Creating TV commercials that are NTSC "Title Safe"

CouponPages.Com · Post by **CouponPages.Com** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:00 pm

Hi everybody.

I'm new here, but I'm glad I found this place. I'm not an animator, but I bought Anime Studio 7 Pro a few months ago to try to create TV commercials for my company. The online tutorials all seemed to be way outside my element because they all seemed to assume you were already familiar with animation lingo and with the older versions of AS. Thankfully every time I looked for information about something I didn't understand, I landed here in your forums... and I learned quite a bit! Thanks guys!

Anyhow, after a few weeks I finally put together an actual commercial that I was happy with... so I submitted it to Google to start bidding on cable TV stations. To me, the commercial was pretty slick. The trouble is it was rejected because it didn't meet their "Technical" requirements.

Google is very strict about cable TV ads. For example, they have to have 29.97 frames per second, and your commercial cannot be even one frame more or less. The audio has to be 48 Khz, the resolution has to be 720x480, etc. This was a big letdown for me because my original commercial was a beautiful 1920x1080 widescreen spot with lots of room for everything. I tried to letterbox it to fit their 720x480 limit and it was rejected too.

Problem # 1 - Audio Sample Rate of 48K

I can see how I can change the frame rate, and the resolution, but I can't seem to see any way to change the audio to adjust the audio sample rate to 48 khz instead of 44.1.

Problem #2 - Frame Rate transcribing 24 to 29.97

When I started the commercial, I left the default 24 frames per second, then when it was rejected, I tried to change it to 29.97, but the problem is all my timing with my audio went out of sync because I was pacing it to go along with my narration. I tried to change it to 29.97 in the export phase, but it still rendered it as 24fps.

Next time I know I should create a project in 29.97 to start with, but is there an easy way to convert my old commercial to 29.97 without moving each keyframe?

Problem # 3 - making it "Title Safe"

This was the biggest hurdle for me. As I mentioned, I moved my titles inward quite a bit from the original 1920x1080 to the more restricted 720x480, but they told me that my final output still wasn't "Title Safe". I had no idea what that meant, so I Googled around to find out that it means that the text and graphics are considered clear and readable on most TVs.

The trouble is, there doesn't seem to be any clear way to know what I can do to make mine "safe". I made the fonts bigger, gave them shadows, moved them closer to the center, but they still rejected it.

The trouble with Google is, they are impossible to communicate with. They don't have phone numbers to call... and emails take days and all you get are canned messages. It's as if they don't even read anything you wrote.

Any tips would be great.

Here are the rejected commercials

Original Widescreen HD

HTSC 4:3 version

THANKS!

Joe

ponysmasher · Post by **ponysmasher** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:15 pm

If you press CTRL+F in Anime Studio you will get guides that show you what is tv-safe. Keep all text within the outermost square and you're good.

You can't change the audio to 48khz in Anime Studio, you'll have to use an external audio editor. Try Audacity, it's free.

You can change the framerate from 24 to 29.97 in most video editors. Don't know of a free one off the top of my head.

CouponPages.Com · Post by **CouponPages.Com** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:28 pm

Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2011 12:15 pm Post subject:
If you press CTRL+F in Anime Studio you will get guides that show you what is tv-safe. Keep all text within the outermost square and you're good.

WOW! That's something I never knew about!

Ok...Now, when you say the outermost square, are you talking about the middle line? Because there are now 3 squares, the original one, one slightly smaller one, then a real small one in the middle.

You can't change the audio to 48khz in Anime Studio, you'll have to use an external audio editor. Try Audacity, it's free.

That's what I used to create the audio track in the first place. It's already 48khz, but the final output still ended up at 44. I guess that's an Amine Studio limit. I think I should be able to re-render it using QuickTime Pro and hopefully it won't degrade the video part.

I just checked and QuickTime Pro can re-render it as 29.97, and fix the audio. Maybe if I can move my text inside that middle zone they'll accept it. Crossing my fingers.

THANKS PONYSMASHER! You may have solved something that's been bugging me for weeks!

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:33 pm

Try this article for title safe images: Guidelines
And you can change audio files around with Audacity - a free sound editor.

Hope this helps.

CouponPages.Com · Post by **CouponPages.Com** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:46 pm

As I said, my original audio track is already 48k, and I did use Audacity. I think Anime Studio renders everything at 44.1. Unless there is a way to change it?

ponysmasher · Post by **ponysmasher** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:22 pm

CouponPages.Com wrote:As I said, my original audio track is already 48k, and I did use Audacity. I think Anime Studio renders everything at 44.1. Unless there is a way to change it?

Depends on what you render it to. If you render to Quicktime you can change some settings in the Quicktime dialog, what compression to use, bitrate and the hertz of the audio.

This is for Anime Studio Pro, I don't know if there is some limitation in Anime Studio.

And sorry, I meant the innermost area for title safe. The other one is called action safe.

CouponPages.Com · Post by **CouponPages.Com** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:35 pm

The Innermost square... YIKES!... It's amazing how many times I've moved my titles for this commercial. It looked great when it was 1920x1080.

I can't wait for them to allow me to submit widescreen. That inner square is sooo small. Everything's going to be so crammed. But if that's what it takes to get it on TV, that's what I'll do.

As for the audio, I've been rendering to MOV using H.264, and I do use Anime Studio Pro 7 and I also have Quicktime Pro, but I've never seen the setting for bitrate when rendering from Anime Studio.

If I load the completed MOV file into Quicktime Pro I can re-code it and it has the option of 48k, so if nothing else, if I can fix the Title Safe issues, maybe all I'll need to do is re-render it in Quicktime Pro to 48k.

I'll give it another try!

Thanks again Ponysmasher!