DVD player/TV crops my DVD-R

[James A. Murray]

>I am not sure what you are seeing but whether you use iMovie or Final
>Cut or whatever you are always going to see more of the edges on the
>program screen than on the TV.
>Always.
>That is why they provide the title box indicators in the first place..

I guess what I'm wondering, is why does iDVD even pretend that the 
data outside the TV safe box might be visible?  Why not just show 
only the TV safe area, since people mainly watch DVDs on TVs, right? 
Anyway, since I'm new to this, I am asking the naïve questions.


>Just so James could find the function in the menus...
>I don't know what they call it in iMove or other programs, but in FCP 
>and AfterEffects that's what they call them.

Thanks, I found the TV safe area in iDVD, but there does not appear 
to be anything in iMovie that helps in that regard.  That's too bad, 
because it is in iMovie that I add the titles.  I won't see that they 
will be cropped by the TV until I bring the movie into iDVD.  That 
seems like a problem with iMovie.  Also, the TV safe area in iDVD 
shows only on the Title/Menu screen.  When you preview the movies, 
the TV safe border disappears.  That also seems to be a problem with 
iDVD.


>  As far as titles etc are concerned,
>if they are not within the Title/TV safe margins you risk cropping.
>Apparently all TVs are not created equal.

Yeah, I wondered if the cropping was due to the DVD player or the TV. 
It seems to be the TV.  My TV is a Philips, and it crops a lot 
(receiving component video from a Toshiba DVD player).  My friend's 
TV is a Toshiba, and it cropped quite a bit less.

>Go to your project folder. Open your project movie (top
>level of the project folder, not in the media folder,
>it's a reference movie) and see how it plays back in
>QuickTime.

It looks great, just as the DVD looks great when played on a 
computer.  No cropping at all.


>It will help the hang-up. The media is important. We've tried the cheap
>stuff, too, and experienced the same symptoms that you describe. These
>disappeared when using the Apple, TDK and Sony media (and probably
>others...one only has so much money to experiment).

I'm willing to try.  The strange thing is that this Imation disk 
plays great on my friend's Toshiba DVD player, but hangs up on my own 
Toshiba DVD player.   It also plays great on Mac or PC DVD players. 
So I'm guessing that some lower-quality media do not have enough 
contrast for some lower-quality DVD lasers???  And my Toshiba must 
have a lower-power laser that does my friends...

Thanks for the help.  It sounds like if I want to use iMovie and 
iDVD, I will just have to cut a piece of paper out to serve as a 
guide in front of my monitor for where I can place titles in the 
movie.  iMovie does not appear to provide any help in this regard.

cheers
jim