over-overscan

[gizmo_1]

I made a DVD (PAL land) with a lot text in it (no subtitles) starting from source at 720x576.

Knowing that 8px per side are meant for overscan I put all the stuff inside the 704x576 area.

Watching it on TV the frame is moved toward the left and up side and its overscan is a lot more than 8px.

After reading a lot here in the forum I understand that I have not to consider safe the 704. Better if it is 688+16(normal overscan)+16(extra overscan).

Am I wright? And what about the vertical measure?
Why is 720 considered be the overscan if it is a fake?

THX

[SomeJoe]

The 720 vs. 704 overscan is talking about how a 720x576 / 720x480 sample matrix oversamples the actual analog picture area which is defined by line timing. In other words, of the 720 pixels present on a line in the sample matrix, typically only 704 of them reflect picture data taken from an analog scan line.

Actual overscan on a TV tube is much more than this. Typically, a properly adjusted TV set will overscan 5% on all sides (about 36 pixels horizontally, 29 pix vertically for PAL, 24 pix vertically for NTSC). This 5%-inset region is called "action safe", meaning that action within this area will be visible on the TV screen. Titles and other text are typically inset even more, to a 10%-inset region (72 pixels from the edge horizontally, vertically 58 pix PAL/48 pix NTSC). The 10%-inset region is called "title safe", meaning the titles/text you put in this region will be readable on the TV screen even if someone has a misadjusted set that overscans more than 5%.

[DaRat]

If you want an easy and quick solution then just take a screenshot of your simulation window with the 2 safe zone borders and use the cropped image as a guide.. Nothing beats this. :D (outer line is the action and the inner line is the title zone, I usually expand in the title but never in the action zone) Also resize this guide to something like 540 pixels wide if you want to work with wide + pan&scan content, it will nicely show you the edges of each zone.