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TV Safe Margins
I filmed a stage performance in pal-widescreen and because I didn’t zoom out wide enough some of the action was outside the safe area but still in shot, if that makes sense.
However, if I scale down the picture a little in premiere (so nothing is outside the margins, just black) I can get everyone in shot, all within the safe area. My concern though is how it will look on various tv’s. Do larger screen tv’s show what’s outside the safe area as well? I want it to look the same on all screens but I know that my pc monitor (22″ Widescreen) shows more than what you would actually see on a tv. Also does scaling down reduce quality?
I hope this makes sense…
Any thoughts are greatly recieved!
Many thanks. -
2 Replies
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It depends on the TV, with LCDs or plasma it depends on the native resolution and how anamorphic the pixels are, I’ve seen some that show edge to edge and some that have a little overscan 5-8%, which is close to the action safe zone, the safe zones are mostly for CRT type TVs which can have a large overscan, here is a article on overscan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overscan -
Hi Chris,
I’ve been in that position myself, shooting many plays and recitals. Every display will vary in how much of the picture edge it shows and you have no control over that, so you need to decide which is the lesser of two evils – have some viewers see a bit of black along the edge, or have performers chopped off. Most of the recitals I’ve shot are very dark off to the sides anyway, with black curtains, so having a black edge in that case would be barely noticeable.
Any time you “scale” an image, up or down, there will be some degree of degradation. Definitely better scaling down than up, quality should still look fine.
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers
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