Can you fix it in post?
The simple answer is: Yes.
Consider Avatar.  Not only was an entire world created and populated in computers, but even a human actor’s legs were atrophied in post.  So, yes, anything can be fixed in post — given enough time and money.  In the worst case, artists would simply “paint” photorealistic [...]

The Society of Motion-Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) just completed an International Conference on Stereoscopic 3D for Media and Entertainment, what it calls “the only scientific gathering focused exclusively on 3D.”  Like many SMPTE conferences, it gazed into the future, with one presentation introducing “the need for additional image processing to get pixel-level geometry matching,” [...]

Roger Payano has a BS in mechanical engineering and an MS in industrial engineering and has worked in the defense industry, but when he was applauded recently at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. it had nothing to do with his engineering prowess.  He played the title role in the Synetic Theater production of Othello, and [...]

A funny thing happened to me at the Digital Cinema Forum this year.  There was a 3ality tutorial on the basics of shooting 3D.  When they demonstrated bad stuff, it looked bad to me.  When they demonstrated good stuff, it looked good.  But one time when they demonstrated something that was supposed to look less [...]

As I roamed the exhibits at the NAB show this month, I kept wondering what other year it seemed most like.  And I was not alone.
There were plenty of important issues covered at the show, from citizen journalism to internet-connected TV.  And then there was the elephant in the room.
It would be a lie to [...]

There is definitely plenty that can be done to improve lip sync.  Making it perfect, however, might not be possible.
Perhaps it would be best to start with a definition.  Lip sync is the synchronization of the sounds emerging from moving lips with the images of those moving lips.  No moving images, no lip-sync issues, per [...]

3DTV suggests that the three Ds are the dimensions of height, width, and depth.  But there are three other linear dimensions that might be worth considering: pupillary distance, viewing distance, and screen size.
Here’s a generic diagram of binocular vision, looking down.  The observer’s eyes are at either end of the short base of the triangle. [...]

“HDTV is ideally viewed at a distance of roughly three times the picture height.”  That’s the sort of statement heard frequently — as recently as at last week’s HPA Tech Retreat.  And there seems to be a basis for it.

According to the eye chart commonly used to determine visual acuity, 20/20 vision can just identify [...]

We’ve all heard about 3D glasses.  There are so many varieties that Rainbow Symphony offers so-called “Ultimate 3D Glasses” (shown here).  They work with many, but by no means all, forms of 3D.  Here’s a link to their site: http://www.rainbowsymphony.com/ultimate-3d-glasses.html
But, since January 11, I’ve been writing about 2D glasses, rather than 3D.  I’ve decided to [...]

It has been a heck of a month for 3D announcements.  Comcast carried The Final Destination in 3D on the day of its DVD release. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) seemed all about 3D.  The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) issued a report on 3D TV.  The program recently posted for next month’s Hollywood Post Alliance [...]

The Oversight Executive for Motion Intelligence of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence is scheduled to be in the southern California desert next month.  So are the chief technology officers (CTOs) of both Panasonic and Sony.  So is the head of the Visual Space Perception Laboratory at the University of California [...]

What I’d like to say is that edges don’t really exist.  And the point I’m trying to make affects everything from camera resolution to audio distortion to data transmission.  But I get in trouble when I make sweeping statements like that.
My desired edge statement is something like Xeno’s most-famous paradox.  If I throw a rock [...]

Most people don’t live in movie theaters.  That could be a problem for 3-D TV.
It wouldn’t be the first time that TV offered an experience different from that of a cinema auditorium.  In 1961, NBC Saturday Night at the Movies began with the 1953 movie How to Marry a Millionaire, shot in an aspect ratio [...]

Take away a camera’s mount, viewfinder, electronics, optical system (including lens), and case, and what’s left? It’s not “nothing;” it’s a hole. Holes treat light very differently from the way nothing treats light, and the image business is very much involved with light. One of the key effects of holes on light is diffraction.
Imagine a small [...]

If you want to see products that don’t appear in U.S. trade-press magazines, you need to go beyond NAB, SMPTE, and InfoCOMM. You need to go to the International Broadcasting Convention.

IBC is my favorite trade show. I can leave work, catch an evening flight to Amsterdam, and take a train directly from the airport to [...]

If you are looking at the above picture on a nominally sized screen at a nominal viewing distance, you probably see an angry man on the left.  What’s an “angry man”?  Me, when I think about technical descriptions of HDTV.
Think about it.  Maybe you hear HDTV described as being 1080i or 720p.  Maybe it’s 1920 [...]

Electronic slow motion was invented for sports video. Tapeless camcorders were created for TV news. Pornography made streaming video successful.  But something else that seems to drive media-technology innovation is opera.  Really.  Opera.
The European Digital Cinema Forum’s 2008 EDCF Guide to Alternative Content for Digital Cinema begins with a chapter on opera because opera happens [...]

Based on the basic questions who, when, where, how, and why, HDTV was invented by NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation), first shown to the public in 1969 at NHK’s Science & Technical Research Laboratory, initially achieved by using three image tubes to create the picture, and developed because, with real estate at [...]

Like the earliest movies, early TV was silent.  And the late, great television director Kirk Browning drove an ambulance during World War II.  Believe it or not, this post is about 3-D TV.
Sound seems inseparable from video today, but ’twasn’t ever thus.  Writing in the Proceedings of the IRE [the Institute of Radio Engineers] late [...]

Sports video began a long time ago