3D and Film Factors
"From a technology standpoint, NAB 08 will be remembered for proving that the latest obsession with stereoscopic 3D is for real, and that the physics behind digital acquisition still need intensive R&D if they are to even equal the chemistry (dynamic range) behind film.
There were inspirational 3D demonstrations on the finishing side by Quantel, and from The Foundry and Digital Vision with upcoming software releases, but it was Quantel that put in the early leg work with its 3D enabled Pablo, attracting 6,000 people to 43 road show events around the world, over 700 people to its ticketed stand event, and selling 19 stereo capable systems in six months. The new tool was simultaneous left and right eye ingest, but Strategic Marketing Director Mark Horton was happy to talk first about the state of the market. “It is not a fad. The issue is not so much of the technology; it’s one of knowledge. Once you have got that knowledge the technology is fairly easy to understand,” he said. “What there isn’t in the industry yet is a sufficiently large enough number of people who know how to shoot the material. The limiting factor will be how quickly the industry can gear up, particularly as there is a lack of offline systems currently. The Foundry has got some interesting tools, but they are doing the compositing side,”he added.“We are the entire workflow. If people give us material and they want a delivery master at the end we can do everything in the middle.”
Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry, was showing off Ocular, a set of tools for people working on live action stereo. “What we’ve done is resolve the hard maths, so we’ve now got a dense disparity map linking the left and right eyes,” he said. “What you see with most manufacturers is that all they are doing is a horizontal X shift on one eye on planes of the image. This is fine, but it won’t do a proper intraocular distance across all depths. We are going to see an awful lot of rubbish stereo that makes your eyes hurt, but some people will spend a great amount of money, such as Jim Cameron for Avatar, to get it right. And they will produce very pleasing films that really add something,” he added. “The worry is that all the rubbish will put consumers off the quality projects.”
Kodak’s Bob Mastronardi, worldwide TV segment manager, had a broad grin. He said: “All we’ve tried to do is improve our emulsions, raising the bar so that where we are advantaged in the highlights we’ve taken that two steps further.Where we had some disadvantages, in under exposure with grain, we’ve improved that as well. It was interesting that at both the Red Camera and Sony F35 presentations they pointed out that they are still not as good as film in terms of dynamic range,” he added. “After all that R&D money was spent, film is still the benchmark.” The camera manufacturers introduced many good new models working at 1080p and 2K, but they had a fit of honesty over 4K.
“There is no real 4K camera around,” admitted Jan Eveleens, Thomson’s GM of image capture. “Some people count their pixels in a clever way, but they are not real 4K. This is just pure physics, not marketing. A 4K camera that beats film is going to take a lot of blood, sweat and tears.”
Speaking for top Sony dealer Band Pro, CTO Michael Bravin said, “I think it will be two years before we have high performance 4K imaging. What I really want to see is a full-res 4K 35mm sensor camera by 2010.”
By George Jarrett, TVB Europe
