LOS ANGELES—Few people saw the 3D
broadcast of the MTV Video Music Awards
on Sept. 6 from the Staples Center in Los
Angeles. In fact the experience was limited
to the hundreds of screaming fans in the
neighboring L.A. Live Theater where Trojan
Condoms had invited winners of an online
lottery to view the show as an “enhanced
experience” in 3D.
But the success of this Video Music
Awards (VMA) presentation may provide a
pathway out of the chicken-and-egg conundrum
of not having enough 3D content to
drive audience acceptance that is plaguing
attempts to fill 24/7 3DTV programming
schedules. The 2012 VMAs demonstrated
that the capability of live 2D-to-3D conversion
has risen to the extent that, although
not perfect, is now highly possible and can
produce a presentation that would be satisfactory
for many production applications.
POSITIVE PARALLAX
To put this landmark experience on the
3D screen, the original 1080i/60 HD production
from the Staples Center was given
extra dimension by simultaneous, unassisted,
2D-to-3D conversion through a Blackmagic
Design Teranex signal processor.
What the “Trojan Charged Intensified
VMA Viewing Party” audience saw
on the 3D screen, although admittedly
not the cinema-quality 3D of “Avatar,”
was thoroughly enjoyable. That’s partially
thanks to the fact the Teranex
processor created most of the 3D in
positive parallax, or receding into the
screen, thereby avoiding many of the
stereographic taboos of hyperconvergence,
edge violations, keystoning or
alignment errors.
Additionally, since the 2D-to-3D
conversion was from a single HD
stream, there were no sync/genlock
conflicts or risks of full reverse stereo
imagery that has plagued other similar
attempts. Only when the show’s host, Kevin
Hart, was introducing the opening acts
did a minor anomaly appear. MTV’s iconic
Moonman figure had been projected on the
screen at the rear of the stage in the Staples
Center behind Hart but when seen in 3D
in the L.A. Live theater it seemed to hover
somewhere in the air above him. Still, this
was the first time this technology had been
given a public airing in the United States
and, hey, it’s only rock and roll.
Blackmagic Design’s Teranex VC100 signal
processor had been previously used by
the Tennis Channel to convert the French
Open into 3D on Memorial Day weekend,
and both France’s Digital Factory (DF) and
Germany’s Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen
(ZDF) have been employing Teranex systems
to convert archival 2D material. But
the 2012 VMA’s marked its debut in the
states.
Jeff Jacobs, senior vice president and executive
in charge of production for the MTV
Music Group, was in charge of most of the
behind-the-scenes content production and
distribution during the whole VMA Week,
most prominently including producing the
3D screening in the L. A. Live theater.
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The VMAs were shown in 3D at the “Trojan Charged Intesified VMA Viewing Party held at the neighboring L.A. Live Theater. |
“The 2D-to-3D conversion of the production that was seen at the Streaming Party
in the L. A. Live theater was completely
non-obtrusive to the main show,” Jacobs
said. “Not one thing creative was changed
and not a single camera was re-positioned.
Nothing of the 3D screening impacted the
main show what so ever to created the 2Dto-
3D conversion. That’s the magic of the
Teranex technology.”
Positioning computer generated graphics
in Z-space can be one of the trickiest
aspects of 3D production. Most stereographers
feel they should not draw attention
to themselves by popping out of the screen
or become obscured by competing with
objects in the background. During the MTV
Video Music Awards, all the billboards and
lower thirds appeared right on the plane of
the screen as they ideally should.
“We had the option of taking a clean
feed [no graphics] from the production
control room and inserting our own 3D
graphics,” Jacobs explained. “But after seeing
how good the graphics looked after
the Teranex 2D-to-3D conversion we decided
to go with the dirty feed (graphics
included) and let the system position the
graphics based on its own algorithms.”
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One of the Teranex VC100 processors was used for the 2D-to-3D conversion, while another was employed to record 3D on a Sony SRW5800 videotape recorder for MTV’s archives. |
NEW TERANEX 3D PROCESSOR TO
COME
What is the magic inside this box? As
Blackmagic Design’s general manager of
Teranex systems, Ray Conkling, explained,
“Our Teranex 3D processor incorporates
advanced Teranex proprietary technology,
which includes two powerful video processing
engines. Each engine has a Single
Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) processing
array that enables
operations to occur on
thousands of pixels simultaneously,
along with a dedicated
image warping processor
that allows
for complex image
manipulation. This
design combination
of brute force SIMD
processing and complex
image warping
and image processing
algorithms, gives
us the ability to create
a number of applications.”
Although the Teranex VC100 signal
processors have been capable
of 2D-to-3D for a couple of years,
the specific algorithms used for the
VMA production will be incorporated into
Blackmagic Design’s new Teranex 3D Processor
system to be released later this year.
So the impact of this 2D-to-3D conversion
demonstration could open new horizons
for 3DTV delivery as long as the idealized
perfect does not become the enemy of
what is currently possible in 3D presentations.
Broadcasters can factor in that conversion
to 3D does not affect the original
master, so improved dimensionalizing processes
can always be applied later when
they become available.
“If more audiences fall in love with the
3D experience, more viewers will demand
it from their entertainment providers,” Jacobs
predicted. “We are still at the ‘show
and tell’ stage of 3D home entertainment.
The more viewers who can experience it
will determine how the broadcast industry
embraces it.”