Side clipping when playing back on a 4:3 standard TV

[hollywood]

I have burned several NTSC DVDs using different aspect ratios and frame sizes, but when I play back the DVDs on my standard 4:3 TV, it clips about 30 pixels off the left and right side of the image. How do I prevent this?

The files I'm using are MPEG2/AC3 files that I reencoded using SUPER. I've tried all the standard DVD frame sizes and 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. I've selected letterbox only output for each file.

[GeorgeW]

That's known as the "Overscan" area. Software will give you a Title/Action Safe area that gives you some guidelines like a rectangle near the outer edges. You should try to keep important stuff within that rectangle so that when you play it on a TV, it's still in view.

so, basically what you see on your computer is NOT what you will see when played back on a TV (the outer edges might get cutoff -- or hidden from view).

The Overscan area can vary from TV to TV.

Regards,
George

[hollywood]

The menus are fine, but how do I avoid overscan during video playback? Thanks for the quick response.

[Devil]

Most DVDs are burnt from original files which are 704 or 720 pixels wide, although a TV line is 768 pixels wide. Because the sync pulses can vary in amplitude, duration and shape a lot between the original and the TV set, there is considerable variation when exactly the line time base is actually triggered and thus the horizontal position on the screen. This is the main reason why there is an overscan area, because, under the worst conditions of the earliest or latest triggering, there would be some VERY ugly goings-on at either the left or right of the screen, which would be very distracting, if the whole image were visible. In real life, and this varies from set to set, an average of only about 680 or 690 pixels can be seen. So, it is quite usual with computer video software, including DV, to have 24 pixel black bands, right and left of the image, the difference between 720 and 768. Of course, they are completely invisible on a TV screen, even if they are visible on a computer monitor, because they are well within the overscan area. If you wish, you can eliminate them by cropping, but the image quality will suffer slightly.