During the early period after the digital transition we rebelled against the "4x3 safe inside 16x9" sentiment that was prevalent at PBS and elsewhere in the industry. We felt that we had been given a wider canvas for a reason and we should use it. If viewers missed something then perhaps it would motivate them to upgrade their 4x3 sets or call their local stations and demand to get letterbox in SD instead of center-crop. As we educated ourselves we decided we had to adapt. Stations often were sending out the correct signal to the head-end (cable/sat) providers, but although specific instructions had been given, there was no rule that forced them to transmit the full raster, so they did whatever they wanted. The result was a dog's breakfast of formats reaching the home, from bread-box 4x3 to blown up letterbox with the sides cut-off, etc.. With that mix came viewer complaints. At PBS unhappy viewers are non-contributing viewers. Keep in mind that local stations pay PBS directly for the national programming they broadcast. As a consequence, if stations feel they are potentially losing revenue, they let PBS know. And PBS lets the producer know. Two years in a row the PBS technical conference was very contentious over this issue and we took serious heat for our position.
Here at FRONTLINE we created an internal spec that tries to accommodate as many interests as possible. DP's are free to use the full raster, keeping in mind 16x9 action safe for most imagery. Interview subjects can be placed at the edge of the 16x9 action area as long as their eyes will not be cut off by 4x3 action safe. Any information that is "critical to understanding the program" like main titles, subtitles or graphics, uses a "4x3 action-safe inside 16x9" guideline. We chose 4x3 action because we feel 4x3 title is just way too restrictive. After looking at several 4x3 sets we found that most of the time all of action safe was viewable. Lower thirds are placed so that non-critical information, like the FL logo on the left side, can fall outside of the 4x3 action area as long as the name of the subject is inside. This widens the perception of the ID to look like it is using more of the frame while making sure the critical data gets to every viewer. Since adopting these general rules viewer complaints have dropped to zero and our stations are much happier.
Looking forward to the time when the wider adoption of AFD in the broadcast chain and incorporation of AFD in all set-top boxes means we no longer have play these games.
Tim Mangini
Director of Broadcast
FRONTLINE
--- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, "johnrobmoore" <bigfish@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks for sharing your findings. Regardless of your findings many shows require 4x3 safe titles in HD shows. Direct TV letterboxes some network shows and others it center crops to SD boxes. Dennis posted that NBC news Center Cuts but the entertainment division letterboxes. So I've heard 5% cutoff is relatively standard and I've seen Panny consumer plasmas that have a crop and a full setting. Just another pain in the arse. If you thinks 80% safe title would look wrong you aren't watching much Network PrimeTime that has all titles 4x3 safe. ;-)
>
> --- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, Steve Hullfish <steve4lists@> wrote:
> >
> > So, my results - on three different size of screens - 60", 50" and 48" LCDs from higher end Sony consumer sets and lower end Seiki set is that all of them are cropped VERY slightly. None show the full 100% raster but ALL show a good deal of the 95%.
> >
> > 93% on ALL of the sets was easily viewable.
> >
> > Basically, I made a 1920x1080 file in Photoshop. Then made four different colored boxes. 100% of raster was colored red, 95% of raster was blue, 93% of raster was green, 90% was yellow and 80% was cyan.
> >
> > As I mentioned, I could see a red border (100% to 95%) on all of the sets, fed as HDMI straight from a video card.
> >
> > Using anything tighter than 90% on these screens would look silly I think. Using 80% as title safe on HD would seem like the designer had screwed up. 90% looks about right for title safe on all of them. I would be completely comfortable with 93% for safe title. I'm shocked at myself for never trying to test this before. I have always used 80% as safe title. Indeed, the Photoshop template for HD is 80% safe title. My eyes have been opened.
> >
> > This is JUST a test with the four HD consumer sets that I have in my office. All were bought last December. I'd love to see whether others have the same results. Maybe burn a test to bluray and play it at home.
> >
> >
> > Steve Hullfish
> > contributor: www.provideocoalition.com
> > author: "The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction"
> >
>
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