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post production feature


It’s been intriguing to watch the development path for 3D television. As quickly as it appeared on the scene, it captured the attention of seemingly every manufacturer in the industry. Its rise has been meteoric and all-inclusive, touching everything from the camera through to the transmission point in master control. Chris Lennon and Stan Moote, CTO Group at Harris Broadcast Communications, report.


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3D: a new dimension in facilities planning


bring their 3D channel visions to life, broadcast engineers need to think about their own 3D strategies. The reality is that management could come calling, and it is important to not take shortcuts now so you are prepared for changes to 3D production & distribution in the future. The first step is, of course, to


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understand a little about 3D on the visual side, whether doing a simple pass-through or adding some production. 3D is an illusion, and it clearly has drawbacks. A logo insertion could look great on one size set and completely fall apart on a smaller screen. How to account for this? The first point is ‘keep it simple’ - don’t try to be fancy, and don’t exaggerate the 3D illusion. In terms of setting up your facility to


handle 3D, you must distill the pertinent details from a very deep well. It all starts with one question: ‘How do I get on the air with 3D?’ It is entirely possible that there is gear in place, notably in the infrastructure, that can accommodate 3D signals as-is or with a simple upgrade. In other cases, some existing equipment may require replacement. The good news is that this can be done without breaking the bank or


new 3D channel launch can overwhelm even the most knowledgeable engineering staff based on the amount of detail. As larger cable networks


creating a technology dead-end. 3D- capable gear doubles as HD gear, so the risk factor is generally low if the decision is made to upgrade certain components to handle 3D. They will serve HD needs well, even if 3D plans don’t develop as expected.


3D workflow


As engineers, we want to ‘maintain the highest quality’. The cleanest and highest-quality approach to 3D television starts with true image preservation. Most broadcasters will opt to maintain full-resolution HD images for each eye through the production and air chain. A frame-compatible approach will


degrade the resolution by half in the case of side-by-side. Storing the images in this format for later conversion to another format, such as over-under, will potentially lower the resolution by half. The result is quarter- resolution images, which are not a pretty sight. The following overview will consider


deployments for full-resolution 3D broadcasts, focused on content and production, facility infrastructure and workflows, post-production, and external networking and distribution.


Production


Mobile content acquisition is crucial in remote and outside broadcast applications such as sports and live


event production. Camera developments, along with developments in fiber-optic systems, now support the transport of left and right images to the router as two distinct, full resolution pictures. The router presents the first


technical challenge in the chain. In a 1.5Gb/s infrastructure, a full resolution 3D environment requires two feeds for every source at the input and output. The router must treat L/R dual-link signals as a 3D pair and frame- accurately route them to dual-link destinations in single control transactions. A typical HD-capable router may not be large enough to accommodate 3D production due to this doubling of inputs and outputs. A 3Gb/s-capable router and


infrastructure ensures that full- resolution signals are transported on a single wire. This supports routing two


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