Underscan issues

[Dan Shallenberger]

Ok, I did a really brain-dead thing here, and I'm hoping it will be ok. Most of my experience behind a camera is for events, primarily weddings. But, yesterday I shot some footage for a local 30 second commercial. I shot it with my PD170 and the footage looks great! But, I wasn't watching the monitor for underscan while shooting, only my camera lcd, so I didn't see that unwanted background elements were creeping into the frame (the crop looked perfect on my lcd). The creative director was watching the monitor and it was facing another direction. I hope this makes sense and I'm using the correct terminology. I understand underscan somewhat, but not totally.

While editing this, I can see the unwanted background stuff on my computer, but not on my tv. I know that now all tv's crop the same, though, and I hope it doesn't show up on some tv's. How can I fix that? Or should I? I could enlarge my clip a bit to get rid of the stuff on the edges, but then won't it degrade my image a bit?

Also, do plasma and lcd tv's show the underscan? Will this be an issue when sending to the production company that will air this?

If any of this doesn't make sense, I can post a small clip.

Thanks,
Dan

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Dan Shallenberger

I know that now all tv's crop the same, though, and I hope it doesn't show up on some tv's.

I think that's probably a typo and you meant "not all tv's crop the same"... right? That is true from my experience. I have a 22" 1280x720 widescreen LCD, a 17" 1280x768 widescreen LCD and a 37" 854x480 plasma screen. All of them overscan by a similar amount, but not necessarily identical. I think you'll find this to be the case with all consumer screens.

As far as what to do... do a search for "overscan" and "underscan" because it's been discussed a lot.