question about burning vcds (1 Viewer)

[Sam E. Torres]

this might seem like a dumb question, but i still need an answer. i edit my movies on the computer and i recently started burning them on vcd rather than exporting them, for quality reasons. my problem is that it seems that the video size is too big for the tv, so it zooms the picture and cuts off a lot of it as well. i use adobe premiere 6.0. can anyone tell me what dimensions would be perfect for a regular television? how do i resize the video? i'd appreciate any input. thank you.

 

[Srinivas Reddy]

I have no experience in this but a good source would be
http://www.vcdhelp.com/
Link Removed
I was just browsing this site for some PAL to NTSC conversion sources.

 

[Ken Garrison]

The resolution for VCD should be 352x240. Of course, some is gonna get cut off due to that god damn OVERSCAN!!! Overscan on TVs should be set 1% and no more. When I configure my computer monitors, I configure them to have just a tiny bit of overscan. I wish TVs can be adjusted like this.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

VCD is only 1 resolution: 352x240 for NTSC televisions. If it seems that it "zooms" the picture, you're just seeing the overscan on your TV

 

[Sam E. Torres]

okay, well it seems my files are 320x240, how do i resize them?

 

[Brad_V]

I don't know about Premiere, but it's easy enough to do with TMPGenc. It's free and is better than almost all not-free encoders.

 

[Ken Garrison]

Is it me, or are conventional TVs just a tiny bit wider than computer monitors. Look at it this way. DVDs are 720x480. Our computer monitors, set at the low res, is 640x480. And I noticed some videos I download have small black bars on the top and bottom on my monitor, but no black bars on the TV. So, this mean the conventional TV is WIDER than a computer monitor?

 

[TyC]

No, TV's are not any wider than computer monitors. The reason that TV's are at 720x480 versus a computer's 640x480 is because of non-square pixels on the TV.

The reason that the videos have small black bars on the computer but not the TV is that TV's use overscan, which zooms in on the image.

 

[Eric Gan]

If you still have your Premiere project, I'd go in there and change the project settings to VCD compliant and render the video that way. If you use TMPGenc to re-encode your already finished video, you'll lose a bit more quality.

Also, if you haven't tried SVCD, I'd give that a spin too. MPEG II is so much better (as long as your source is of higher resolution) and many DVD players these days should be able to play it.

Regards,

Eric

 

[Sam E. Torres]

what software is available that encodes in mpeg 2?

 

[Sam E. Torres]

i put an image i made on photoshop(which is 352x240) on premiere, the video size set to 352x240, and i put maintain aspect ratio and the picture is still too big for the screen. this only happens with images for some reason.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

TMPEG can do MPEG-2 if you register it

You're still having overscan, that's your problem. Also, if you're hitting "maintain aspect ratio" then it's likely not being properly resized.

 

[Ken Garrison]

Some of the smaller 19" TVs have a 352x240 resolution, right? I counted the pixals in 1 inch and multiplied that how many inches high the screen was and I got close to 240 pixals. And the bigger TVs have double that. Am I right?

 

[Sam E. Torres]

what i still dont understand is why some things fit the television perfectly, but others are just blown up, even if they're the same size. if i can see all of it on my computer, and i know the size is 352x240, why can't i see all of it? i dont think it is overscan because i make other files that fit the television perfectly. i just don't understand. and another thing, when i customize the project to be 352x240 on premiere, i have to uncheck the 4:3 aspect ratio...another thing i don't quite understand.

 

[Ken Chan]

Premiere assumes square pixels -- it's how they get displayed in the program, because your computer uses square pixels -- but Premiere doesn't really "care", it will do what you want. When 352x240 is used for 4:3 TV, the pixels are not square (352/240 does not equal 4/3). The checkbox is just an easy way to do the math for you; for example, type in 640 and it figures out 480 for you.

Give an example of what fits "perfectly", and how does it get on your TV. And just how much are you missing? There are test patterns that show the action-safe and title-safe areas (something like 5% and 10% overscan respectively). Test DVDs like Video Essentials and Avia have them.

As for smaller TVs, I'm pretty sure that even a 13" color TV has 480 scanlines, i.e. 480 horizontal lines from top to bottom. That's just the way broadcast TV works. Measuring them can be tricky because TV is interlaced. (Dunno what happens with miniature TVs.)

Horizontal resolution is another matter entirely. For example, it is unlikely that your TV can actually resolve the 720 pixels that DVD offers, for a variety of reasons.

//Ken

 

[Sam E. Torres]

okay, well...i recently started "testing" out some videos on cds that i've been editing, and they fit perfectly. i'm afraid the previous files that i have made(my other movies) were made a while back and i don't remember what resolution it was in...but i recently found the file and it IS in 352x240. the only thing i can think of...the only reasoning i can think of for having my recent stuff work and my old stuff work, is that maybe when i captured the old movie footage, i put it at an odd resolution, maybe it was too big of a resolution for 352x240, but i honestly don't see how that would matter if i can see all of it on the computer perfectly. if anyone would like to see any of these movies that i have made, so you can judge for yourself to see what the problem is, send me an email and i will send you the ftp. you must have a cable modem, however, because they are extremely large files.

on a somewhat different note, with the new video cds, i am also having problems with titles that i have made on photoshop. i resized them on photoshop to be 352x240, and i imported the image into premiere, but it is blown up, and you miss about 1/16 of the picture from the corners. but once again, this is a problem that you might notice when/if you download my movies.

sorry if i didn't clarify some things properly, i tried my best. it's a complicated situation.

 

[Sam E. Torres]

bump

 

[Jeff Kleist]

It's overscan, your computer monitor is probably adjusted for 0 overscan or less

 

[Sam E. Torres]

...so how do i fix that?

 

[Ken Chan]

you miss about 1/16 of the picture from the corners

1/16 is 6.25%, which is not too bad for a TV. The first two links at google.com for "action title safe" are a Link Removed and a template. You want titles inside the title safe area, the inner rectangle. Don't put anything outside.
Depending on your make/model of TV, you might be able to adjust it to minimize the overscan, but most people won't bother (or can't), so you simply don't put things near the edges. Conversely, you do make sure that stuff in the overscan area -- i.e. outside the title/action safe areas -- is OK (no boom mikes, dolly tracks, stuff from other edits) in case someone does play the disc on a computer, which will probably have no overscan.
//Ken