I downloaded the Lite version and have been playing around with it, but it is not a very intuitive program.  I am about fifty pages into the manual, but have yet to be able to get a sequence of content I cut together in CS5.5 into Resolve successfully.  I can’t export it into any format Resolve will read, besides uncompressed HD, which my array is not designed to handle.  Using an EDL to link to my Canon 5D source files is giving me all sorts of issues as well, which is something we experienced at the office when we first switched from Speedgrade to Resolve.  Clearly it is going to take some time to learn how too get anything useful done in the program.  If I do get it to work, the automatic tracking tools are the features I am most interested in playing with.

In other major news that doesn’t directly affect me, Blackmagic-Design also acquired Teranex last week.  The first major change they made was cutting the price of Teranex’s primary flagship product, the VC100, from $90,000 to $20,000.  This is similar to what happened when they acquired DaVinci last year, but much more extreme.  It will be interesting to see if some of that high end image processing technology makes it into future Decklink cards, or any similar products.

Canon’s existing video DSLRs have two major things going for them.  One is that their small lightweight form-factor is easy to use and allows the cameras to be put into places that any other high quality camera wouldn’t fit.  The second is that with such a large imager, they give a unique style to the images they shoot, that many people prefer, even when compared to the results of cameras that cost 10 times as much.

When compared to existing HDV and AVCHD camcorders, the idea of a video DSLR totally revolutionized the low end market.  It had so many advantages in that space, that it even caught the attention of the high end market, in places the Canon never dreamed that it would go.  For the money, nothing else even comes close in regards to image quality, so DSLRs are an obvious choice for students and other independent filmmakers, and freelance videographers.

But people who are familiar with larger professional cameras look at a DSLR and see a huge stack of limitations. (SDI output, 15min record limit, remote control, excessive moiré and aliasing, etc.)  They are looking for the image style and quality of a DSLR, but without those limitations, regardless of the cost and size of the resulting product.  The C300 seems to be aimed at that market, and instead of revolutionizing it, it is just going to offer itself as one more option, which is a disappointment to those who were expecting more.  It offers nothing to further the interests of the independent videographer or film-maker, because that is not who it is targeting.  It is designed to tie into the existing equipment that larger organizations have invested millions of dollars into, the benefits of which, they are not willing to forego, in favor of the image style and depth of field offered by existing DSLR sensor systems.  Whether it will be successful in its target market remains to be seen, but I am confident that many of its key features will eventually make it into future products that are more similar to the existing 5D and 7D DSLRs.

After announcing it last week, today Avid released the next version of Media Composer, and it is a major update.  The key thing that will affect all users is that the program will now be a natively 64bit application.  This will exclude users who still have 32bit systems, but allow the software to use more RAM, and therefore effectively do larger projects, on 64bit systems, which are pretty prevalent at this point.  From what I can tell, re-coding an entire application for 64bit is also good for cleaning up the code for existing features, and streamline performance and threading.  Avid’s primary competition: Adobe Premiere Pro, saw a huge improvement in both performance and stability when the first 64bit version (CS5) was released.  This has led to a huge increase in that application’s popularity, especially for larger projects.  The level of competition presented by that change may be a key factor in why we are now seeing so many major changes from Avid.

The next most significant new feature, that will affect many users, especially new ones, is “Avid Open I/O” which is Avid’s new approach to integrating hardware with Media Composer.  Avid now supports hardware I/O via products from AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox and others.  We have seen hints of this coming, with support for the Matrox MXO2-Mini and AJA ioExpress in versions 5.0 and 5.5 respectively.  This change has two major benefits, it will allow most users access to professional hardware I/O solutions without paying for Avid’s overpriced hardware, and nearly as important, it will allow edit systems to run multiple applications on the same system and hardware.  Add this to advances in project compatibility and interchange, and users will be able move their editing projects between Avid and Premiere Pro (and FCP on the Mac side) on the same systems, using the same video output hardware.

Avid also added a myriad of new features to enhance more advanced workflows, with better support for stereoscopic content, more advanced color correction tools, and surround sound mixing options on the audio side.  They also have a 4:4:4 RGB version of the popular DNxHD codec, and natively support ProRes files.  Their Symphony finishing toolset no longer requires Nitris DX hardware, but I have yet to find the pricing structure for that option.  It looks to be a solid feature set, and I am looking forward to trying it out.

The next step is to set the horizontal offset, or convergence.  This is much more complicated than the vertical alignment, because the difference in the images that causes the depth effect also prevent the separate angles from ever matching perfectly.  The part of the image that is desired to be viewed at screen depth should be aligned, while anything that should be in front of or behind the screen will appear offset, if it was shot correctly.  This offset is what gives the view the illusion of depth.  By altering the convergence, one can change how “close” the image appears to the viewer, so this is a creative decision, and should take into account the depth of the other shots in the sequence.  By changing the convergence over the course of a shot, the illusion of motion can be created as well.

Another issue that may need to be dealt with, especially if the content was shot with a beam splitting rig, is a color difference between the left and right images.  This is usually handled the same way as color correction is in the standard post production process, but once again, can be somewhat automated in newer high end software.

There are a few other more advanced processing steps that can be taken to further refine a stereoscopic image for natural and easy viewing by the audience.  These include ghostbusting, which attempts to eliminate crosstalk between the left and right images in high contrast areas, and floating windows, which make objects that cross the edges of the screen seem less jarring to the viewer.  Over the past few years, I have used many of these techniques to manually process stereoscopic video, using standard 2D video tools, like Adobe After Effects.  We are finally beginning to see dedicated stereoscopic features being developed for these applications, that help streamline that process, without requiring extremely expensive dedicated stereoscopic software toolsets.

The solution that I use for my stereoscopic work is Cineform’s Neo3D, which allows 3D content to be processed through a fairly standard post production workflow.  They also have a creative way of supporting stereoscopic content, that allows stereoscopic finishing work to be done during any step in the process, even concurrently on a separate system if desired.  This process uses the same active metadata workflow that they have made available for color correction for the last few years.  All of the stereoscopic adjustments, as well as the muxing of the left and right streams is done on the fly by the decoder, so changes don’t have to be permanently rendered into the media, and the target application receives a premuxed single stream of video.  This allows certain 2D apps that have no integrated support for stereoscopic post, to be utilized for 3D editorial, and still give editors a live stereoscopic preview.  I discussed the options for connecting 3D preview displays, as well as some of the display options available, in earlier articles in the series.  I am sure the process will continue to evolve as new products are developed to simplify the workflow.

Cineform’s big news was their acquisition by GoPro, and a reduction of their prices.  Neo (Previously “Neo4K”) is now $300 and the full Neo3D is $1000.  There is also a new free utility called the GoPro Cineform Studio posted on the GoPro site, designed to help users easily process their footage from the new GoPro3D.  That download effectively makes the basic Cineform codec freely available to anyone who needs it.  I highly recommend having the Cineform codec available on any system you do video work on, since it is a useful cross-platform compression format.

Adobe announced the next step for the Creative Suite line, which is a .5 update for most of the products.  Premiere 5.5 adds merged clips for better sync sound support, and some improvements to exports and Media Encoder.  After Effects 5.5 has a new Warb stabilizer, that should help fix rolling shutter artifacts in DSLR footage, among other uses, and it also has new options and presets for stereoscopic work, primarily focused on motion graphics.  Soundbooth has been totally replaced by the return of Audition as a standard part of the suite, which should improve support for multitrack editing and surround sound.  There are a variety of new features in the update, but nothing totally revolutionary.

AJA has a few new things to show.  The Kona 3G now supports outputting 3G SDI signal on all four ports at once, allowing preview of 4K media at full resolution, provided that you have a 4K display available.  They have updated their frame convertor with the FS2, adding support for HDMI and 3G SDI.  I am still trying to figure out if their implementation of 3G includes support for 2K over SDI, which could make it a useful tool in DCI theater systems.  They also showed off a new piece of hardware under development that they are calling Riker.  It is an external box connnected via 8x PCIe, that could support stereoscopic 4K at some point in the future.

Blackmagic has a variety of new products on display.  The Hyperdeck Shuttle allows uncompressed recording of SDI or HDMI to a SATA based SSD.  At $345 it is a bargain, until you count in the price of an SSD that supports uncompressed HD capture.  They will also have a rack mount version with two drive slots called the Hyperdeck Studio.  Among other things, they have a new Decklink 4K I/O card with 4 channels of SDI for $600, and some more live video switching products as a result of their acquisition of ATEM last year.  A stripped down version of DaVinci Resolve was announced, that will be available as a free download, which should further bring advanced color correction to the masses.

Sony has a variety of new products available.  Their OLED based displays look amazing, but are still quite expensive.  With the lack of HDCam-SR tapes available from Japan, Sony’s new SRMaster series of solid-state media products are probably going to get a big external boost into the market.  The new SRMaster devices replace tapes with 1TB SRMemory modules that use the same MPEG4 codec as HDCam-SR tapes, but with many benefits, including direct access to the compressed file format, and faster transfer options.  In the camera world, the F65 is Sony’s first 4K camcorder, writing 16bit 4K files to SRMemory, captured from what Sony describes as an 8K CMOS sensor.  On a more practical front, the PMW-F3 looks like a great camera for many applications.  While I don’t like the formfactor, the large single-sensor CMOS should produce an image similar to the look and feel that DSLRs have made popular.  That fact that it can output 4:4:4 RGB over the dual SDI outputs on the back is an impressize option.  Sony also has a small stereoscopic 3D camera coming out, that records to the same MVC format that 3D BluRays use.  There will also be an update released for Vegas 10 that will allow encoding of 3D BluRays, and that feature alone could make it worth purchasing, if you expect to need that capability anytime soon.

Convergent Design has a new recorder on display, the Gemini 444, which records uncompressed SDI at 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 to SSD drives.  I am still a bigger fan of their original MPEG2 based NanoFlash devices, since that is a more efficient use of space.  On the other hand, the dual link recording option is nice for stereoscopic 3D work, or VFX plates and greenscreen shots, especially if you have a new PMW-F3 with full RGB SDI output.

There are a variety of video I/O devices on display that use the new Thunderbolt connectivity technology, but they are all probably a ways off from being released as finished products.  They will be faster than USB3, but besides the daisy chain option, I see no immediate advantage over ExpressCard based I/O products.  AJA, Blackmagic, and Matrox all had their own flavor of external device hooked up to new Macbook Pro  laptops under glass.  Combining these devices with Thunderbolt based storage solutions will greatly enhance the expandability of laptop systems, especially for onset media management and review work.

In the edit bay, stereoscopic content can be output from a workstation in a number of forms.  AJA and NVidia can output separate SDI streams for each eye, using the same display interface that would be used onset.  Combining the left and right view into a single stream allows it to be played out a single SDI port or even standard DVI on a GPU to a passive 3D display.  Those specific options will depend on what software you are using, and need to match your display requirements.  Outputting 120hz from a dedicated HDMI 1.4 port requires a newer GPU and specific application support, but greatly simplifies the hardware setup.  I am sure there will be a whole variety of new options announced at NAB next month, and as new hardware and software tools are developed, the preview options become cheaper to setup and easier to use.

Shutter glasses can be used with displays that have high refresh rates, to filter alternating frames from one eye or the other.  A 120hz display can provide 60 frames to each eye, which is enough to create smooth motion and make the blinking shutter imperceivable.  The disadvantage is that each viewer requires a pair of expensive active shutter glasses, which all require charged batteries or some other source of power.

Polarization has been used in many different variations of 3D display solution.  The most straightforward is to use dual projectors, each projecting onto the same silver matte screen, with opposite polarizing filters in front of the lenses.  Complementary filters are used in cheap passive 3D glasses that each viewer wears, filtering out light from one projector or the other, from each eye.  One issue with this method is that perfectly aligning two projectors on a large screen can be very challenging.  To solve this, RealD took this process a step further, and created a polarizer for a single projector that alternates the polarization angle at the same rate that shutter glasses usually blink.  The result is that the “active” part of the filtering for a 120hz projection is done once, and each viewer can use cheap passive 3D glasses to separate the views for each eye, while experiencing the full resolution results offered by shutter glasses.

Polarization can also be used within passive 3D LCD displays, but currently with these solutions, any pixel is permanently polarized either right or left.  As long as the image sent to the screen conforms to the pattern, usually horizontal interlaced, it can send imagery from the correct angle to each individual pixel.  This requires a 1:1 image to pixel ratio, in order to ensure that the display places pixels from the correct angle in the correct locations.  The disadvantage is that usually half of the image resolution to each eye is lost to the filtering process.  Displays that have this type of built in polarization can be viewed with cheaper passive 3D glasses.  In my opinion, any passive 3D is also easier on the viewer’s eyes, especially over periods of extended use, since there is no alternating flicker.

The cheapest, but lowest quality option for viewing stereoscopic depth information on regular displays, involves using color information to separate the images for each eye.  This is called anaglyphic processing, and the benefit is that nearly any standard full color display device can be used, but it comes at the cost of most or all of the original color information being discarded.  Anaglyphic video can either be generated on the fly during playback from two separate streams, or rendered out into a single stream to be edited, usually as an offline version.  Viewing anaglyphic imagery, or even just wearing anaglyphic glasses for any significant period of time is usually not comfortable.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are certain displays available that use lenticular filters to isolate the separate views, and focus them on each eye.  This is similar to the process used to create depth and motion effects on static 2D surfaces, called lenticular printing, but using this method for video requires the underlying display to be extremely high resolution.  With stereoscopic source, this results in certain areas where the effect is null or reversed, and requires the viewer to be in just the right spot for maximum effectiveness.

The next step to solve that issue is to replace the alternating left and right views projected from the lenticular screen, with a series of progressively different views.  That way any viewing angle within reason can be accommodated for, without gaps where the illusion breaks down.  Instead of recording every variation of viewing angle, these perspectives are usually generated on the fly from a single recorded perspective, usually with the help of a Z-depth map.  The Z-depth channel is like an alpha channel, but instead of storing values of transparency info, it records how far an object on screen is from the camera.  This information can either be captured at record time with specialized hardware, or be generated from an image analysis process, with a bit of interpolation.

At the end of the day, each option has certain pros and cons, and multiple display types could be used at different stages of a single project.  As long as you have both full streams of data available, you can adapt your content for any display.  Once you render it into a display specific format, like interlaced or anaglyphic, certain image content may be lost that cannot be recovered for use on other  display types, without going back to your original source.  Because of this, it is highly preferable to have a system that allows you to display stereoscopic content in 3D without having to pre-render into a dedicated display format.  As computers become more powerful, and better software is developed, that capability is becoming much more common, greatly aiding the stereoscopic post process.

The first step in the process is to generate and record two separate images of similar but different perspectives.  This is usually solved with specialized hardware, by using rigs to mount two narrow cameras in parallel, or using a beam splitter to record two similar perspectives with larger cameras.  Recently there have also been cameras released that have multiple lenses as an all-in-one option.  Ideally both the separation between the lenses and the angle at which they converge should be easily controllable, especially for live recording, since those two values have a significant impact on the final stereoscopic effect.  The other acquisition option for content generation, is to render two separate perspectives of a computer generated 3D animation.  This requires no special hardware, just a few changes to the software and settings, plus a doubling of render time and storage  space.

Depending on the acquisition approach, there are a number of extra steps in the post process.  Both angles must be matched together, synced down to the frame, and usually muxed in some fashion.  Eventually they need to be aligned, the convergence needs to be set, and there may be a color shift from the beam splitter that needs to be compensated for.  Any visual effects will be much more challenging as well.

Finally there is the issue of displaying separate images to each eye from the viewers perspective.  This can be achieved with separate miniature screens for each eye, or more frequently, by finding some way to filter out the opposing view from each eye, from the combined image.  This can be done with color filters, polarization, alternating shutters, or lenticular screens, to control the image that each eye sees.  Ideally there need to be ways for the stereoscopic effect to be previewed immediately on set, examined during the post process in the edit rooms, and delivered to the final target audience.  This makes display solutions the first logical aspect to be examined, even before camera options.  The basic ideas behind many of these viewing options will be discussed in the next post.  Following that, we will examine some of the other practical ramifications imposed on the post-production process by stereoscopic projects.