settings help

[Bubby Grub]

Hi All,
Just a quick bit of advice please if I may.
I have just finished a project which was just set to Pal Standard Wide Screen.
This was from a lot of old pics so no HD. Everything worked fine, except for a couple of places
I had some text which I will say was placed well within the text safety margins, yet when played on our
32" HD Wide Screen TV the text is too wide for the screen. My husband tried a couple of different settings on the TV,
I think there was 16.9, extra wide zoom, and something else which I can't remember now, but nothing made any difference.
I actually went into the project and made the type slightly smaller, which I course made it look better. But I guess
I am missing something, why when the type is well within the safety margins, why is like that on the TV.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Bubby Grub

[Chuck Engels]

Hi Bubby
There are two sets of safe margins, Action Safe Margins and Text Safe Margins.
The outer safe margins are for action, the inner for Text. Are you sure the text was within the innermost margins?
Did you try Letterbox on your TV?

I have had this happen myself at times, the safe margins are only guides and can be a little off depending on the font and size of the text. That is one reason why I like having a TV monitor to view the timeline while I edit, it shows me exactly what it will look like when played on a television.

[Bubby Grub]

Hi Chuck.
Thank you for the reply.
Yes they were well within the inner safe margin. As we are up at our Holiday Home at the moment, we only have two 32" LCD TVs here.
But that shouldn't matter. I have tried it on both TVs with the same results.
I must admit I don't use a TV as a Monitor, so maybe I should look at getting just a small LCD TV for this job.
Would that be a better way for me to go in future?
Thanks again Chuck.
Regards,
BG

[Chuck Engels]

It helps to have the tv monitor, that way you see exactly what your video will look like.
To connect a tv monitor you need a DV Bridge, like a Pyro Link or a Canopus Converter.
The other option is to just burn the test DVD and make adjustments accordingly

[Bubby Grub]

Thanks Chuck, will check it out, but for now I am just making adjustments accordingly from the 1st burn. I actually need 5
so lucky I only burnt one at first.
Thanks again
Bubby Grub

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

....I actually need 5 so lucky I only burnt one at first.....

I don't have a TV monitor set up by my editing system so I use a re-writable DVD (or BD-RE if it is an HD project) to check that all works OK before I write the final discs.

[Bubby Grub]

Hi Chuck, Steve or anybody that could throw any light on this particular situation.

In the original thread, I was having trouble with type and some pics fitting correctly when showing on the Wide Screen TV. The project was set to Standard Pal Widescreen, and the
type was well within the inner safety margins, and the pics were well in the outer safety margins also. I had to make the necessary adjustments, I had 5 DVD's to burn, so it was basically
trial and error with one until it seemed satisfactory, or basically till you really could not adjust it any further. It was a family project of old pics etc. so eventually I had to let it go.
Today just out of interest I decided to play my copy on our Blu-ray player using the same HD TV just to see the difference in quality if any, and well that goes without saying, but the thing I did notice
that all my troubles with type and pics, well that did not exist as a matter of fact in the first test there would not have been a problem at all though the Blu-ray.
I understood Chuck's thought about using a TV Screen as a monitor, and of course using DVD RW for the first test run. But what I can't follow is that if I had played it through the Blu-ray in the first
place there would not have been a problem, but playing it through the normal DVD player there was. As a matter of fact a certain effect I did in Bluff Titler with plenty of key frames, fitted perfectly
on the computer screen, but not on the normal DVD player, but the blu-ray was perfect. I did not make any alterations to that as there were far too many key frames and took so much time to achieve
what I wanted so opted not to interfere with it.
Also I included certain footage from my wide screen camera with me walking to the side, on the Computer screen perfect, blu-ray perfect, but normal DVD player I am half missing.
Sorry for being so long with this explanation, but I am definitely confused, with how to go with future projects, I still have quite a few family ones to go with the same settings. It works great on the Blu-ray
but not everybody has a blu-ray. Could it be our DVD players they are Panasonic, we have three of them and they all do the same, or is that just grasping at straws so too speak. Unfortunately it is not possible to check it out
on the other family members players as they are 1,000 miles away, and if I tried to explain this to them, I may as well talk to the wall, because they would not have the slightest idea what I was talking about.
Depending on what you guys say, I may take it to a friend and check it out on their players.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in Advance
Bubby Grub

[stanatou]

One thing to check, if you haven't already, is the display setting on the TV. Most will have something like normal, wide, and zoom options. If the TV is set to 'Zoom' it would produce the results you're seeing.

Stan

[Chuck Engels]

A normal DVD player does not play widescreen by default, as Stan says there are setting for how a standard definition 4:3 DVD player should play Widescreen 16:9 video; Letterbox for example.

Blu Ray players will upconvert the video to at least 720p Widescreen automatically, that is why it works there.

When making video for a DVD that is to be sent to many people it is best to stick with standard definition 4:3, not widescreen, as many people do not know how to set up their TV or DVD player to display widescreen video. With Blu Ray that is not a problem.

Hope this is helpful.

[Little Nac]

Hi Guys.
Little Nac here, the other half. Thank you so much for helping out Bubby Grub. It turned out it was all my fault. I didn't realize that there were settings on a DVD Player as such.
I automatically thought that because the TV was set to 16:9 that the DVD was also set to it. BIGGGGG mistake. After all these years of wondering why the type was running off the screen, and pictures were also bleeding off, to think of all the extra work my other half has had to do just because of my stupidity. Any way, I went into settings on all our three DVD players and they are now set to 16:9, and voila, perfect. Luckily for me we are up at our Holiday House at the moment and not at home, as I don't have a "Garden Shed" up here. If I did, I think that would be where I would be sleeping for the next 10 years!!!!!
Any way, thanks so much once again.
Cheers, L.N.