Video and/or slide show images cropped after burning

[Janet]

I am using MovieFactory 7 SE and love it. But it makes me crazy when it does the following. Every display (initial, editing, preview, etc.) within the program shows the video or slide show image the correct size. After burning, when you view the video or slide show on a TV, there is about 1/2 to 3/4 inch (depending on screen size) of the image's top, bottom, left, and right that has disappeared as if it's cropped. This means you miss part of the scenes. Also, if you've added text to a video or slide show, you can't place it near any edge because you'll lose all or part of it. This means you lose even more of your scenes because the text has to be moved inward so far.

I've tried adjusting the TV Safe Area to zero and the Menu Editing Grid to 1 (the least) (both parameters are under Preferences - Advanced) and made other adjustments to these parameters -- which didn't help. I can't find anything else in the program which might affect this problem.

The source file format is .mpg; they' range in side from 1,500 Kb to 100,600 Kb; they're output to DVD; the destination video format is NTSC.

I've also looked and searched through this forum and can't find anything on this topic.

Does MovieFactory 7 Pro do this?

Thank you for any help you can give.

[Ron P.]

Janet,

The T.V. Safe Zone settings are there as a guides. A television will cut-off a percentage around your video, this is called over-scan. It's your T.V. that is loosing parts of your scene, not your editing program. DVD MF or VS, just provides you with guidelines so that you can properly place your text, video and images so that you will have the most important parts seen.

So what you need to do is try and determine what percentage your T.V. overscans. A rule of thumb has been about 10%, but can be more. So set your T.V. Safe Zone settings accordingly, and make sure the text is inside those boundaries. Any part of your video or image that falls outside those boundaries, risk being cutoff.

Computer monitors have higher resolutions than standard-def TV. So previewing a SD video clip on your PC may seem that it is too small, and will not fill your TV screen. NTSC SD video is a max resolution of 720 x 480, so on a PC it will appear that way, but on your TV it does not. Set your Safe-zone percentage to around 10-20%, and keep everything that you want to see on your TV inside those boundaries.

[Janet]

Dear Ron,

First, let me apologize for the delay in my reply. There suddenly cropped up a problem accessing yahoo mail on my computer and I've been fiddling with that ever since I posted my question. (It's still not working ... I'm using a computer at the library at the moment.)

Thank you so much for your in-depth information! I understand the relationship between the computer and TV displays better.

I will try to find a TV Safe Zone on my TV. If instead you meant the TV Safe Area in MF7SE, I've tried zero. Now I'll try 10% - 20% per your suggestion and see what happens.

Thanks again for the help!

Janet