Safe area (television)

Safe area is a term used in television production to describe the areas of the television picture that can be seen on television screens.

Older televisions can display less of the space outside of the safe area than ones made more recently. Flat panel screens, Plasma displays and liquid crystal display (LCD) screens generally can show most of the picture outside the safe areas.

The use of safe areas in television production ensures that the most important parts of the picture are seen by the majority of viewers.

The size of the title-safe area is typically specified in pixels or percent. The NTSC and PAL analog television standards do not specify official overscan amounts, and producers of television programming use their own guidelines.

The title-safe area or graphics-safe area is, in television broadcasting, a rectangular area which is far enough in from the four edges, such that text or graphics show neatly: with a margin and without distortion. This is applied against a worst case of on-screen location and display type. Typically corners would require more space from the edges, but due to increased quality of the average display this is no longer the concern it used to be, even on CRTs.

If the editor of the content does not take care to ensure that all titles are inside the title-safe area, some titles in the content could have their edges chopped off when viewed in some screens.

Video editing programs that can output video for either television or the Web can take the title-safe area into account. In Apple's consumer-grade NLE software iMovie, the user is advised to uncheck the QT Margins checkbox for content meant for television, and to check it for content meant only for QuickTime on a computer.Final Cut Pro can show two overlay rectangles in both its Viewer and Canvas; the inner rectangle is the title-safe area and the outer rectangle is the action-safe area.

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