NAB: Glasses Free and Rig Technologies

Last week the National Association of Broadcasters held it's annual conference in Las Vegas. The conference features vendors from companies and firms operating within the digital broadcast industry. I was hoping to read about some awesome new 3D technology never before seen and was partially satisfied. The Cameron Pace Group was there pushing the 3D medium and applauding it's evolution and progress. Back in 2011, James Cameron predicted that 3D is the future of broadcast. Since then however, the medium has failed to become a powerhouse in tv like it has in film. We've talked a lot about glasses-free 3D and at NAB, it definitely was the focus. CPG thinks 3D's popularity in the living room is contingent on this technology and the answer to it's slow adoption.

Dolby Digital and Phillips partnered to create Dolby 3D, a new, "end-to-end system" for creating glassess free content. Csilla Andersen, a product manager for Dolby 3D, during the conference was interviewed and advertised "Dolby/Philips' solution covers every aspect of content creation and distribution. It encompasses post-production tools, compression for broadcast and distribution, a format decoder and a Multiview Rendering Engine for playback." Dolby and Phillips worked with software companies and platform services to streamline 3D editing and better integrate workflows. Once produced, the glassess free screen technology enables clear, un-warped 3D picture from almost anyplace in the room, a feature other glassess free screen's lack.

"Glassess free" is only half the battle, and the Germans over at Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute have an answer to high production costs and expensive, timely and tricky post production efforts. They introduced a concept trifocal rig, with help from Disney. The rig described as a "hybrid 2D/3D approach to capturing 3D that effectively combines 3D cinematography with 2D-to-3D conversion." The rig holds three cameras and then during postproduction, depth maps are estimated which allows for the generation of stereo content from the footage. The camera also has the ability to calculate the distance between itself and an object which enables the production of shots without a green screen (very cool). It will be interesting to see this technology in action and how effective or ineffective it is when compared to traditional methods.



For More Information:

http://www.dolby.com/us/en/professional/technology/dolby-3d-glasses-free-3d.html

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nab-dolby-3d-format-specification-431918

http://www.nabshow.com/