Title-safe area
The inner margin of the frame where text is conventionally clear of screen overscan, platform buttons, and reframes. A convention, not a promise.
See it
What it is
The title-safe area is the inner rectangle of the frame where text is conventionally expected to survive whatever the display, the platform, or the crop does to your edges. It is a margin convention, not a promise: no percentage protects you from an arbitrary crop or an overlay somebody ships next month. The broadcast convention gives you two boxes: action safe at about 93 percent of the frame (keep important motion inside) and title safe at about 90 percent (keep every word inside). Every NLE can overlay both as guides.
It started as insurance against CRT overscan, and it matters more now, not less. Social platforms stack their own chrome on top of your video: TikTok and Reels bury the bottom fifth under captions, usernames, and buttons, and the right edge under the action rail. Automatic reframing and 16:9 to 9:16 crops shave the sides off anything you centered by eye.
Gotcha: safe areas are per destination, not universal. A lower third sitting perfectly inside broadcast title safe still lands under the caption bar on Instagram. Build a guide overlay for the actual platform you are shipping to, and check the export on a phone rather than trusting the guides in the timeline.
Ask AI for it
Lay out the titles for this video against a named destination. For the broadcast-safe version, keep all text within the inner 90 percent title-safe box and key motion within the inner 93 percent action-safe box. For a social cut, tell me which platform and use that platform's current overlay template rather than a fixed percentage. If no destination is specified, deliver both a generic broadcast-safe version and a platform-review version with the caption bar and action rail marked, and state plainly that neither guarantees clearance, since platform UI moves without notice. Show the guides as an overlay.