges of the image were cut off and invisible. But is this still relevant for 16:9 images and high definition? Apart from CRT television sets, are there any other circumstances in which the edges of an HD image in 16:9 might be cut off?
Flat panels don’t require a safe zone because they have fixed pixels, but I’ve heard that SD flat-panel TV sets still simulate overscan because of extra information encoded in some of the scan lines. What about HDTV? And what about cinema?
I use the safe-zone markers to allow some air between titles and the edge of the image, but I don’t make any attempt to restrict action to the safe zone. The modest videos I make will probably never be seen on a dedicated TV set (as opposed to a computer), but one never knows, and I’m wondering if the latest HDTV sets are still wasting the edges of the image with simulated overscan (and if they are, what happens to the one-to-one correspondence between image pixels and screen pixels?).
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2 Replies
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[Anthony Atkielski] “Apart from CRT television sets, are there any other circumstances in which the edges of an HD image in 16:9 might be cut off?”
Yea, my Sony HD TV definitely cuts off the edges. So does my Samsung. Just because there is no CRT doesn’t mean you’re seeing the full image. I would continue to work within the Safe zones for maximum compatibility.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Ditto here… my Samsung DLP definitely cuts off a bit. My LG LCD less so, but I did tweak it. And yeah, doesn’t make any sense… a digital display is support to have 1:1 pixel correspondence with the input video (well, at least at 1080i/p). There’s no picture tube aging, either, so what’s the point of overscan? I dunno, but it still seems to be there. I suspect there’s a way to get full scan, but unless this is for purely personal use, you’re going to have to accept that some people are still going to be chopping off your edges).
-Dave
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