Preview and Safe Zone

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LEN

Preview and Safe Zone

Postby LEN » Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:34 pm

I'm confused about using safe zone in ProShow Gold. I've got the defaults and all the slides set to "fit to safe zone." I've got the safe zone set to 8% all 'round. I see a shaded frame in the Motion Effects window, and I understand that I need to use that shaded frame to judge how things will look on a TV. So far so good (I hope!).

What I don't understand is (1) whether the Preview function (either the small one in the Motion Effects window or the scalable one in the Preview Area) shows the effects of applying the safe zone, and (2) if not, is there any way to get Preview to do this? If not, then how does one judge the result of one's motion effects settings if you can't preview them with the safe zone applied?

Or am I missing something?

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Postby nannybear » Fri Jul 20, 2007 7:53 pm

I think this is a Brian question.....I am sure he will be able to explain....cheers Jan
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Postby briancbb » Sat Jul 21, 2007 11:19 am

Hi Len, welcome to the forum.

Thanks Jan, :roll:

I think, if I read you correctly, you have hit the nail on the head with your option 1). If you select 'fit to safe zone' in 'slide options' then the view in the time line, the preview window, and in motion effects will all show the picture fitted in the safe zone (for that layer).

There are times when I use 'fit to safe zone', particularly if the image being used has detail at the edges that I do not want cropped by a 'badly' setup TV. For instance a group portrait where peaople are at the edge of the photo. However this does leave a black (or background colour) border. If it deos not matter if the edges of the picture are sometimes cropped by the TV then I'll use 'fit to frame', which will show the picture to fill the screen.

I guess it is horses for courses.

Now the complicated bit. If you zoom in on the picture that has been fitted to the safe zone, it WILL grow outside of the safe zone, likewise with a pan it will move outside the safe zone :evil: . What you need to create to keep the outside edges of the picture at the safe zone limits is a 'frame' or 'mask'. The simplest way to describe this is a top layer(in 4:3 aspect ratio), used with 'fit to frame' that has a transparent centre rectangle the size of the safe zone.

This thread may help, it is now a bit old but still valid, http://www.proshowenthusiasts.com/viewtopic.php?t=262 . These sizes are for the default 5 and 10% safe zone figures.

Brian

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Re: Preview and Safe Zone

Postby DickK » Sat Jul 21, 2007 3:07 pm

LEN wrote:I'm confused about using safe zone in ProShow Gold. I've got the defaults and all the slides set to "fit to safe zone." I've got the safe zone set to 8% all 'round.

Just to tag a little bit on Brian's good explanation. There's a reason the defaults for the safe zone aren't the same all around and that's because tube TV's will typically overscan more in one direction than the other. With computer monitors and most LCD/Plasma TV's the overscan is almost zero (unless the display has been messed with or set up badly to start with).

As Brian explained, it's not always necessary to restrict the image to the safe zone even with a tube TV as long as you know that some bit of the image edge is probably going to be lost.

Like most things in life, there's a tradeoff. Typically I'll make my shows with fit to frame so they'll fill the screen better but fit-to-safe-zone is just that, safe, it ensures the image won't be cropped but it often results in images not filling the screen.

Dick
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