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One to One Magazine

June/July 2008

3D: Extra Dimensions for Blu-ray Disc?

New technology is poised to make 3D the “new colour TV.” Joy Zaccaria examines the market and technological issues that need to be resolved in order to make 3D a compelling draw for consumers to buy content on Blu-ray.

Reports from broadcasting technology show NAB, held in Las Vegas earlier this year, were mostly centred on the buzz about stereoscopic 3D technology and aesthetics. Many sectors stand to benefit from the proliferation of 3D video. In addition to higher end post-production facilities that require training in 3D,display manufacturers,broadcast equipmentsuppliers,disc replicators and content companies will all have plenty of work with the introduction of the new dimension. “Let’s not forget the retailers,” says Jim Bottoms,co-managing director at UK-based Understanding & Solutions. “Retailers love new products and titles. It’s good for foot traffic.”

3D is infiltrating the mainstream consciousness in digital signage, advertisements and corporate and sporting events. It’s a natural progression for the shorter form projects that pack a punch – such as advertising – to build interest and familiarity in 3D so it is eventually a norm in the home. Bill Foster, senior technology consultantat Understanding & Solutions, describes a digital signage system for public places from Philips called 3D WOW that requires no glasses. It is designed to catch you as you walk by, not for presenting a two-hour movie. “People say it’s 10 years out for consumers,” said Foster. “So we’re going to be stuck wearing glasses in the living room.”

The very successful U2 3D, produced by Sassoon Film Design and 3ality, and distributed by National Geographic Cinema Ventures

Excitement is building, but issues such as standards for production and delivery, and finding a comfort zone for the eyes to watch 3D for a feature-length movie need to be resolved. At the same time, filmmakers are called on to re-examine how they approach a project in 3D. Another issue raised at NAB is the looming ‘train wreck’ if studios and theatre owners don’t come to a quick settlement over digital cinema fees. If the screens ready for 3D are not as prevalent as they should be in the theatres, there’s even more motivation for Hollywood studios to try to recoup through secondary sales – that is, Blu-ray.

The 3D buzz for the big screen means plenty of work for the home video market. Some see it as potentially the ‘killer app’ for Blu-ray.“In the short- to mid-term, Blu-ray would be the only way to access 3D content to view in the home,” says Bottoms.“ One wonders if Blu-ray’s strongest supporters had 3D in mind when they pushed so hard for it. Some of the 3D technologies involve about 1.5 times the data rate. The capacity of Blu-ray is definitely going to be a benefit.”

STUDIOS HAVE BEEN PUSHING

Studios have been pushing for digital cinema for a number of years but they haven’t been successful in deploying any large-scale initiative. “With 3D, studios would be able to jump-start the whole thing,” says Nicholas Routhier, Sensio president and CEO. “Studios are making the same bet on the consumer market. We’re in discussion with them for DVD and Blu-ray. They’ve made it clear that Blu-ray is their champion.”

Sensio is a small company based in Montreal that has been developing 3D technologies since 1999. “We’re building the bridges between Hollywood content and the Asian display manufacturers,” says Routhier. Sensio works with studios to encode their movies in Sensio formats. The company has 16 titles on the market, such as Spy Kids 3D Game Over from Disney, and they have rights to 40 titles.

As a technology company, Sensio brings content to the market, as well as working directly with 3D display manufacturers to integrate its decoding technology in their products. Working to bring the various factions together, Sensio is a founding member of the new 3D@Home Consortium, along with Samsung, Disney, Warner and 22 other big players. The mission of the non-profit alliance, headed by Chris Chinnock, president of Insight Media, is to promote the deployment of 3D in the home. “To speed the
commercialisation of 3D into homes worldwide and provide the best possible viewing experience by facilitating the development of standards, roadmaps and education for the entire 3D industry – from content, hardware and software providers to consumers,” is how the consortium describes it.

“We form working groups from studios, manufacturers and tech providers to discuss differentchallenges and how to come together to solve them,” says Routhier.

“In 2008,millions of TVs capable of showing stereoscopic 3D content will be purchased by consumers,” adds Chinnock. “The value of DLP, PDP and LCD TVs sold in 2008 that are capable of showing HD-quality, stereoscopic 3D content is expected to
exceed $2 billion, making this market large enough to attract the interest and attention of many players.”

A big partof the 3D at home equation is gaming. “Gaming enthusiasts won’t mind wearing the head gear,” says Bottoms at U&S. “It will considerably enhance the whole gaming experience. There will be more and more titles as part of the same franchise and the 3D needs to be maintained. “If you just played the Pirates of the Caribbean game in 3D, you wouldn’t want to watch the movie in 2D.”

Understanding & Solutions sees the studios as driving the push for 3D. “It’s considered by the theatre owners to be a means of keeping people going to the theatre,” says Bottoms. “Then the studios are saying, ‘Well, if we’re making these movies in 3D, we ought to be putting them out in 3D’. Particularly companies such as Disney and Fox and, to a lesser degree Universal – but they’re all involved in it.” Studios are aggressively looking at how quickly they can make more of their content, especially animated, in 3D and how quickly they can get that out on the market. Disney, DreamWorks and Pixar have all committed to 3D for every movie they make from now on.

Tim Sassoon is presidentand creative director of Sassoon Film Design in Santa Monica, California. He sees the studios as starting to dip their toes into 3D waters. “The pace is somewhat slower than many have hoped, both in conversion to digital theatres – which is what enables the current 3D projection technologies from Real-D and Dolby Laboratories – and for 3D release schedules to drive conversion,” he says. “Most of the near-term releases are fairly small films, including Walden Media’s much anticipated Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D.”

BUILDING A FOUNDATION OF FAMILIARITY

Building a foundation of familiarity with 3D starts with shorter-form projects and advertisements. “The acceptance of 3D in the public is related to the quality of the contents available already,” says Philippe Gerard, 3D movie director at 3Dlized in France. “Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Bestof Both Worlds Concert in Disney Digital 3D and National Geographic Cinema Ventures’ U2 3D have been very successful.” These successes usher in alternative content and a new way of seeing 3D in the movie theatre. “The market now is comparable to the way it was in the 1960s or 1970s with preshows before the big movie,” says Gerard. “Instead of starting with producing feature-length movies in 3D, we have a good position to produce content such as cultural and sporting events in 3D.” Live events with 3D presentations on display simultaneously are offering more exposure to the concept.

“We’re enabling the distribution of live 3D events inside the theatres,” says Routhier of Sensio. “The Metropolitan Opera in 3D for example is a huge success in theatres along with USC and WWE. Major groups want to do live 3D events in theatres. That’s where we getinvolved.” Sensio recently signed a deal with Access IT to distribute 3D content to theatres in North America.

Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus – leading the way for DVD success – and Spy Kids Game Over 3D from Disney, one of the Sensio titles

While 3D production is working through its kinks, there are many ways to produce a 3D movie, some causing more headaches and eye-strain than others. “We expect camera manufacturers such as Sony, Samsung or Grass Valley to provide a good solution
within the next year or so,” says Gerard. “For now we have a temporary solution.” The corporate video for Dassault Aviation that 3Dlized produced had a major constraint in the contract. 3Dlized would have had to pay a huge penalty if any of the viewers suffered serious headaches or other eye problems. “Because of that we were forced to create our own tools. At that time no tools were available to create the 3D Dassault was looking for. They wanted the plane to emerge from the screen at the real size, which means 26m on a 20m wide screen.”

In these exciting early days of the new technology, everyone is doing something different to achieve the same 3D goals. While the studios are pushing for 3D content, they are aware of the issues that accompany the progression. There are several methods of
displaying stereo images on current displays, which aren’t perfect, but do work in the here and now. “There’s not much point in waiting. Whatever your solution is now, you’ll be using something entirely different in two years, and different still in 10,” says Sassoon. “Audition the available technologies, and get your feet wet with whatever you feel is most practical now, while you have the marketing advantage of novelty. A decision to wait will be, in effect, a decision to stay out of the 3D market for many years.”

STUDIOS DON’T WANT DIFFERENT MANUFACTURERS

Studios don't want different manufacturers adopting different solutions. They are determined to standardise on the technology and on the solution adopted so that everything is interchangeable. “The content community is driving this as opposed to the hardware companies,” says Bottoms at U&S. “I get the strong impression that the content companies are saying: ‘We’re going to work with you from day one because we want to have a big say in standardisation here’.”

There are various systems for 3D presentation at home – some with glasses and some without. Foster from U&S estimates that 3D at home will be displayed using a simple system in the short term, meaning the glasses are shipped with the Blu-ray DVD. For the DVD of Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Bestof Both Worlds Concert in Disney Digital 3D, there will be a Blu-ray 3D format and glasses. “It will be a good indicator for the type of 3D they use and the type of glasses. Hannah Montana will be the experiment,” he says. Blu-ray 3D format will have to be standardised in order to work with a variety of displays at home.

Different manufacturers are presenting their own solutions for 3D display at home. According to Foster: “There is a Mitsubishi 3D TV that currently has active glasses. Each eye switches off in turn so you get left eye, right eye. Philips has something where you don’t need glasses.” Sensio’s Routhier mentions a rear-projection TV from Texas Instruments that requires a certain type of signal. “We feed that signal,” he says. “The DLP system uses shutter glasses. We have also integrated our technology inside a TV from SpectronIQ.”

Iconix Video, a developer of end-to-end stereoscopic 3D workflow solutions, captured stereoscopic footage of boxer Amir Khan
for a 3D film for Reebok. The film, entitled Have You Got What it Takes? may also be produced as a supporting feature in 3D theatres in the UK later this year, in addition to anaglyph web versions for download. The four-minute stereoscopic 3D film comes from UK-based 3D specialists The3DFirm.

Bruce Long is CEO of Iconix Video. As a filmmaker himself, he is trying to educate other mainstream filmmakers about the transition to 3D. “We’re mapping out a workflow for stereoscopic 3D that is not so different from 2D that it becomes cumbersome,” says Long. “We want to enhance what they’re doing with the second camera in the stereo approach.” The goal for Long is to bring 3D to the mainstream.

At3Dlized, Gerard sees the importance of writing the story with 3D in mind from the beginning. Because of the added stimuli from the 3D aspect, the storyblock should not be too fast, the rhythm should have a more relaxed pace, and there should be longer sequences. “You don’t want cross fade which can hurt your brain,” he stresses. “You can express a time lapse in a different way.”

‘Fitou’ has been a short feature in every French movie theatre to introduce 3D for a number of feature movies

3D direction is the next step for 3Dlized for a feature film or a documentary. “I’m consulting on long movies that we don’t do ourselves,” said Gerard. “For commercials we insist on implementing these directing directives. Everybody doing 3D now is
attuned to the fact that nobody wants to cause any discomfort to the audience. “If you go once to a 3D movie and leave with a headache, you won’t come back. Every producer is going to be aware of that.”

Gerard sees the importance of matching the advertisements to the movie for 3D pictures like Disney’s Meet The Robinsons or Beowulf. “For commercials, since it’s a short content, you can do very strong effects in 3D,” said Gerard. “That’s why we’re insisting on shooting commercials now in 3D for the big movies nextyear, like James Cameron’s Avatar.”

ONCE THE TECHNOLOGY EVOLVES

Once the technology evolves and it becomes an easy experience to watch a feature film in 3D, Foster at U&S believes there won’t be any other way of watching it, like colour TV. “We need to lose restrictions such as glasses,” he said. “You’ve got to be careful of rapid head movements. If you turn around to talk to the person next to you and then turn back, you have to readjust to the 3D image.”

Subtlety seems to be key. There’s a limit to how many times something can come out and nearly hit you in the face. “Like the early days of stereo sound when things pinged from left to right,” Foster adds. “They’ll getover that.”

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