Ever since I got into video and television production in the eighties, I have learned all about the term safe area. It is a concept that seems to be mentioned less frequently nowadays, even though its importance both in and outside video and television production persists and grows: in printing and even more importantly in newer media, including blogging, audio podcasting, social media and today’s audiobook cover art. Ahead, I’ll review the original reasons for safe areas in television (and its subsets Action Safe Area and Title Safe Area) with modern hardware and software tools to facilitate compliance, followed by the reasons for safe areas in printing and in the aforementioned newer media.

Safe area in television and its subsets

The original television sets (from the 1930s to the early 2000s) had CRT (cathode ray tube) displays. The display on the CRT would vary with variable electrical voltage available at viewers’ homes. Because it varied, television TV set manufacturers began to calibrate them at the factory with overscan. That’s why TV producers could not be certain where the visible edges of the image would be. In order to compensate, our ancestors in the video and television production field defined these safe subareas:

• Title Safe Area – An area visible by all reasonably maintained TV sets, where text was certain not to be cut off.
• Action Safe Area – A larger area that represented where a “perfect” set (with high precision to allow less overscanning) would cut the image off.

Despite the wide adoption of LCD TVs that do not require overscan since the size of their images can fortunately maintain the same irrespective of voltage variations, many LCD TVs still come with overscan enabled by default, although it can be disabled by the user using the TV set’s on-screen menus. Since many users have no idea that the option exists, we video producers in 2025 must still respect safe areas for the foreseeable future. This is equally true if the video we are creating will be displayed on traditional broadcast, on a smart TV connected to the Internet directly or via a set top box like an Amazon Fire TV stick, AppleTV or Roku box/stick.

Some tools to comply with safe area for television

 

Many professional monitors including the Blackmagic SmartView 4K G3 I covered in April 2024 include safe area indicators.

 

Apple’s Final Cut Pro comes with title-safe and action-safe overlays that you can show or hide.

 

 

Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve Studio also includes this, as shown with the above video from Resolve Training.

 

Safe area for audio podcasting

One example is Apple’s stipulation in its audio podcast artwork guidelines:

«Keep all essential design elements within the Art Safe Area. Anything placed outside of the Art Safe Area is subject to cropping and or UI overlays.»

Source: here.

Beyond Apple, i.e. other places where an audio podcast or its episodes are promoted, see the following section.

Blogging, social media and today’s audiobook cover art

After decades of experience publishing content in blogs (WordPress and others) and in many social media platforms, I know that many of them will automatically crop an important percentage of a main image for its display on the main page or within search results. That automatic cropping they do is similar to the overscan in TV sets, but worse! For that reason, I very often create a larger version (with extra safe area) to upload in the «main image» section in the blog and in social media promotion, so that the image is still valuable after that cropping occurs. I don’t usually use that larger version (with extra safe area) since it usually takes too much space in the column.

The same applies to today’s audiobook and podcast cover art for the same reasons.

Print safe area = bleed

In printing, bleed is printing that goes beyond the edge of where the sheet will be trimmed. In other words, the bleed is the area to be trimmed off. The bleed is the part on the side of a document that gives the printer a small amount of space to account for natural movement of the paper during guillotining, and design inconsistencies. Artwork and background colors often extend into the bleed area. After trimming, the bleed ensures that no unprinted edges occur in the final trimmed document.

It is very difficult to print exactly to the edge of a sheet of paper/card, so to achieve this, it is necessary to print a slightly larger area than is needed and then trim the paper/card down to the required finished size. Images, background images and fills which are intended to extend to the edge of the page must be extended beyond the trim line to give a bleed.

Bleeds in the US generally are 1/8 of an inch from where the cut is to be made. Bleeds in Europe generally are 2 to 5mm from where the cut is to be made. This can vary from one print company to another. Some printers ask for specific sizes; most of these companies place the specific demands on their website or offer templates that are already set to their required bleed settings.

Source about this printing bleed information: here.

Lee este artículo en buen castellano

El «área segura» tiene hasta más importancia en 2025

 

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