weather page

Ours is usually too small also.

my carousel crawl always reverts to defaults when I make a new one. Thus the crawl is never title safe by default.

Since we are dealing with TV, I would request that title safe elements be put into future versions. Like when I make a slide in carousel, it should never not be title safe unless I define it in some global or local properties.

Michael Dube
FRED-TV
360 Elsbree Street
Fall River, MA 02720
508-675-8128

Actually, for a time ours was too small as well. But for the last couple of months it has been too large.

This issue came up several years ago.

Part of the issue is the amount of data being posted by the NWS; the more words they use in the forecast, the smaller the font will need to be to get that forecast into a given space.

Originally the font was so small, nothing could read it. We experimented with how much to grab from the NWS feed, and ended up with "current and next" (kinda like today & tonight or tonight & tomorrow mornig, etc.). That seemed to work most of the time, although occasionally I see a Wx page that is unreadable (too small).

As for the crawl, the defaults are set by the user (Carousel-Setup-Display Engine-Crawl). Mike, what are you referring to by "title safe"?

John M. Goran, NCE
Cable TV Coordinator
Brunswick Cable 7
28 Federal St.
Brunswick ME 04011
Office 207.725.0614
Fax 207.725.6637
cable7@brunswickme.org
www.brunswickme.org

when creating something for television, one needs to create content with the fact that many tvs have curvature at the corners and that the edges often get cropped by the nature of the individual television. When dealing with normal content, the viewer often does not realize that they are missing "x" number of pixels on the top, bottom, left and right. The only time they really do is when there is text on the screen. Carousel does not (to my knowledge) account for what is the title safe area of the screen and make sure that graphics and especially text stay well within the title safe area. It is appropriate that we be allowed to use the full screen if we want, but there should be a thin white outline which indicates to the creator where the title safe area is within the small graphic that shows what is being created.

Michael Dube
FRED-TV
360 Elsbree Street
Fall River, MA 02720
508-675-8128

Thanks for the explanation, Mike.

Interesting, though, that I have been producing slides on Carousel for TV for 4 years now, manipulating templates, building new templates, and watching all that I post. My viewing test are done on the following: 5.5" LCD, 13" tube, 17" LCD and 27" tube, and that is just what I have in the office, let alone other viewing spots in the coverage area. Additionally, I have a number of viewers that will notify me if a slide is unreadable in any way.

I have NEVER had an issue such as you describe. Using the default areas on a slide template has never revealed a problem such as you describe, and, as long as I keep the text boxes on the background, they are always on the screen.

It sounds like there may be another issue involved here, maybe the settings on the scan converter (too much overscan, maybe)??? [?]

John M. Goran, NCE
Cable TV Coordinator
Brunswick Cable 7
28 Federal St.
Brunswick ME 04011
Office 207.725.0614
Fax 207.725.6637
cable7@brunswickme.org
www.brunswickme.org

I am getting my stuff updated next week. Perhaps it will take care of itself, though I have had this issue through 3 versions now. I usually go back and change them, but not before they get on the air. And I delegate slide creation to a number of seniors in our classes which tend to add up to hundreds of slides a month so it would be great to provide title safe lines to these students which they are used to in FCP, AVID and Premiere.

Michael Dube
FRED-TV
360 Elsbree Street
Fall River, MA 02720
508-675-8128