DVD Author Background Image Question

[mattstan]

Hi,

I have a custom background image that I use when authoring DVDs with DVD Author -- when I play the DVD on my computer using WinDVD, my background image is displayed in full correctly, however when I play the same DVD on my standalone DVD player the very top and very bottom of the image is missing / cropped on my TV. This makes the image look stupid, although there's only a bit missing that bit is essential to the design.

My TV is a 'full screen' (not Widescreen) TV and it is PAL. When I first made the background image I used 720x480 for its size. After the first time I saw the missing top and bottom bit I realized these are the NTSC screen dimensions and so remade the image using the PAL dimensions of 720x576. This made no difference, it still looks fine on my PC using WinDVD but with the same problem on my TV.

Any ideas how to resolve this?

Thanks,

MS

[mpucoder]

This is caused by the overscan of television sets. Somewhere between 5% to 10%, depending on make, around the edge is not visible. Just keep the visually interesting part of the image inside the "title safe zone" and it will look better. Most authoring programs and a few image processing programs can show you the safe zones. About 36 columns left and right, and 28 rows (PAL) top and bottom should not contain important graphics.

[mattstan]

Many thanks.

I'll re-do the background image with a black border and see how it looks.

Cheers,

MS

[mpucoder]

A black border would probably not look good unless the rest of the image is dark. It's better to use a color similar to the overall color of the image, possibly fading into another color or to black towards the edge.