Working with 3D – Anybody doing this yet?

[Joey Burnham]

ARGH. 1080i 59.94 for all the nit-pickers. 🙂
Joey

[Russell Lasson]

[Joey Burnham] “is anybody working in 3D these days?”

We are.

[Joey Burnham] ” I’m talking 3D for cinema”

We are.

[Joey Burnham] “broadcast”

Not yet.

[Joey Burnham] “How they get comped for Blu-ray or cinema I’m in the dark on.”

For Blu-ray the dual streams are encoded to MVC (Multi-view codec or something like that). It compresses one eye as the master, then bases the other eye’s compression off the master eye. Makes it small and able to play back in 2D or 3D from the same file.

For cinema, the streams are encoded into a DCP in 3D.

For delivery, it’s pretty straight forward. It’s the acquisition and mastering that gets tricky.

Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net

[Joey Burnham]

Thanks for the speedy reply. Good to know there’s a fellow cow dealing with this.
More questions to come tomorrow.
Joey

[Joey Burnham]

Alrighty, here goes.

Editing:
If I get provided left and right eye streams, is it safe to say that I can edit with them linked in FCP and just output a tape/pass for each eye? That part seems simple enough. I’m not in front of my machine right now, but I figure I can just link 2 video layers like I can stereo audio channels. I think if not then maybe I can do it via multicam or something like that.

Creating 3D:
Let’s say I need to create my own 3D content. Not extrusions or anything, but just Z-displacement like you see on the green frames for 3D trailers. Basically separating the text from the background in 3D space that’s only visible when you are wearing 3D glasses.

Thanks all. I know this is just a shot in the dark but it can’t hurt to ask. Let me know if you need me to describe this in more detail.

Best,
Joey

[Andrew Rendell]

I haven’t done any 3d yet, but I’ve been to a 3d seminar by Sky (I haven’t been impressed by much 3d film yet, beyond the initial wow factor, and I think we’re going to have to reassess how we cut for pacing, but football is brilliant in 3d!).

They’re doing it by combining the left & right feeds into one 3D HDCAM-SR tape, cutting on FCP and/or Avid with a stereo tv in the suite, then taking that cut into their online system and doing all the grading, convergence, etc, in there (not in FCP/Avid).

[Joey Burnham]

Thanks All.
I’ve been doing some research and talking with our engineer. AJA’s new Kona3G helps with this process as well as Neo3D from Cineform. You need plugins for both FCP and AE, but apparently once you have everything in place it works pretty well. That said, we are still going to wait until FCP goes 64-bit to implement any of this.
Best,
Joey