TV vs DV dimensions

J

JCVR

Well-known member
When shooting and editing DV, you always have the "safe zone guides". Why are there two different safe zone guides? just because TV's differ on how much room is cut off? What is the actual resolution of a TV? I have a slightly annoying problem that media that i've placed in accordance to the safe zones looks fine when played on a TV, but looks out of place when played on a computer (because nothing is being cut off). Should I / can I just crop the image down so that it essentially looks the same whether it's being played on a TV or computer?
 
JCVR said:
Should I / can I just crop the image down so that it essentially looks the same whether it's being played on a TV or computer?
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TV's just aren't all the same, so it's hard to predict how it will look for everyone. So they give you two SAFE ZONES/AREAS, the outer of the two is basically what will be shown on every TV, i.e. it's the ACTION SAFE AREA: everything within the outer area will be visible. This is helpful for you to know so you can shoot and edit accordingly. Anything important that happens that you want the viewer to definitaly see, should be withing this action safe area.
The smaller zone is the TITLE SAFE AREA, and all your titles should be within this area. Keeping within this area will make sure (sort of) that any titles/writing, etc. won't be distorted and show up on any TV correctly.
This is a guide only, and older TVs are far worse than newer ones in showing the correct images of course.

And yes, you can crop for computer display. In fact, in many instances it's a good idea to do that, as if you don't, there may be some black bars on the sides, etc. (depending on editing practices and cam used).
 
Safety accounts for an industry wide standard for masking. In other words your Tv set goes a bit further than the edges show you. So standard safety areas guarantee that your picture will not be lost. THe outer zone is Tv safety. Anything that is important should be inside this. THe inner zone is title safety and makes sure that you titles do not slip outside the edges. So all titles should go up to but not outside this box. As for the computer discrepancy, computers show full frame so you see all the extra info a Tv does not. If you crop the edges you will get something that plays the way you want. I usually crop 15 points on all sides in Cleaner to get what a TV would show.
 
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