What Portion of My Screen Is Viewable?

In the print world, a concept called bleed requires additional padding on images. When printing photos in publications or on a press, a small portion of a photo might be cut off. Photographers often crop a little loosely to allow for trimming during printing. This same bleed concept also translates to video.

In most video formats the actual footage is larger than the television set it’s displayed on (referred to as overscan); therefore, some of the footage is cut off. The reason this is important to you when producing video on your DSLR is that you need to pay special attention to action that may be present in a scene. You’ll also need to consider overscan when you’re creating graphics.

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