The 'safe zone' derives from the old days (when tubes were all glass and thick glass at that and had rounded corners)
What was done was to set an overscan of 5% on the picture - on the old test card, the side castellations were set so that only the centre ones on the sides touched the edge of the screen and the remainder went over the edge. This was to prevent black edging on the picture but the 5% overscan value has remained, even in this day of LCD, Plasma and FST CRTs
Discussion:
There are at least four methods to get an image to fit into the TV safe zone so that when a Video Wave made slide show is played on a TV using a stand alone DVD player you will see the full image..
Note: As of February 2008, there is a new version of Cropper. Look at the last post in this thread for an image of the new version with explanation of batch resize.
This is a free program. There are at least three variations depending on your computer, monitor resolution settings and preferences. The program is fast and reliable. It can do one or a batch of image files.
1) Bring in all of the pictures that you want to crop.
2) Select 4:3 Aspect Ratio at lower part of screen.
3) Click on the Batch icon above.
4) Click on Safe Area Size, select the size that bests suits you 80-85%.for CRT; higher numbers for LCD.
5) Click on Show Safe Area
6) Click on Fit Selection to Safe Area. For portrait images, select fill height *
7) Click on border and select the color border you want.
8) At the bottom, change the Filename Suffix to whatever you want the name to be.
9) Make sure the other settings what you want.
10) Click on Batch Save.
Thanks grandpabruce for the instructions:
ggrussell suggests also to: "RIGHT mouse and DRAG" is a very quick way to resize the 'marquee' area. The lines default to 'fit width' with optional buttons to 'fit safe area' and 'fit height' (good for portrait oriented).
This is another free but powerful program that can do batch resizing. It works a little differently than Image Cropper. Like Image Cropper this also has the same capability of multiple image resizing. It requires net framework 2 or 3.
1) To give anyone who want to try it a head start, for images that are in landscape, apply this setting:
Landscape: put about a 125 pixel border around the image.
2) For portrait, as a starter, put a top and bottom border of about 350 and a left and right border of about 1000 pixels.
Since not all images are the same, you may have to play with this. Do not select any other processing option.
Remember to save the files with either a prefix or suffix to identify it from the original.
Photoshop Elements (Adobe)
This is a powerful imaging program. It is not free but many people get the program with some program or hardware. I have not yet found a way of doing batch scaling with this program but perhaps others know how. Here are the directions for Photoshop Elements; they should be similar for Photoshop.
1) Add the image
2) Select resize.
3) Select scale.
4) The controls near the top will change. Make sure the height and width are chained (restrained proportions) and type in 85%. You can adjust this based on your equipment and intended display.
5) Acknowledge and accept change.
6) You'll get a checkerboard pattern around the image.
7) Select a foreground color that you want in around the image in the slide show. Most of this will be cut off but some will show in portrait images.
8)Flood fill using the paint bucket tool on the checkerboard pattern.
9) Save the re-scaled Image under a different name.
Photosuite (Roxio)
My process for getting an image into the TV safe zone using Photosuite is less scientific. It takes a little bit of guess work and some experience. Here is what I do.
1) Create a new canvas using the top menu; landscape, 8 by 10 (I don't think this matters.) and color it.
2) Open an image and copy it.
3) Bring up the canvas and paste the image on the canvas.
4) Drag the size of the image to about the correct size about 85% of the canvas you chose..
5) Use the tools/position tab to center the image.
Background:
The 'safe zone' derives from the old days (when tubes were all glass and thick glass at that and had rounded corners)
What was done was to set an overscan of 5% on the picture - on the old test card, the side castellations were set so that only the centre ones on the sides touched the edge of the screen and the remainder went over the edge. This was to prevent black edging on the picture but the 5% overscan value has remained, even in this day of LCD, Plasma and FST CRTs
Discussion:
There are at least four methods to get an image to fit into the TV safe zone so that when a Video Wave made slide show is played on a TV using a stand alone DVD player you will see the full image..
Image Cropper: (Preferred tool and method)
Note: As of February 2008, there is a new version of Cropper. Look at the last post in this thread for an image of the new version with explanation of batch resize.
This is a free program. There are at least three variations depending on your computer, monitor resolution settings and preferences. The program is fast and reliable. It can do one or a batch of image files.
1) Bring in all of the pictures that you want to crop.
2) Select 4:3 Aspect Ratio at lower part of screen.
3) Click on the Batch icon above.
4) Click on Safe Area Size, select the size that bests suits you 80-85%.for CRT; higher numbers for LCD.
5) Click on Show Safe Area
6) Click on Fit Selection to Safe Area. For portrait images, select fill height *
7) Click on border and select the color border you want.
8) At the bottom, change the Filename Suffix to whatever you want the name to be.
9) Make sure the other settings what you want.
10) Click on Batch Save.
Thanks grandpabruce for the instructions:
ggrussell suggests also to: "RIGHT mouse and DRAG" is a very quick way to resize the 'marquee' area. The lines default to 'fit width' with optional buttons to 'fit safe area' and 'fit height' (good for portrait oriented).
Multiple Image Resizer
This is another free but powerful program that can do batch resizing. It works a little differently than Image Cropper. Like Image Cropper this also has the same capability of multiple image resizing. It requires net framework 2 or 3.
1) To give anyone who want to try it a head start, for images that are in landscape, apply this setting:
Landscape: put about a 125 pixel border around the image.
2) For portrait, as a starter, put a top and bottom border of about 350 and a left and right border of about 1000 pixels.
Since not all images are the same, you may have to play with this. Do not select any other processing option.
Remember to save the files with either a prefix or suffix to identify it from the original.
Photoshop Elements (Adobe)
This is a powerful imaging program. It is not free but many people get the program with some program or hardware. I have not yet found a way of doing batch scaling with this program but perhaps others know how. Here are the directions for Photoshop Elements; they should be similar for Photoshop.
1) Add the image
2) Select resize.
3) Select scale.
4) The controls near the top will change. Make sure the height and width are chained (restrained proportions) and type in 85%. You can adjust this based on your equipment and intended display.
5) Acknowledge and accept change.
6) You'll get a checkerboard pattern around the image.
7) Select a foreground color that you want in around the image in the slide show. Most of this will be cut off but some will show in portrait images.
8)Flood fill using the paint bucket tool on the checkerboard pattern.
9) Save the re-scaled Image under a different name.
Photosuite (Roxio)
My process for getting an image into the TV safe zone using Photosuite is less scientific. It takes a little bit of guess work and some experience. Here is what I do.
1) Create a new canvas using the top menu; landscape, 8 by 10 (I don't think this matters.) and color it.
2) Open an image and copy it.
3) Bring up the canvas and paste the image on the canvas.
4) Drag the size of the image to about the correct size about 85% of the canvas you chose..
5) Use the tools/position tab to center the image.
6) Save the image and use that in VideoWave
Edited by sknisShare this post
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