MIPTV 2011 GLOBAL SPOTLIGHT 3D

April 2011

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Global 3D Spotlight MIPTV Special Edition

www.miptv.com ALSO INSIDE ...

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SONY’S 3D DREAM FACTORY

SHOOTING IN 3D

Inside, page 6

Inside, page 18

O F F I C I A L

M I P T V

New developments in creating 3D content • Educating the new generation of 3D producers • 3DTV on 3net, 24-hours-a-day, seven days-a-week • And more ...

P U B L I C A T I O N

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CONTENTS

Global 3D Spotlight — April 2011 Director of publications: Paul Zilk

Editorial Department – Editor in Chief: Julian Newby – Deputy Editor: Debbie Lincoln – Sub Editor: Joanna Stephens – Contributing Editor: Marlene Edmunds – Technical Editor in Chief: Herve Traisnel – Deputy Technical Editor in Chief: Frederic Beauseigneur – Graphic Designer: Carole Peres – Editorial Management: Boutique Editions Ltd. Production Department – Content Director: JeanMarc Andre – Publications Production and Development Manager: Martin Screpel – Publishing Product Manager: Chealsy Choquette – Publishing Coordinators: Emilie Lambert, Amrane Lamiri, David Le Chapelain, Bruno Piauger – Production Assistant: Veronica Pirim – Production Assistant, Cannes Office: Eric Laurent – Printer: Riccobono Imprimeurs, Le Muy (France) Management, Marketing & Sales Team – Director of the Television Division: Laurine Garaude – Director of Digital Media: Ted Baracos – Sales Director: Sabine Chemaly – Brand Manager: Dee Perryman – Programme Director: Karine Bouteiller– Managing Director (UK / Australia / New Zealand): Peter Rhodes OBE – Sales Manager: Elizabeth Delaney – Vice President Sales and Business Development, Americas: Robert Marking – Vice President Business Development, North America: JP Bommel – Executive Sales Director, North America: MJ Sorenson – Sales executive: Panayiota Pagoulatos – Sales Managers: Paul Barbaro, Nathalie Gastone – International Sales Manager: Fabienne Germond – Sales Executives: Liliane Dacruz, Cyril Szczerbakow – Sales Manager: Samira Haddi – Digital Media Sales Manager: Nancy Denole – Australia and New Zealand Representative: Natalie Apostolou – China Representative: Anke Redl – CIS Representative: Alexandra Modestova – English speaking Africa representative: Arnaud de Nanteuil – India Representative: Anil Wanvari – Israel Representative: Guy Martinovsky – Japan Representative: Lily Ono – Latin America Representative: Elisa Aquino – MiddleEast Representative: Bassil Hajjar – Poland Representative: Monika Bednarek – South Korea Representative: Sunny Kim – Taiwan Representative: Irene Liu – Germany Representative (Digital Media Sector): Renate Radke Adam Published by Reed MIDEM BP 572 – 11, rue du Colonel Pierre Avia – 75726 Paris Cedex 15 Contents © 2011 Reed MIDEM Market Publications – Publication Registered: 2nd quarter 2011

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Printed on 100% recycled paper

African Wild From Gannet Island and its 100,000 seabirds of the same name sharing one giant rock, the 60,000 flamingos at Kamfers Dam, the Luangwa River and its 30,000 hippos and much more, African Wild, a 3D series of one-hour programmes for 3net, captures the richness and diversity of the world’s second-largest continent. Produced by Aquavision Television Productions.

Moving into the third dimension

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From the lens to the living room

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Digital sparks the 3D revolution

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3net: the television of the future

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Making it easy on the eyes

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Bringing 3D to the screen

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3D COMES TO THE SMALL SCREEN

Moving into the third dimension Today 3D is firmly in the minds of the creators of all screened entertainment — games, TV and movies. And that is something that is very new to this industry ...

Shooting the 2010 FIFA World Cup in 3D

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HERE is nothing new about 3D. But the notion that pretty well everything could, or even should, now be produced and consumed in 3D is brand new.

MIPTV’s 3DTV Broadcast Content Experience in association with Sony Corporation is principally about the small screen — but today’s 3D craze began with the big screen. Immediately before James Cameron’s 2009

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movie Avatar, the buckets full of 3D glasses at the entrance to the cinema were a rare sight. Since Avatar they’ve become as common as buckets of popcorn.

Of course there had been hundreds of 3D movies before Cameron’s box office record-breaker — but Cameron himself had to wait some 10 years between the conception and completion of his box-office record-

breaker, while he worked with Sony and others in the development of the technology.

“On a global level there’s nothing that has come even close to the impact of Avatar,” says Sony marketing director David Bush. “It was great 3D, but the reason it was great 3D, in my mind, was that it’s a very naturalistic type of 3D. In the film there’s not an awful lot of in-your-face, gratuitous 3D

that we've all seen a hundred times, and which I think people will tire of over time if they haven’t already. What Avatar did was to think about making 3D from a natural, more realistic point of view.”

But we are here to talk about the small screen, and in that context, for Bush, it is sport in 3D that has had the most impact. In 2010, with broadcast partner HBS and production crews from Telegenic and AMP, Sony and FIFA produced 25 World Cup matches in 3D. “The first time I sat and watched one of those matches live, it wasn’t about the ball coming out over my shoulder or any of that stuff, it was just the dawning realisation that I really felt more like I do when I sit there in the stadium — which is also not about the ball coming over into your face, it’s just about having a wider, slightly more immersive experience and vision of everything that’s happening.”

And that’s Sony’s core aim — to offer a more realistic, more engaging experience to the small screen viewer. Sony’s “from the lens to the living room” involvement across the whole 3D value chain is what is being demonstrated at MIPTV 2011’s 3DTV Broadcast Content Experience.

3D LANDMARKS ■ 1838

Sir Charles Wheatstone presents the first stereoscopic 3D camera ■ 1915 First 3D films shown to a paying audience in New York ■ 1922 The first 3D feature film, Nat Deverich’s The Power Of Love ■ 1935 Louis Lumiere shows 3D reworking of L’Arrivee D’Un Train ■ 1953 Andre de Toth’s House Of Wax, first 3D film to use stereophonic sound ■ 1983 Richard Fleischer’s Amityville 3D, part of an 80s trend for 3D horror ■ 2009 Avatar, the most successful film of all time ■ 2010 BSkyB broadcasts 3D Premiership soccer in the UK ■ 2010 3D TV sets go on sale worldwide ■ 2011 Launch of Sony, Discovery, IMAX JV 3DTV channel 3net

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TV IN THE THIRD DIMENSION

From the lens to the living room Inside the Sony headquarters in Basingstoke, in the south of England, there is a kind of dream factory where all your 3D wishes can come true. Here they develop state-of-theart technology, they build and fit trucks for live 3D broadcasts, and they train filmmakers in the art of filming in the third dimension. David Bush is marketing director for the operation; Julian Newby went to have a look

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NE OF the most recent announcements from Sony in the build-up to MIPTV was that it will be filming the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships in high definition 3D. Sony has partnered with the All England Lawn Tennis Club to film the world's most prestigious tennis event in 3D. Sony is currently in talks with cinemas with a view to screening the live footage, and the All England Club is negotiating with broadcasters.

Sony's announcement is indicative of a growing rise in filming major events in 3D, and so far sport seems to be the most likely candidate as 3DTV’s killer app. The announcement also highlights the company’s strategy to be engaged in 3DTV at all levels. “Sony’s doing a lot in terms of delivery of 3D pictures. We’re very busy on the production side and we’ve got content companies as part of the Sony group — Sony Pictures and Sony Music,” says Sony marketing director David Bush. “Sony Pictures of course is already producing movies in 3D, and we’ve got a Blu-ray division of Sony Pictures delivering Blu-rays in 3D, so there are a lot of different touch-points. And for us on the professional side, we’ve been very involved not just in selling 3D equipment to broadcasters and film-makers but also getting involved in productions.”

An example of that is last year’s soccer World Cup finals in South Africa, during which Sony worked with FIFA to shoot 25 of the games in 3D. “We took that live not only to TV broadcasters all over the world, but also to cinemas,” Bush says. “It was transmitted live to 650 cinemas globally, and we also distributed it to retail outlets. And we produced a Blu-ray as part of that arrangement as well —so it goes far beyond just selling the cameras.

We’re very much involved across that whole value chain, even in terms of being part of the content production service itself.”

Bush says the partnership with FIFA was as much of a toe-in-the-water exercise as it was a business venture. “With 3D it’s more about partnerships with content owners. FIFA was an example of where there was a great opportunity to do something for the first time,” he says. “The numbers didn’t look too attractive as a commercial venture because at that point not many people were going to get to see live 3D — not many TVs were out there. We could get to a handful of cinemas worldwide, but no great numbers, so it was pretty clear that it was not going to be a massive profit-making venture.

And 3D I think is still in that space for the main part, but it was a great

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Sony marketing director David Bush

opportunity to get some new kind of content produced. There are a lot of projects of that type around 3D at the moment, where there are good opportunities but not yet the critical mass — outside of Hollywood 3D distribution, that is. In TV it’s still very early days, it’s still in the investment phase where it really needs the collaboration of traditional content owners and companies like Sony, to invest and start to make it happen.”

GETTING THE CONTENT RIGHT The establishment of the training centre at Basingstoke was partly an attempt to influence the quality of 3D production. Looking right along the value chain, if the content isn’t right, then nobody’s going to buy the TV sets.

“Our main objective at the moment is to get a lot of good 3D out there,” Bush says. “Frankly speaking there’s a lot of bad 3D out there at the moment as well, so one of the reasons we set up a training centre here is to help people get better at making really good 3D. Because if the content is bad, whether it's seen on a Samsung TV, a Panasonic TV or a Sony TV, it’s not doing any of us any favours. So we have a vested interest in quality-control of the content that gets produced, and that’s one of the drivers for us to be involved in the content creation business, to play a role in ensuring that good-quality 3D is coming out.”

From a professional business point of view Sony is also interested in selling cameras, outside broadcast (OB) trucks and production equipment as well, but from a corporate point of view, although Bush says that this is “a small piece of the whole puzzle”. He adds: “One of the original reasons for having a professional division in Sony was to be a kind of test bed for technology development, and then for it to filter into into consumer applications. And these days it actually goes both ways — there’s a lot of professional tech-

“More important is that 3D gets proliferated and that good 3D wins an audience and generates an appetite among consumers”

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In 2009 Sony and FIFA announced that they would together be producing 25 World Cup 2010 matches in 3D. Making the announcement David Bush said: “For the first time ever fans will be able to enjoy the World Cup in 3D because of unique Sony technologies such as the MPE-200�

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nology development that then finds it’s way into consumer, and also the other way around. All of that serves the greater goal of getting 3D better understood, not just in terms of the economics but the production and craft, the capabilities that are needed.”

Bush says that a bi-product of the introduction of 3DTV is a new collaboration between otherwise competing companies. “I’ve never actually seen so much collaboration — more than I’ve ever seen in my entire career — between companies that you may easily have thought would be in a competitive space, in order to share learning and experiences of producing 3D content.” He adds: “It’s about people understanding that there’s still a lot to be done. Although 3D is not a new subject, there’s still a long way to go, there are still very, very few skilled practitioners out there, and only through collaboration are we going to keep turning the audience on to it.”

STANDARDS AND SAFETY Traditionally where new technologies and formats have been introduced to the industry, formats and common standards have taken time to establish, and 3D is no exception. “One of the big debates in the industry is about having 3D that doesn’t require glasses. At the moment the best technology from a viewing experience point of view does require glasses,” Bush says. “Now there are different types of glasses — there are so-called passives which very simply are cheap, and there are also the active glasses, which have advantages but are more expensive. There are pros and cons to both types of technology, and in the future I’m quite sure there’s going to be glassesfree technology as well. There are already glasses-free prototypes that have been displayed, it’s a little way away I think from becoming a mass product but it will come in the future. So at that end there are some choices appearing for consumer.

“There are still very, very few skilled practitioners out there, and only through collaboration are we going to keep turning the audience on to it” Bush says that one of the advantages of the current 3D technology that is widely used, is that it uses standard HD viewing technology and adds a decoder to split up the left and right images. “So it means that mass production technology that’s already being produced can be relatively easily adapted for 3D use and that’s why the price premium that you pay for a 3DTV over an HDTV is not so high.” He adds: “The difficulty with new technologies that don’t require glasses is that they are fundamentally different and so there’s a very big cost impact there.”

There has been a lot of talk about the safety of 3DTV — how it could cause headaches, affect people’s eyesight and so on. “I have a strong belief that 3D done well is not going to cause any problems. And a lot of 3D is clearly being done well. It would be nonsense to say that 3D doesn’t give you a headache sometimes, or cause people to feel nauseous, because clearly there is that kind of 3D out there. I think there is a need for production guidelines and quality control over that,” Bush says.

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So what is Sony doing this this field? “Well, I think what we're doing in the training centres is pretty much about that. I think the content industry itself probably needs to find ways to come up with guidelines. I know that for the public broadcasters in Europe, the EBU is thinking about this.

Those broadcasters like Sky who are responsibly producing good-quality 3D have very clear guidelines about things like depth budgets [how much of the action goes on behind or in front of the screen] and so on, which all play a part in how we perceive the comfort of the 3D that we see. There’s no kind of industry standard at this point, but I can see a need for it and I think that may emerge over time. I think initiatives like this [Sony’s training centres] are certainly designed to help with that.”

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In October 2010 Sony Professional announced that it would be working with BSkyB on live 3D coverage of the 2010 Ryder Cup. The Ryder Cup was the second major international sporting event covered in 3D that Sony have been involved in, following the 3D FIFA World Cup in June

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Bush says that producers are now starting to work with a positive depth budget, “which means depth that is appearing behind the screen, as if you’re looking through a window into a world of depth, as opposed to working with images that leap out of the screen. So with the football on Sky, we set quality control constraints around how much depth we would allow to come forward off the screen, or how far into the screen the depth would appear.

And you need to manage that carefully particularly between large and small screens — if you set a certain depth budget for a small screen it will look very different when you see it on a big screen.”

There’s also the multi-tasking argument against 3DTV: how can people about the house get kids ready for school, wash and iron, or fix a meal while watching one of the TVs in the house, if it involves wearing special 3DTV

“I think one of the things we’ll see in 2011 is a lot of trialling of different genres by broadcasters and producers” glasses? “I think these are real considerations, but having said that I think the content that’s getting produced for 3DTV isn’t really that kind of dipin, dip-out experience. Whether it will be in five or 10 years, it’s not easy to say at this point.

WHAT IS THE KILLER CONTENT? “There are many questions around 3D and I think that’s one of them — to what extent is it going to proliferate in every genre? Is it going to be only movies and perhaps sport and special-event television, or is it going to become much more of mass-medium than that? Who knows, in 10 years we could be sitting watching the news in 3D,” Bush says. “I think one of the things we’ll see in 2011 is going to be a lot of trialling of different genres by broadcasters and producers. Last year we started to see some of that — we saw a lot of sports trials last year and one or two other genres like opera and ballet were done to some extent in 3D. This year I think we’ll see more of that trialling, and frankly there’s not a lot of data around audience appetite for 3D by genre at this point.”

On the other hand Bush says the Hollywood experience speaks for itself.

“It’s well documented that cinemas are able to charge more money and get bigger audiences for the 3D … even when you’ve got the 2D choice. In television that’s far from clear yet. But I’m often reminded about HD. It seems only about five years ago that a lot of people in the broadcast industry were saying that HD would never go beyond those same genres we’re talking about with 3D — you know, there’ll never be a need for an HD news channel — and here we are just a few years later and HD news is becoming fairly standard.“ The arrival of HD was slowed down by bandwidth issues, the size and cost of camera equipment, the high cost of production and the lack of broadcast outlets. All MIPTV veterans will remember seeing the occasional screen around the Palais showing HD close-ups of tiny insects blown up to look as scary as dinosaurs. Aren’t the issues facing 3DTV similar?

“I think what the craftspeople in this sector are starting to understand that

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telling the story in 3D is a different challenge to telling the story in HD,” Bush says. “There are new opportunities. From time to time the wow effect with 3D can be great, but it’s only one part of what great 3D should be about. And I think that will come with more and more experience. The 3D we shot at the end of the world cup was better than what we shot at the beginning of the tournament. I think the whole industry is in a kind of learning situation still and there’s still a long way to go.”

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Control room and camera operators prepare to shoot the FIFA World Cup

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T H E V I E W F R O M J A PA N

Digital sparks the 3D revolution Joe Nakata is deputy general manager at the 3D Strategy Office of Sony Corporation in Japan. Here he gives his views on the emergence of 3DTV and Sony’s role in its development

Q: What is behind this sudden wave of 3D activity?

“3D in itself is nothing new — it has a long history dating back to the analogue days, and Sony has been experimenting with it for many years.

But the recent drive towards the 3D has really been made possible by advances in digital technology. If you think about cinema, theatres have been using 35mm film to project onto the screen for years and years. But with the advance of digital technologies, that can now be done with digital cinema projectors and that digital technology is crucial to provide a high-quality 3D content experience.

“With packaged media we now have very high-capacity Blu-ray discs which have 50-gigabyte storage capacity and that has become a standard. In the early days there were competing formats but now Blu-ray is the standard.

And the 3D format for Blu-ray has also been agreed as a standard, called MVC — Multi-view Video Codec — it’s an extension of the MPEG format and it’s a standard already agreed upon by the Blu-ray Disc Association, of which Sony is a founder member. These high-quality large-capacity discs make it possible to deliver HD and 3D video at the same time.

So that’s another example where advances in digital technology make it possible to provide very good quality 3D images.

“In the consumer area, the Sony Bravia TV has a technology called High Frame Rate which means the TV will refresh the displayed images at very high speed, so that the picture is very Joe Nakata: “It’s up to the content producers as well as the broadcasters how we unlock the potential”

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smooth even if the object is moving. So leveraging this High Frame Rate technology, we are able to display right pictures and left pictures in alternate high speed so that you can enjoy very good quality 3D.” Q. When will 3DTV become mass market?

“HD took a long time and 3D is just starting. But I think the rate of adoption is much faster in the case of 3D right now, if you compare it with what happened to HD. People tend to think a 3DTV set is only for 3D but it’s not.

3DTV is a regular high-quality 2D HDTV but also with 3D as an option.

For all the TV manufacturers, including Sony, with the large-screen TVs — over 40” — 3D has become a standard option. So the installed base will automatically grow in terms of playback capability.

“And PlayStation®3 (PS3) plays a big role here. Worldwide we have around 38 million PS3 units already in people’s living rooms and these are all connected through the PlayStation network. And PS3 can be upgraded for it to become a 3D Blu-ray playback machine, as well as of course a stereoscopic 3D games machine. So all of a sudden — it’s like a Trojan Horse — peo-

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High octane scene from 3net original series High Octane

ple who own a PS3 are now 3D-ready. The only thing they need is a 3DTV. That plays a big role in terms of adoption.”

Q. What about 3D channels? Where can we see 3DTV? “In terms of content, Sony Pictures is constantly producing 3D movies and there is distribution of those on many VOD platforms. In terms of sport, we work with ESPN in the US with whom we have become official partner, and they have launched a 3D-dedicated channel on top of their subscriber base. Starting with the FIFA soccer World Cup we have shown 3D sports — including PGA golf — on ESPN 3D, and we have held public viewing events in theatres too.

“And then there’s 3net, a 24-hours, 7-days, 3D-dedicated channel that is a joint-venture between Sony, Discovery and IMAX. This was launched in the US in February on satellite operator DirecTV. Comcast is doing a lot of work in 3D in the US — and Sky has launched 3D television channels in the UK, Germany and Italy.”

Q. When will we be watching 3DTV without glasses?

“At CES in Las Vegas we showed a prototype of glasses-less 3DTV but this is not yet ready for market. We believe it is very important to display 3D in full high-quality and we believe glasses and high-frame-rate 3DTV is the best viewing experience. With glasses-less 3D there is still a lot of work to do in terms of resolution, production costs — those kinds of things.”

Q. What will MIPTV delegates learn from your exhibition in Cannes?

“At MIPTV we are showcasing examples 3D broadcast content from 3net and Sky3D. And also some examples from Japanese broadcasters such as Fuji, TBS and SkyPerfect TV. I think in terms of the installed base, 3DTV is going to grow very big, very fast. And its up to the content producers as well as the broadcasters how we unlock the potential of that. So when people experience this 3DTV content at MIPTV — and seeing is believing — if they feel that 3D is really an interesting experience they can use, they should look into how they can leverage that opportunity.”

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3D COMES HOME

The television of the future 3net, the joint-venture, 24-hour 3D network from Sony, Discovery and IMAX, launched in February of this year. It was the first step towards a global 3D rollout

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DTV in the home is here — since February 13, when 3net launched on DirecTV channel 107 in the US. From 20.00 on that day 3net viewers were treated to one-hour specials China Revealed, produced by Natural History New Zealand, and Forgotten Planet, Flight 33 Productions’ look at ghost towns around the world — followed by a movie, the premiere of the feature-length IMAX film Into The Deep 3D. Further programming featured in the inaugural line-up included Experience 3D from Arena Films that puts viewers in the driving seat on high-speed journeys across land, sea and air; and Hubble 3D, narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio and co-produced

by IMAX and Warner Brothers Television in co-operation with NASA.

The impending launch of 3net was announced during Sony Corporation's press event at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Making the announcement, Sir Howard Stringer, chairman, CEO and president, Sony Corporation, said: "3net is a critical component of the growth of 3D, as it will deliver a rich array of immersive, high-quality programming directly to consumers.” He added: "In a year when 3D becomes more personal, Sony, Discovery Communications and IMAX are dedicated to bringing great 3D television experiences into consumers' homes. Our groundbreaking vision — the creation of the pre-eminent 3D television destination — will soon become a reality."

Discovery Communications Founder and Chairman John Hendricks was at the launch. "For 25 years, Discovery Communications has been dedicated to satisfying curiosity and making a difference with the highest quality and most compelling content for viewers," Hendricks said. "Over the past decade, in partnership with technology leaders like Sony, we have made good on that promise by helping to pioneer HD in over 80 markets around the world. Today, with my friend Sir Howard Stringer at Sony and our partners at IMAX, 3net takes that commitment to the next level for consumers, affiliates and advertisers with the closest to real-life experience that TV has to offer — 3D." President and CEO of 3net, Tom Cosgrove, added: "As we kick-off 3net's first full month on-air, our goal is to give viewers a sampling of the kind of compelling programming we've committed to bring to the emerging 3D television marketplace."

IMAX CEO Richard L Gelfond said 3net was the company’s first step in a strategic effort to take 3D into the home and extend the IMAX brand. "IMAX has been a pioneer and recognised leader in 3D technology for more than twenty-five years,” he said, adding: “We're reaching more and more consumers with the recent expansion of the IMAX® theatre network and the growth of 3D movie content."

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Experience 3D puts viewers right in the driving seat. A series produced by Arena Films and featured on 3net

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China Revealed (Natural History New Zealand)

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LEARNING THE CRAFT

Making it easy on the eyes Today’s television audience is used to high-speed presentations of outdoor action. But 3D is going to slow things down a little as the creatives get to grips with the equipment and the techniques

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VERYBODY’s doing it. On the big screen and on the small screen, 3D is the next big thing. But making it look good, and easy to watch, is crucial, if content creators are going to engage audiences and leave them wanting more.

“It’s not difficult to shoot something that gives you a perception of depth.

But to shoot a programme and to cut a programme that feels comfortable and compelling is very different,” says David Bush, marketing director, Sony Professional Solutions Europe. “There are a lot of considerations around that, particularly when you’re asking people to look at 3D for quite a period of time. We can all look for a couple of minutes and quite enjoy stuff that’s flying out in our face, but if you sit for half an hour, an hour or movie-length in front of 3D material and then come way from that feeling like it’s been really comfortable, that takes a lot of craft.”

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African Wild, produced by Aquavision Television Productions and featured on 3net

James Cameron, the man whose movie Avatar kick-started the re-birth and mass marketing of 3D entertainment, echoed Bush’s point ahead of the film’s release. “The irony with Avatar is that people think of it as a 3D film and that's what the discussion is. But I think that, when they see it, the whole 3D discussion is going to go away. That's because, ideally, the technology is advanced enough to make itself go away. That's how it should work. All of the technology should wave its own wand and make itself disappear.”

“All of the technology should wave its own wand and make itself disappear” THE VIEWER EXPERIENCE And that’s exactly what staff at Sony’s UK aim to achieve — 3D that’s so immersive and seamlessly shot and cut, that the viewer goes away having had an experience, rather than a demonstration 3D technology. “ ”We learned a lot on the World Cup project about not cutting so often, about panning wider, not zooming and panning so quickly when you’re cutting between shots, to ensure that the shots are relatively the same depth. Because our eyes don’t instantly move between different depth points — so it’s learning all of those things, actually slowing down the production process, rather than the cut-cut-cut technique that we’re all used to when watching football, for example.

"It takes considerable 3D experience to begin to understand why these things have an impact,” Bush says. “It's important, for example, to avoid so-called ‘edge-violations’ or unexpected near-field object appearances such as a fan standing up and waving a flag in front of a camera. Live 3D planning can be a trade-off between planning the optimum positions for the best 3D shots and the risk of unplanned interference — these kinds of violation can create uncomfortable viewing experiences. So there are a lot of lessons to learn, which is what our specialist here Paul Cameron spends all day helping camera operators, stereographers and freelancers to understand and think about.”

Bush says there will be trials in other genres in the near future, and meanwhile the forms that have worked well in 3D — movies and sport — will continue to grow. “Hollywood’s producing more than twice the number of 3D movies this year than it did last year and I’m sure it will go up again next year. And broadcast is growing too, with 3net in the US, and with Sky3D in the UK, Germany and Italy.”

Live music could be the next draw for 3D producers. “I think it’s going to work for concerts as well, especially on the big screen,” Bush says. “Interestingly live music is something that hasn’t worked terribly well on the small screen — it doesn’t get big audiences on TV. But there is something about the nature of that live event feel in the cinema context that’s going to work really well. There have already been a number of trials in that area.“ But he adds: "2011 will remain an exciting challenge as piloting of different genres in 3D continues to expand. While 3D cinema has proven it's value, the commercial realities for TV broadcasters remain challenging because viewing numbers have not yet reached the tipping point. I expect that to start shifting this year."

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BEHIND THE CAMERA

Bringing 3D to the screen

Sony training developer Paul Cameron

Paul Cameron is a training developer based at the Sony Corporation UK headquarters in Basingstoke. Much of his working day is spent teaching the next generation of young film-makers how to produce in 3D — a process he calls 3D Acquisition

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ROM broadcast production teams faced with the difficult task of covering live sporting events in 3D, to the CGI team dealing with the difficulties of blending live 3D shoots with virtual scenes, 3D is presenting new challenges as well as a whole new set of craft possibilities for the media industry.

“Ever since man has found a way of capturing a moment in time on screen, there has been a small group of determined people who have pondered the idea of capturing the same scene in 3D,” Sony Corporation training developer Paul Cameron says. But 3D is an odd concept. “Of all the previous advances in image technology, it stands somewhat alone. 3D has largely been seen as a novelty and curious technology. However, recent players in this field have come to realise that the success of 3D will depend largely on the ability of the media industry as a whole to develop 3D as a serious contender — to make 3D as accessible and normal as any other of the recent developments in broadcast technology, like HD, digital cinematography, or Blu-ray.” So what stands in the industry’s way? In short, according to Cameron: “The methods of capturing, shooting and editing the content is a complex decision process.”

Q: How do our eyes and brains work together to build a 3D image?

“3D is an illusion. We are creating an image that simulates what we would see if we were actually there instead of the camera. The first thing I need to explain is the concept of depth cues. A depth cue is something our eyes

“3D is an illusion. We are creating an image that simulates what we would see if we were actually there instead of the camera” 18 / G L O B A L 3 D S P O T L I G H T 2 0 1 1

and brains use to estimate depth, and also where all the objects we see around us are relative to one another. There are eight of these depth cues. The first five are: Focus & Depth of Field; Perspective & Relative Size; Occlusion; Lighting & Shading; and Colour Intensity & Contrast. The sixth, Relative Movement, can be used in films and video to give a further sense of depth in moving images. It is these last two depth cues, Vergence and Stereopsis, that provide the most powerful way of showing depth.

“Vergence is a word to describe both convergence and divergence. When we look at something at a distance far away, both our eyes are pointing straight ahead parallel to one another. However when we look at things close up, our eyes converge together, and our brains use this small change in angle to estimate distance.

“Stereopsis is the small difference we see with each eye. Those tiny differences between the left eye and the right eye. Our brains have an amazing ability to calculate from these distances where objects are in a 3D space — which objects are close by, and which objects are far off.”

So the key to 3D acquisition is to simulate Vergence and Sstereopsis.

How is this done?

“Shooting scenes with a 3D camera is the most effective method of acquiring 3D material from live subjects and scenes. This can be achieved with either a specially made integrated camera (two cameras or camcorders stuck to-

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This year's Four Hills ski-jumping tournament in Garmisch-Partenkirchen provided the backdrop for the first ever 3D live broadcast of ski-jump images, produced

by Bayerischer Rundfunk and Sony Professional in collaboration with TopVision

gether), or something that combines the images from two lenses on to one sensor. There have even been some experiments in designing an integrated 3D camera with one lens.

“In almost all circumstances professionals will be shooting 3D material using a 3D rig. This is essentially two cameras or camcorders bolted to a piece of metalwork so that one camera captures an image for the left eye and the other for the right.

“Each camera produces a video signal. These are combined into one signal and sent through the production and post-production process as a single signal. All the cuts, mixes and wipes are done on both left and right images at the same time. For television, the signal is transmitted using conventional transmission technology to the home where it is displayed on a special television. Then by wearing a special pair of glasses the combined signal is split into two images, one for the left eye and one for the right, and this fools the brain into seeing 3D.”

It is also common practice to convert traditional 2D images to 3D. What is the technique used to do this?

“The original 2D video can be selected as the left eye signal, and this signal is copied — or cloned — for the right eye signal. Then the clone is slipped just a few pixels to the right. There is a small reduction in quality, because only the overlap region between the two images can be used. The overall effect is to push the whole scene back into the screen. It is not really 3D, but if used for small clips no longer than about four seconds, the viewer can be fooled into thinking the whole programme is 3D. “Proper real-time 2D-to-3D conversion is a complex task. Indeed good realtime conversion of any video scene requires a great deal of complex fast signal processing. If the original signal is used for the left eye signal, then the right eye signal will need to be reconstructed.

“2D to 3D converters have been available for years, but new generations are becoming more complex and sophisticated. As designers increase the over-

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“In production there are several potential problems. The first is knowing what audience you are going to make your 3D programme for” all power of image processors, and understand more about shape recognition, image analysis, and the probability of distance assumptions, so each new generation of converter becomes better than the last.

“However, the best converter is also the oldest — us! While live broadcast requires a real-time converter, pre-recorded material and archive footage can take it’s time in conversion. Each frame can be rotoscoped and analysed automatically to save time, and then tweaked manually by a team of artists.

However, even taking all this into account it is still better to shoot a scene with a 3D camera rather than a conventional 2D camera and a converter — certainly for the time being.”

What is the method used for creating simulated 3D images and 3D special effects?

“The third method of creating 3D material is by using 3D modeling software applications like Maya, 3DS Max, Lightwave — or any one of a series of likewise applications. Artists use this software to create entire virtual scenes, with virtual objects and virtual lighting. The whole scene is then rendered, frame by frame to 2D from the point of view of a virtual camera. In 3D, the scene is rendered from two virtual cameras sitting next to each other just like in live 3D. “Incidentally, this method introduces a terminology conflict: What is 3D? Artists using this software have used the term 3D for a long time to describe the process of modeling virtual objects and scenes. The 3D we are discussing should perhaps be called ‘stereoscopic’.”

What are the potential problems that are specific to shooting in 3D? “In production there are several new challenges. The first is knowing what audience you are going to make your 3D programme for. If I make a 3D movie and without any further editing I simply show the film on television, this will

3D outside broadcast control room for the 2010 FIFA World Cup

probably be okay. The viewer’s eye will probably need to converge a little bit more to see the image but that should be okay. However if I do it the other way around, make a TV programme and show it at the cinema, this might go dreadfully wrong. The differences between the left and the right image become so great that it might cause eye strain or completely break the 3D illusion.

“This is going to be really important in the future as people start making 3D movies to go onto YouTube for instance, and try to transfer them to television. The differences you need to see in 3D on a small window like YouTube would become huge when shown on a 40-inch TV. Another thing producers need to watch out for is what happens at the edge of the screen.

Let’s imagine you have something behind the screen in positive parallax near the right hand edge moving off the image to the right. It would disappear from your right eye just before your left eye. This would look normal.

Now imagine something in front of the screen in negative parallax. Now it’s

“The differences you need to see in 3D on a small window like YouTube would become huge when shown on a 40-inch TV” Teaching 3D — Paul Cameron in action

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going to disappear from your left eye before your right eye. That looks odd, our brains can’t work that out and the whole 3D illusion snaps. So we need to be careful of anything in front near the edge of the screen. We would need to add a black border to the left eye image only so that the object in front disappears from both eyes at the same time. This maintains the 3D illusion.

Of course it’s the opposite for the left eye and the left side.”

How does the viewer receive 3D images in the home?

“There are many different technologies that have been devised to see 3D material in general. All of them try to achieve two basic requirements: to provide one image for the left eye and another for the right, and to do this for more than one person at the same time.”

Whether cinema, gaming or TV, all 3D content requires the user to wear glasses. Will this ever change?

“There are several technologies companies are looking at. Take Parallax Barrier for instance. Basically this consists of two LCD screens, one in front of the other. The back one contains all the image pixels, and the front one acts as a barrier. This ensures that you only see half the pixels with your right eye and the other half with the left eye. Thus 3D without glasses.

“Lenticular technology may also hold possibilities for 3D without glasses.

You remember those small plastic cards you could turn and see a moving image? Now this technology may hold the key to 3D screens without glasses.

However both of these technologies require the viewer to look from a certain position — move sideways and the whole 3D illusion breaks. There needs to be some further development into these technologies to provide a nice bright 3D image from anywhere in the room.

“Another possible solution is Autostereoscopic 3D. There have been several attempts here. All of them involve some kind of semi-mechanical device, with rotating lights or lasers or diaphragms that wobble up and down. Again there really needs to be some kind of break through in the technology. Overall we are several years away from having proper 3D without glasses. And remember, whatever solution we eventually have cannot be the same old little gadget that kind of provides a faint 3D image if you stand in the correct place. No, it needs to have a nice bright image that several people can see at once from almost any angle. And it needs to be reasonably cost effective.”

The killer app for 3DTV could well be sport. But isn’t shooting action in 3D more difficult than in 2D? “Each environment has its own unique requirements on set — or in the case of location and nature shoots, out in the wild. The broadcast indus-

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How 3D works

“The broadcast industry has in recent years just got to grips with 2D filming in difficult and hard-to-reach locations” try has in recent years become adept at 2D acquisition in difficult and hard-to-reach locations. 3D brings some new challenges as well as some new craft tools when shooting in extreme environments.

“There is one main requirement when shooting live 3D action at sporting events and music performances, for example: speed. Quality is still an issue, but there needs to be a very clear balance between capturing a scene with reasonable quality, the need to set up equipment quickly before the event, the chance that something might be damaged during the event, and the fact that in all cases it is totally impossible to re-shoot a scene.

“Over the years a number of ideas have been explored. These include cameras with varying lens and prism arrangements that make a more portable, user-friendly, single-bodied camera. Ensuring a complete workflow system is in place from beginning to end will make any 3D shoot an effective 3D success. Last year Sony met the challenge of delivering the first ever FIFA World Cup in 3D. But we don’t intend to stop there. I’m sure we will continue to see 3D innovation helping to deliver fresh and exciting experiences for the viewer.”

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A P1 & HDFA camera rig at the Dog Track in Swindon, southwest England

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