Video Too Big For TV

[KWSW]

Got a question about burning anime to dvd to be played on dvd players.

I use TMPGnc to do my encoding from avi to mpg for buring to dvds. Than I would use DVD Author to create the dvd for burning. Everything turns out fine except no matter how small the resoultion I set, the picture would not fit my TV set when viewing. The top and bottom would get cut off.

Is there any way to fix this?

[dbloom]

Originally posted by KWSW
Everything turns out fine except no matter how small the resoultion I set, the picture would not fit my TV set when viewing. The top and bottom would get cut off.

This is called the "overscan area", an area in which broadcasters never place any important elements of the picture because not all TVs are guaranteed to show it (this is similar to a "bleed" in the publishing world). Your computer monitor (unless it's an LCD panel) most likely has a small black border around the lit display area, to make sure nothing is accidentially cropped off. All CRT and rear-projection TV's, however, cut off a small amount of the picture, and most movies and broadcasts compensate for this. This way, the picture can extend to the very edge of the screen, and you won't miss anything.

As for TMPGEnc, use the resizing tool in the "Advanced" tab to force the picture frame to be a little bit smaller than the video size, so that TMPGEnc will add a border. Make sure you know your ratio math because otherwise your video will end up stretched or squeezed - you can't size off the exact same amount from the top/bottom and left/right, you have to do an amount proportional to the aspect ratio.

[Mug Funky]

hehe... overscan can be a big problem with subtitles. sometimes even on DVDs, the subbers try to put too many lines of text on and they get cut off (if only everyone who worked with TV as a destination actually viewed their designs on a real TV).

try shrink the frame by 10% (called "action safe"). if that's not far enough try 15% (or "title safe"). all TVs cut differently, but they are supposed to be standardised at 10%. if you have a TV output on your video card (most do now), you can save a lot of time and DVDs by testing it out before you encode. in fact, there's no need to make a DVD at all if your computer is up to the task of outputting video and audio satisfactorily.

[KWSW]

I did some testing and it seems that if I encode in ntsc 4:3 the sides are ok but the top and bottom gets cut off. While if I encode in pal 4:3 the top and bottom is ok but the sides get cut off. So is there a way to get both?

Also is it possible to manually set the size of the video to 90% of the usual 640 X 480 so that all the sides are viewable on my tv?

[dbloom]

As for TMPGEnc, use the resizing tool in the "Advanced" tab to force the picture frame to be a little bit smaller than the video size, so that TMPGEnc will add a border. Make sure you know your ratio math because otherwise your video will end up stretched or squeezed - you can't size off the exact same amount from the top/bottom and left/right, you have to do an amount proportional to the aspect ratio.



Mess with that tool in TMPGEnc, lemme know if you can't figure it out (it's not very intuitive).