Picture too large for screen

mainstreetprod

mainstreetprod

Veteran
I'm making test DVD's of a feature movie and they play back fine, fitting on the screen well and right aspect ratio (widescreen) on my Imac and my home TV, which is a Toshiba monitor hooked up to a DVD player. Have not tried it on a conventional TV until today, visiting relatives for the holidays. The picture is about 20-30% too large for the screen on any of their 3 conventional (modern HD) TV's! The DVD was made in IDVD. Any idea what is going on?
 
It's called overscan. A leftover from the analog era. Serves no real purpose I can see with a digital signal, but it's still used. This is why we still have title-safe and action-safe areas defined.
 
mainstreetprod said:
The picture is about 20-30% too large for the screen on any of their 3 conventional (modern HD) TV's! The DVD was made in IDVD. Any idea what is going on?
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What do you mean by "conventional" but "modern HD" TV? That seems like a contradiction.

Any "modern HDTV" should be able to display without overscan -- there may be a menu setting. Older HDTVs (read: pre-2005 or so) and standard-def TVs may not.
 
David Jimerson said:
What do you mean by "conventional" but "modern HD" TV? That seems like a contradiction.

Any "modern HDTV" should be able to display without overscan -- there may be a menu setting. Older HDTVs (read: pre-2005 or so) and standard-def TVs may not.
Click to expand...

No one of my HDTVs plays DVDs without overscan (and I have 5!). You can use them as a computer monitor at 1920x1080 as see all the pixels, but as soon as you go HDMI from a DVD player you lose due to over scan. That's why action safe is still an important area to pay attention to.

However, 30% seems a bit excessive. Are you really losing a third of your shot? That does seem excessive.... even for overscan. Any chance you can take a photo of it on your iMac and then another one on the TV so we can get a better (visual) idea?
 
David Jimerson said:
Any "modern HDTV" should be able to display without overscan -- there may be a menu setting.
Click to expand...

You'd think that, but you'd probably be wrong. I know I was. My 2009 Panny plasma will only show the full HD picture (1920 x 1080) in THX mode. Any other picture mode uses a small amount of overscan. I have no idea why, and I've spent days trying to find out. All I can conclude is that it's not something you can change with a menu setting. It's part of the picture mode. But THX mode on a Panny plasma is pretty darn good, so all my DVD / Blu-ray viewing is done there.
 
Bruce Watson said:
You'd think that, but you'd probably be wrong. I know I was. My 2009 Panny plasma will only show the full HD picture (1920 x 1080) in THX mode. Any other picture mode uses a small amount of overscan. I have no idea why, and I've spent days trying to find out. All I can conclude is that it's not something you can change with a menu setting. It's part of the picture mode. But THX mode on a Panny plasma is pretty darn good, so all my DVD / Blu-ray viewing is done there.
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That's interesting; I have a 2009 Panny which doesn't overscan at all -- it doesn't have THX mode; I think it's just the lowest model available (it came as a freebie with the house). I had a 2008 (which crapped out on me after two years) and it didn't, either.

I also have a 2010 Toshiba which does overscan at default settings, but it can be turned off.

Why any TV would still do this at all, I don't know.
 
I'm familiar with overscan, having cut my teeth on video in the analogue age. I tried another DVD, a typical movie (not cinemascope) that should display the same as mine, and it was closer to correct, but still with some overscan. The menu, however, displayed correctly, while mine is easily 30% off the screen. I'd love to do the movie in DVDSP instead of IDVD but near the end of the movie, consistently get a strange heavy artifacting for about 30 seconds, as if the data rate was reduced to half for that segment. Nothing I've tried gets rid of it, yet IDVD does not have that problem. The only solution I can think of is to "shrink" the picture 10% or so in the Quicktime file I use to make the DVD to compensate for the excessive overscan. Any better ideas welcomed!
 
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