May Return Apple TV / May Not ( New PICS - TV Screen Shots )

[harcosparky]

Same issue... The TV safe regions do not magically go away when in photo mode. the video signal being output while displaying photos is not altered.

I wouldn't worry about this unless every photo you take you're trying to format for video... in which case you need to do what I do when I'm filming or photographing stills and take the safe regions into account when photographing.

This is part of the normal process of framing and blocking that every director of photography on every television and film production has to take into account.

I want to thank you for your input. It has been most helpful. At least now I understand what's going on and when doing a photography shoot I know how to compensate.

Getting myself 'trained' to do so may be another issue!

Not being a videographer I had no idea about 'safe regions', now I do and can compensate for them.

harcosparky,

Ok, so here's some more information for you.

I wanted some fine art (paintings done by artists) as screensaver "photos" on our Apple TV. My wife and I like art from the Impressionists on, including Surrealism, Expressionism, etc. So I downloaded a ton of (free) art images from the internet. I loaded them into iPhoto, examined them in an iPhoto slideshow, and eventually uploaded them to the Apple TV. This was where my problems started.

It was immediately obvious to both my wife and I that the images were being cropped -- tough to miss on art, easy to overlook on a snapshot.


-- Mikie

Thanks also for your input.

I have an idea for you.

Couldn't you load the image up in Photoshop, open the photo and do IMAGE/RESIZE/CANVAS SIZE ..... add say 64 pixels to the height, it should not change the image, but will give you a white border above and below. It's a bit of work to do for each image, but it might be a good workaround.

I'll play with that idea myself.

UPDATE:I increased the " Canvas Size by 64, and it worked 'almost'. Looks like it may need a few more pixels. At lease there is a viable workaround.

it doesn't seem like you're happy with it, so stop whining and just return it already.

Thank you for your helpful input.

 

[MikieMikie]

Thank you for your helpful input.

Lol. You fit right in here. Welcome.

 

[harcosparky]

Lol. You fit right in here. Welcome.

Well I liked his comment ... ' seems like you don't like it, just return it .. "

What's wrong with figuring out what the heck is going on. If you can work around it, you do so. If you cannot work around it, then you make the decision to keep it, or return it.

I guess there are some who are easily dismayed and give up if they cannot figure something out in the first 5 minutes.

Apple was generous, when they handed me the ATV they told me I had 14 days to try it out. When I asked about the " restocking fee " the guy kinda shrugged and said " well with the Apple TV, your reason for return determines if there is a restocking fee ". That kinda leads me to think that some have returned these in the past for similar issues, but again that's just a guess.

When you think about it, this is probably the only product Apple sells that can have 'compatibility' issues because it depends on non-Apple hardware ( various TV sets ) in its' normal use.

EDIT: If you try RESIZING the Canvas ..... fill the space in with black, then you wont see the border in the screen saver mode.

 

[jaw04005]

A 4x3 HDTV is not supported afaik.

Just for future clarification, there is NO such thing as a 4:3 HDTV. Samsung and Sony (among others) are selling what's effectively an EDTV with a widescreen 16:9 mode with HD marketing jargon. Such EDTVs can process 720p or 1080i digital signals. However, they scale them to fit the EDTVs native resolution (typically 800x600).

Please don't buy into their marketing hype. HDTV resolutions of 720p, 1080i and 1080p are all widescreen aspect ratios.

For more details: http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/3674

 

[MikieMikie]

Well I liked his comment ... ' seems like you don't like it, just return it .. "\

Yeah, it looked like he missed the whole intent of the thread. Not to worry.

EDIT: If you try RESIZING the Canvas ..... fill the space in with black, then you wont see the border in the screen saver mode.

This is exactly what I had to do, and it worked like a charm. I used the black background, it worked fine. (I was/am concerned that you might adjust the way you frame your content in the original viewfinder to adjust for this "overscan." Better to use this canvas-size technique if necessary.)

 

[Avatar74]

I want to thank you for your input. It has been most helpful. At least now I understand what's going on and when doing a photography shoot I know how to compensate.

Getting myself 'trained' to do so may be another issue!

Not being a videographer I had no idea about 'safe regions', now I do and can compensate for them.

I do believe as of Photoshop 7 there are both guides for TV safe areas and Pixel Aspect Ratio converters (so when outputting a still for use in video the image is adjusted to compensate for the change in Pixel Aspect).

However, here's a guide you can use for an approximation:

I say approximation because 35mm motion picture film runs vertically, not horizontally... but if you use this as a sort of a guide to familiarize yourself with the rough areas where "TV safe" (the outer guide) and "Title safe" (the inner guide) regions fall, you should be a lot better at prepping your own content.

When you pull content into a Non Linear Editor (e.g. Final Cut Pro), it has its own guides that you can use to line up and resize the image, titles, graphics, etc. properly... but taking the pictures/video properly to begin with will maximize the resolution you're using to capture the image rather than resizing it and losing clarity in the process.

With my Nikon there are guides that follow the Rule of Thirds for scene composition, and they don't match with the TV safe guides but they help me get a bearing in the middle of the space so I know roughly how to block and frame the shot:

With motion picture cameras there are ground glass inserts for the viewfinder, as I said before, that mirror exactly what the TV safe regions are when shooting. Of course you probably won't ever use a Panavision camera for what you're doing, but if you're oddly curious, here they are.

You can see an example in the Telecine output from the video monitor in this photograph I took on the set of Comanche Moon, produced for CBS/Paramount Television (the black lines, they may be a bit hard to spot at first):

Note the outer 16:9 guide for HDTV blocking/framing and the 4:3 inner guide for Standard Definition. Interestingly, here's a situation where CBS required they center the action using the inner guides so that they could crop down in HD/SD simulcast instead of producing a separate 4:3 pan & scan master. Of course if you saw the miniseries when it aired a couple weeks back, the result was somewhat disappointing as it really failed to take advantage of the cinematic properties of HD as a medium, but that's a different story... one involving studio politics.