Safe Zone Overlay Generator

Knowledge Base

How to Use the Safe Zones Reference

The Safe Zones Reference shows title safe, action safe, and broadcast safe areas for video. Different displays and platforms crop content differently. Position important elements in the safe zones to ensure they're visible on all screens.

Understanding Safe Areas

• Action safe (93%, a 3.5% inset): Where action should happen. Content outside may be cut off on some TVs.
• Graphics safe (90%, a 5% inset): Where titles and text should stay. Outer edges risk being cut off or hidden.
• A tighter working margin: Conservative boundary for broadcast television and streaming.

Why Safe Areas Matter

Older CRT televisions and projectors have physical overscan (edges cropped off screen). Modern displays also crop differently based on aspect ratio and zoom settings. Streaming platforms scale video for different devices. Safe areas ensure your content is visible everywhere.

Practical Application

Frame faces and important text within the 90% graphics safe zone. Keep a logo inside the graphics safe zone rather than tight to the corner. Don't place critical information near edges.

Platform-Specific Overscan

YouTube, Netflix, and broadcast TV each have slightly different safe area rules. When in doubt, use the 90% graphics safe zone. Test on multiple devices before finalizing.

FAQ

Q: Do streaming platforms still require safe areas?
A: Yes, especially for text and graphics. Phone screens crop differently than TVs.

Q: What if I need text at the edge?
A: Add a semi-transparent background bar to ensure contrast and readability no matter what gets cropped.

Why safe zones still matter

Safe zones began with cathode ray tube televisions, which stretched the picture slightly past the edge of the visible screen so no blank border ever showed. Anything within roughly the outer five percent might not reach the viewer. Flat panels display every pixel, so the original reason has gone.

The modern reason is different and stronger. Platforms overlay their own interface on your video: progress bars, titles, account names, buttons, captions. Feeds crop differently from one another, and the same upload appears in several shapes. Text placed near an edge disappears behind a control or falls outside a crop, and you find out after publishing.

Treat the bottom of the frame as the most hostile area, because that is where nearly every player puts its controls and where automatic captions land. Anything you need read, such as a name or a call to action, belongs clear of that band. The lower third convention exists partly because it sits above the controls and below the face.

Where one asset serves several platforms, design to the tightest crop rather than the widest. Keeping key elements inside a centre-safe region means a single graphic survives being shown square, vertical and wide without a separate version for each. That decision costs a little composition freedom and saves remaking the asset three times.

Check on a real device rather than in a preview window. Platform overlays, notches and rounded display corners all interact with a frame in ways no editing timeline shows, and the only reliable test is publishing something unlisted and looking at it on a phone before the real upload.

Vocabulary

Title safe. The inner region where text is certain to be visible on any display and under any platform overlay. Conventionally about ten percent in from every edge, and the area to keep names and captions inside.

Action safe. A slightly larger region than title safe, where important picture content should stay. Anything outside it risks being cropped, which matters less for scenery than for a subject's face.

Overscan. The practice of displaying a picture slightly larger than the screen so no blank edge appears, standard on cathode ray tube televisions. The original reason safe zones exist, and obsolete on modern displays.

Aspect crop. What happens when a platform fits video of one shape into a space of another by cutting the excess. Different platforms crop differently, so a single upload can lose different parts of its frame in different places.

Sources

The safe-area figures on this page were read from the standard itself rather than from a summary of it. Checked 31 August 2026.

• EBU R 95 v1.1, Safe areas for 16:9 television production, European Broadcasting Union, June 2017. Note 5 states the action safe area is a 3.5% inset and the graphics safe area a 5% inset, at the top, bottom and lateral parts of the image. That is where 93% and 90% come from. The recommendation's own erratum, correcting a misquoted 3.5% from 76 pixels to 67, confirms the percentages apply to the full raster: 1920 × 0.035 is 67.2.

Platform interface zones are a different kind of number and are labelled separately above. They are observed placements rather than a published specification, they differ between a phone and a desktop, and they move whenever an app is redesigned. Treat them as a working margin and check your own export on the device that matters to you.