Move over flat images, TV to assume 3D avatar

LONDON - Soccer fans watch with bated breath as a penalty striker carefully sets the ball right, just before the kick. Like a cannon ball, the leather sails over and past the heads of the spectators, who are completely awestruck.

These fans are not sitting in the stadium, but rather in front of a 3D TV, away from the hustle and bustle of FIFA World Cup football.

Experts from the film industry, academia and research have joined hands in the consortium “PRIME: Production and Projection - Techniques for Immersive Media,” to make the transition to the third dimension for cinema and TV this summer.

Blockbusters like James Cameron’s “Avatar”, Pixar’s “Ice Age” and “Dawn of the Dinosaurs” have raked in billions of dollars at the global box office. And now, the time for 3D movies for TV has also come.

Significantly, a few games of FIFA World Cup football have already been captured in 3-D. Yet, before this technology becomes the standard equipment for the movie screen and the TV, a few questions still require some clarification.

For instance, how can the recording process and post-processing be optimised, and the costs be reduced?

Indeed, Cameron’s science fiction extravaganza gobbled down 250 million dollars in the making, and required four years of computer work.

PRIME is exploring and developing business models and techniques for cinema, TV and gaming.

Three-D films pose tougher challenges than their 2-D counterparts, since two images are always needed in order to create a spatial depiction. For this reason, at least two cameras must be used to record the film, and a 3D screen is needed to display both images.

This process demands the utmost precision from the camera crew and post-production, because an individual film has to be produced for each eye.

“The most infinitesimal shift or tilt of the camera becomes visible on the screen, and can even make you feel nauseous,” explains Stephan Gick, group manager for digital camera systems of Fraunhofer Institutes for Integrated Circuits IIS.

For the movie theatre, a scene is shot with two synchronised MicroHDTV cameras from IIS. For this, the team around Stephan Gick propelled the technology forward in a way that allows reliable images to be digitally recorded for the right and the left eye, says a Fraunhofer Institutes (Berlin) release.

The “Genlock” process is designed to guarantee that the cameras record in synchronous imaging. Researchers are also working assiduously on one special highlight in the PRIME project - the 3D panorama.

The findings are being presented at the Fraunhofer’s CeBIT Booth in Hall 9, Booth B36, in Berlin.