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MillimeterProduction and Post at NAB 2008
May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By D. W. Leitner and Dan Ochiva
This year's show saw many advances in digital cinema and color-management technologies.
3D on Parade
By Dan Ochiva
With all the talk of a new age of stereoscopic 3D on its way, it's no surprise that technology addressing 3D in post popped up on the showfloor. (Check BlogLive@NAB at blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/nab for more day-by-day 3D coverage, including at the Digital Cinema Summit.)
But much of the 3D product news seemed to come from camera systems, presentation, and even broadcast (3ality's cool demo). Sensing a new market opportunity, the 3D@Home Consortium debuted at the show, with some 22 international firms hoping to "speed the adoption of 3D entertainment in the home." There are some big names involved: Disney, Philips, Samsung, and Thomson, along with IMAX, 3ality, DDD, Fraunhofer Institute, and Universal Studios Home Entertainment. The nonprofit alliance plans to develop industry standards as well as educate the public. (More info at www.3dathome.org.)
Companies involved in post, however, seemed to take a more modest, incremental approach. For example Cine-tal Systems, working with Dolby Laboratories, announced a product that plays back 3D movies during production when a team is working with the Dolby 3D Digital Cinema process. Cine-tal Color Processor for Dolby 3D helps anyone that fits this description perform post operations such as color grading and screenings. The setup employs Dolby’s color processing for playback of any 3D source material that has not yet been packaged into a Digital Cinema Package.
Assimilate Scratch offers a stereoscopic 3D workflow that includes data management, conform, color grading, preview, dailies, realtime playback, rough cuts, and finishing. 3ality used a system to post the U2 3D feature. Scratch ran on a Boxx workstation and handled the two necessary hi-res streams via dual-DVI outputs from an Nvidia Quadro FX card.
Quantel had launched 3D chops for Pablo at IBC last year, and claims that 17 new Pablo workstations (or the stereoscopic 3D upgrades for Pablo) have been purchased in the past few months by post and DI houses working on 3D. New V4 software allows Pablo users to record left-eye/right-eye stereo signals at the same time in realtime. With the software, company claims to address colorimetry, sync, editorial, and imaging errors, stating they can all be fixed in context. Other special 3D features include a comparison mode (50/50 mix, left/right eye, difference map) and the ability to see when left/right eye link is broken.
All new Pablo 4K, iQ4, and Max 4K systems can optionally add on the new Stereo 3D toolset. (Current Pablo 4K or iQ systems can also be upgraded to stereoscopic 3D.) The Quantel Stereoscopic 3D Option for Pablo iQ and Max enables playout and manipulation of two simultaneous streams of HD or 2K in sync and without rendering.
