Black edges in digital8 clips.

[zwierzct]

Hello :)
I'm trying to capture some material form a Digital8 Tape. But all of my clips have those black top and left edges (picture).

My Edius ver. is 4.6 and I'm using SONY DCR-TRV130E Digital8 camera.
My preset:

Video
Frame size : 720 x 576
Frame rate : 25,00( 25/1 )
Pixel aspect : 1,0667
Field order : Bottom Field First
Audio
Rate : 48000Hz
Sample size : 16 Bit
Channel : 2
Setup
Rendering format : DV AVI
Over Scan Size : 3 %

Is it possible that my cam is discalibrated or am I doing something wrong with the settings?

[antonsvideo]

this is perfectly normal, no TV will show the overscan area, so no need to worry

if your end user is going to watch on a PC monitor, then you may want to crop these lines with the layout tool

note: when you zoom into footage to hide the overscan, you will lose some quality

[zwierzct]

Thanks for help :)

[rann]

You might also want to change your "overscan" from "3%" to "0". As Anton has pointed out, anything but "0" will give you video junk around the edges on any kind of a video wipe transition. I'm still not sure what overscan does (no explanation in the help files, and doesn't seem to change the image or size in Edius); but it is certainly good at generating unprofessional-looking wipes.

[STORMDAVE]

If you put the overscan to 0 and do transitions, the black edges will show so you should put it to 3% or so.

[rann]

Stormdave, do you mean that an overscan setting actually resizes the video frame? It did not appear to do that when I tried it (unfortunately, I can't try it now). The only thing it accomplished on the Edius monitor was making a messy-looking wipe, leaving the video frame size & boundaries unchanged. Does overscan make a sizing change when rendered or exported that otherwise is not reflected in the initial Edius monitor? Thanks

[antonsvideo]

overscan handling other than 0% was useful years ago when a TV would never show the overscan area, a setting of 3% would crop the black analogue outlines during the transition

now in 2008 I strongly advice against it because more and more people view on computer screens and the end result of a transition would look rather ugly

if the transition shows a black edge because the footage was originated via analogue tape, I would live with it

[STORMDAVE]

Yeah but if you put in 0% for overscan and your video has black pixels on either sides and you do a transition, the blacks will show and it will look ugly.

If I go to web, I always crop at least 7-8 pixels from all 4 sides before exporting.

If you're talking about people watching DVD's on their computers...well hopefully they don't and they just use a regular TV for that.

I'm just happy that HD and better cameras out there don't have these black bars.

[rann]

Stormdave, are you saying that OVERSCAN crops 7-8 pixels from your frame? I've experimented with frames that have thin black edges on various sides of the frame, but have not found overscan to have any effect on the black edges or to do any resizing of the frame. A setting of "0" or a setting of "50" gives me the same black edge in the Edius monitor, and also in a render, as far as I can tell. My workflow with a frame that has much black border around any of the edges is to adjust (usually re-size) it so that video fills the frame; if you are saying that an overscan setting accomplishes that, please explain - I'm not seeing it. The only thing I see a high overscan number actually DO is give a messy wipe. What am I missing? What does overscan do? thanks

[STORMDAVE]

The overscan only affects EDIUS FX (page peel, etc)...Xplode Pro & Xplode for EDIUS have their own overscan settings.

Overscan does not resize the image, it only crops the incoming/outgoing transition and crops the edges on the transition.