Understanding Title-Safe Areas for Video

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Photoshop provides most of your video format as a preset in the New File dialog box. Choose File ’ New, click the down arrow for the preset button, and browse all of the video formats that Adobe has provided. Also notice that guides are listed next to each of the video formats. Choose the NTSC DV 720 —480 (With Guides) option. Now look at Figure 27.13 to see what Photoshop CS has given us.

Figure 27.13: Video format with guides

What are these guides for? Your television set is really closer to a square format, but many DV and big-screen movie formats are more rectangular. So something will have to be cropped off, and the guides show you the areas that are going to be viewed on the television set. The center is also known as safe areas. The center rectangle is known as the Inner Title Safe Area. You want to make sure that all titles are within these borders so that your audience will get the full view of credits without any cropping. The outer rectangle guide is called the Outer Action Safe Area. You want to ensure that your visual imagery will fit within these borders. This will allow the video editor to choose what areas of the film will be seen by the audience for the normal TV set formats. If you would like to see the entire movie format as filmed according to the director s vision, then you just have to wait for the director s cut to be released or purchase an expensive HDTV television. Personally I think the movie theatre is much more fun.