Pico the Hits

Salma Shaw & Roger Payano in Synetic Theater's "Othello"

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 everyone in the audience knew what his character was thinking, despite the fact that he did not utter a single word during the course of the play.  Neither did any of his fellow actors.

Synetic Theater won two Helen Hayes awards this year for earlier productions.  Prior to Othello this season they presented critically acclaimed versions of such other plays as Antony and Cleopatra and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, also without any spoken words.  But Othello was different.  Audience members could literally see what Othello was thinking, thanks to a video-based technological breakthrough.

Theater has long used technology.  More than two thousand years ago, the ancient Roman poet we call Horace warned writers not to use a “deus ex machina” (a god from a machine) to resolve plots.  He was referring to a practice in ancient Greek theater, at least 500 years older still, of having a crane drop an actor playing god onto the stage to use supernatural powers to take care of problems.

Nicola Sabbatini's 1638 lighting dimmer

The exact dates when the spotlight and the lighting dimmer were invented might never be known, but in 1638 Nicola Sabbatini’s Pratica di fabricar scene e macchine ne‘ teatri, a theatrical-technology instruction book, offered plans for both, not to mention designs for set-changing, flying, and storm- and flame-simulating machinery.  Sweden’s Drottningholms Slottsteater, opened in 1766, still uses the original 18th-century, human-powered stage machinery (and lighting control), which can effect a complete set change — wings, flies, etc. — in a matter of seconds.  You can see it in operation here: http://dtm.se/visningar/bakom_kulisserna.asp

One of Zahn's moving-slide projectors

The use of motion pictures on a screen in theatrical presentations is much older than Sabbatini’s book.  Documentation exists that an 11-piece shadow puppet was used to entertain Emperor Wu of China more than 2000 years ago.  Johann Zahn’s Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium, first published in 1685, showed how to project moving images using mechanical slides in what are today called “magic lantern” or “stereopticon” projectors.  Below is a moving image from one form of motion slide, as shown on the Dutch magic-lantern site de Luikerwaal: http://www.luikerwaal.com/newframe_uk.htm?/boeken_uk.htm

Below this paragraph is another motion picture, said to be the oldest existing long sequence intended to be projected in a theater (older sequences shot by Eadweard Muybridge exist, and some of those were intended to be projected, but they comprise only a few frames each, arranged around a disk).  The motion sequence below was shot by Louis Le Prince in Leeds, England, in 1888.

Was Le Prince trying to invent what we today call “movies”?  There’s no question that he wanted to be able to capture and project live-action sequences, and some say he succeeded before Edison.  But it’s not clear that he intended audiences to enter an auditorium simply to watch his movies.  At least one contemporary document suggests that his invention was intended to provide motion-picture backdrops for live performances.  In 1896, when the Rosabel Morrison Company performed the opera Carmen at the Lyceum Theater in Elizabeth, New Jersey in front of a projected Eidoloscope movie sequence of a bullfight, Le Prince’s goal might have been achieved.

Moving-image projection in the service of theatrical drama has certainly advanced over the past century or so.  When a new production of La Damnation de Faust opened at the Metropolitan Opera in 2008, it utilized multiple high-definition projectors, fed computer graphics generated live based on input from motion sensing cameras, to provide images that interact with the human performances on the stage.  Thus, a character on stage could pole a gondola, the water rippling in its wake — except for the fact that there was no water, let alone wake and ripples; it was all projected computer graphics.

There are advanced projection systems today that can track moving screens across a stage and not only project on them but also pre-distort the images according to a varying screen angle.  Some can even project on non-flat surfaces.  Here’s one example: http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=LHLqATsdWQo&feature=related

Unfortunately, the more advanced the systems, the less they seem to be appropriate in live drama.  As Avatar showed, it’s possible to do anything in a movie, from atrophying an actor’s legs to creating an entire non-terrestrial civilization.  And movie tickets, despite recent price hikes, usually cost less than those of live theater.  Might computer-graphics-based images, like amplified voices, make live theater seem more like movies, and, if so, would it be worth paying more than a movie-ticket price to see it?

The wordless Synetic Theater performances don’t use amplified voices, of course.  And the company’s foray into video projection, though it involved such advanced concepts as tracking moving screens and presenting images on irregular surfaces, was remarkably live and human.

Othello literally grapples with projected jealousy in Synetic Theater's production (photo by Graeme B. Shaw)

There were no whirring projector fans.  There was no projection booth.  No illuminated dust motes made the projection beams visible.  At times the images seemed to come directly from Othello’s mind.

In fact, the images came from palm-sized, battery-operated, handheld 3M MPro150 pico-projectors, small enough to be hidden in costumes when not used and barely visible even when they were.  One is shown below on a small tripod.

Introduced for the business-presentation market, pico projectors might not be ideal for that purpose.  With just 15-lumen output, the MPro150 would provide 8 nits of luminance (think brightness) on a plain white screen just 2 feet high.  For comparison, a Panasonic TH-50VX100U 50-inch plasma display, with roughly the same size picture, would offer 1200 nits, 150 times more.  A smaller projected picture would be brighter, but then the business presentation might as well be shown on a laptop screen, also brighter.

On a dark stage, however, the images from the pico projectors in Synetic Theater’s production of Othello seemed perfect.  Tracking moving screens was no problem; the actors using the projectors just turned their wrists.  And the human foibles of such tracking seemed to keep the images human, too.  Similarly, projecting hands on the irregular surface of the waist of a character’s dress required only that the actor doing the projecting aim that way.

Perhaps Othello was the first example of what will be an age of on-stage pico projection.  Either way, it was a superb production.

Tags: 3M, deus ex machina, Drottningholms Slottsteater, Eadweard Muybridge, Eidoloscope, Johann Zahn, Kennedy Center, Louis Le Prince, Metropolitan Opera, MPro150, Nicola Sabbatini, Othello, Panasonic, pico projector, Roger Payano, Synetic Theater

The Elephant in the Room: 3D at NAB 2010

implicit 3D eyewear range at NAB 2010

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 say that 3D technologies could be found at every booth on the show floor.  But it was probably the case that there was 3D in at least every aisle.  There was so much 3D that it tended to diminish all other news.

In acquisition technology, for example, LED lighting was near ubiquitous, with focusable instruments, such as the Litepanels Sola, sometimes painfully bright.  Panasonic and Sony both showed models of future inexpensive video cameras with large-format imagers, and Aaton joined the range of those offering “digital magazines” for film cameras.  In small formats, GoPro’s Hero is a complete HD camcorder weighing just three ounces.

In storage technology, Cache-A, For-A, IBM, and Sony all showed in new offerings that tape is not dead.  Meanwhile, iVDR removable-hard-drive storage could be seen in several new products, and Canon introduced new camcorders based on Compact Flash cards.

Cinedeck looks like a viewfinder but includes built-in storage and editing capability. NextoDI’s NVS 2525 can copy either P2 or SxS cards.

In processing, Dan Carew’s Indie 2.0 blog said of Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 7.0, “this best-in-class color correction software was formerly US$250,000 (for software and hardware) and is now available in a Mac software only verions for US$995.” http://indie2zero.com/2010/04/16/what-i-liked-and-saw-at-nab-2010/ Immersive Media’s 11-camera spherical views can now be stitched and streamed live.  NewTek’s TriCaster TCXD850 can deal with 22 inputs and virtual sets.  And, though you might not yet be able to figure out why you’d want this capability, Snell’s Kahuna 360 production switcher can deal with up to 16 shows at once.

In wireless distribution, there was VµbIQ’s 60 GHz uncompressed transmitter on a chip and Streambox’s Avenir for bonding up to four cellular modems to create a 20 Mbps channel.  In wired, there was Pleora’s EtherCast palm-sized bidirectional ASI-IP gateways.  And, in technologies that could be applied to either, there were Fraunhofer’s codec with a latency of just one macroblock line and a Harris-LG/Zenith proposal for expanding ATSC mobile transmission to full-channel use.

In presentation, there was a reference picture monitor from Dolby (seen in almost its final form at the HPA Tech Retreat).  Several booths had OLED monitors, from 7-inch at Sony to 15-inch at TVLogic.  Wohler’s Presto router has an LCD video display on each button.  And Ostendo’s CDM43 is a curved monitor with a 30:9 aspect ratio.

That barely scratches the surface of the non-3D news from NAB.  And then there was 3D.

Even All-Mobile Video’s Epic 3D production truck, parked in Sony’s exhibit, wore 3D glasses.  But it was the glasses on visitors to the truck that proved more instructive.

Sony provided RealD circularly polarized glasses to visitors for looking at everything from relatively small monitors to a giant outdoor-type LED display.  As soon as those visitors entered the control room of AMV’s Epic 3D truck and donned their glasses, however, they saw ghosting — crosstalk between the two eye views.  AMV staff were prepared for the shocked looks.  ”Sit down,” they said.  ”There’s a narrow vertical angle, and you have to be head-on to the monitors.”  Sure enough, that solved the problem — at least for those who could sit.

Another potential 3D problem was mentioned in the two-day 3D Digital Cinema Summit before the show opened.  If 3D is shot for a small screen and blown up to cinema size, it can cause eye divergence.  3ality’s camera rigs indicate when this might happen, but it happened anyway on at least one cinema-sized screen at NAB, leading to some audience queasiness.

Buzz Hays of the Sony 3D Technology Center says making 3D is easy, but making good 3D is hard.  There was a lot of 3D at NAB, including both easy and hard, good and bad.

It was hard to count the number of side-by-side and beam-splitter dual-camera rigs at the show, but, in addition to those, there were integrated (one-piece) 3D cameras and camcorders, in various stages of readiness, from 17 different brands, both on and off the show floor.  It seems that all of them were said to be “the first.”

Much could be learned about 3D at the two-day Digital Cinema Summit before the show opened.  It began with Sony’s Pete Lude showing that an ordinary 2D picture can seem 3D when viewed with just one eye, leading a later speaker (me) to quip that watching with an eye patch, therefore, is an inexpensive way to get 3DTV.

3ality’s Steve Schklair followed Lude with an on-screen, live demonstration-tutorial on the effects of different 3D rig settings: height, rotation, lens interaxial, convergence, etc.  He was followed by directors, stereographers, and trainers of 3D-convergence operators, among others.

Although 3D would seem to require more equipment (two cameras and lenses plus a stereo rig at each location) and more personnel (a convergence operator per camera in addition to a stereographer), there is seemingly one saving grace.  According to Schklair and others, 3D can get away with fewer cameras and less cutting than 2D.

The same thing was said of HD, however, in its early days.  Sure enough, when I worked on one show in 1989, we used just four HD cameras feeding the HD truck and twice as many non-HD cameras feeding the non-HD truck.  In the early days, it was common practice to do separate HD and SD productions.  Today, of course, one HD production feeds all, and it typically uses as many cameras and as rapid cutting as an SD show.

Atop a tower of Fujinon’s NAB booth, Pace showed something that recognizes the current economics of 3D.  With virtually no 3DTV audience, it’s hard to justify separate 3D productions, but, with such major players as ESPN, DirecTV, Discovery, and Sky involved in 3D, the elephant cannot be ignored, either.  So the Pace Shadow system places a 3D rig atop the long lens of a typical 2D sports camera.  Furthermore, it interconnects the controls (in a variety of selectable ways) so that the operator of the 2D camera need not be concerned about shooting 3D: one camera position, one operator, different 2D and 3D outputs.

Screen Subtitling came up with similarly clever solutions to the problem of 3D graphics.  Unless text is closer to the viewer (in 3D depth) than the portion of the image that it is obscuring, it can be uncomfortable to read.

Traditionally, subtitles are at the bottom of a screen, where 3D objects are closest to the viewer.  Raise the graphics to the top, and they might work in the screen plane.

Then there’s the issue of putting the graphics on the screen.  With left- and right-eye views, it might seem that two keying systems are required.  But with much 3D being distributed in a side-by-side format, a single keyer can place 3D graphics directly into the side-by-side feed.

copyright 2010 Inition | Niche | Pacific

There was much more 3D at the show, in every field of video technology (and, perhaps even audio).  In acquisition, for example, aside from integrated cameras, 3D mounts, and even individual cameras designed specifically for 3D (like Sony’s HDC-P1), there were also 3D lens adaptors, precision-matched lenses, precision lens controls, and even relay optics intended to allow wider cameras to be placed closer together, as in this picture shot by Eric Cheng of WetPixel.com: http://wetpixel.com/i.php/full/2010-nab-show-report-las-vegas/

At the other end of the 3D chain, there were both plasma and LCD autostereoscopic (no-glasses) displays using both lenticular and parallax-barrier technology, small OLED displays with active-shutter glasses and giant LED screens with passive circularly polarized glasses.  There were LCD and plasma screens (up to 152-inch at Panasonic) and DLP rear-projectors using active-shutter glasses, and both LCD and laser projection using passive polarized glasses.

There were dual-panel displays with beam splitters, and displays intended to be viewed through long strips of fixed polarized materials (to accommodate all viewers’ heights).  There were many anaglyph displays in the three-different primary-and-complement color combinations.  There were 3D viewfinders using glasses and others with displays for each eye.

Japan’s Burton showed a laser-plasma display that creates 3D images in mid-air.  Normally, they’ve viewed through laser-protection goggles, as in the image at the right at the top of this post.  But as a safety measure, they showed them instead inside an amber tube at NAB.

In storage, it seems that everyone who had anything that could record images had a version that could do so in 3D.  Even Convergent Design’s tiny Nano was available in a 3D version.  The Abekas Mira is an eight-channel digital production server — or it’s a four-channel 3D digital production server.  Want an uncompressed 3D field recorder?  Keisoku Giken’s UDR-D100 was just one such product at the show.

In processing, just about every form of editing and processing had a 3D version.  Monogram showed a touch-screen 3D “truck-in-a-box” production system.  Belgium’s Imec research lab even showed licensable technology for stereoscopic virtual cameras.

There was a range of equipment and services for converting 2D to 3D either in real time or not, automatically and with human assistance.  And there was a large range of processing equipment designed to fix 3D problems, such as camera rotation and height variation.

Sony’s MPE200 is one such device, with a U.S. list price of $38,000.  The MPES3D01/01 software to run it, however, is another $22,500.  With the least-expensive 3D camera at the show (Minoru 3D) retailing for under $60 at amazon.com, it might be said that 3D is cheap, but good 3D costs.

There was 3D test equipment from many manufacturers.  There was high-speed 3D (Antelope/Vision Research). There was 3D coax (Belden 1694D, complete with anaglyph color coding).  Ryerson University is doing eye-tracking research on what viewers look at in 3D and whether it’s different from HD and 4K.

So why was I wondering what year it was?  At NAB shows there have been many technologies shown that never went anywhere.  We still await voice-recognition production switchers, for example, and also voice-recognition captioning.  But those have generally been shown by only one company or a small number of exhibitors.

Digital video effects were among the fastest technologies to penetrate the industry.  First shown at NAB in 1973, they were commonly seen in homes by the end of the decade.

Then there was HDTV.  Its penetration after NAB introduction took much longer, even if dated only from 1989, when an entire exhibition hall was devoted to the subject (there were many earlier NAB displays).  Estimates vary, but U.S. household penetration of HDTV 21 years later seems to be in the vicinity of half.

At least HDTV did eventually penetrate U.S. households.  Visitors to NAB conventions in the early 1980s could see aisle after aisle of exhibits claiming compatibility with one or both competing standards for teletext.  One standard was being broadcast on CBS and NBC; the other on TBS.  There were professional and consumer equipment manufacturers and services offering support.  Based on the quantity and diversity of promotion at NAB, it was hard to imagine that teletext would not take off in the U.S.

So, will 3DTV emulate digital effects, HDTV, U.S. teletext, or none of the above?  Time will tell.

Panasonic 3D Camcorder: Show Us the Money

In the 3D-in-the-Home “supersession” at next week’s HPA Tech Retreat, one presentation is titled “Are You Nuts?”  I thought of that at today’s Panasonic pre-NAB press conference.

Panasonic's $9900 BT-3DL2550 monitor uses passive cross-polarized glasses

The Tiny AW-HS50 HD switcher includes a multiviewer

Let me emphasize from the outset that I was not thinking about Panasonic in the “nuts” category.  As best I could tell, no one from the company lied, which is my highest praise at press conferences.  No one avoided questions.  There was legitimate news (such as an inexpensive P2-to-USB adaptor, two tiny HD switchers, and a small HD pan-tilt-zoom camera optimized for IP networks).  I also think Panasonic builds good equipment.

No, the people I thought were nuts were some potential customers for something the company sort of unveiled at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), an integrated (one-piece) 3D camcorder (shown above) to be delivered this fall at a list price of $21,000.  Panasonic said it had received thousands of inquiries about the product, some seeking to buy it sight unseen.

It was those blind-faith customers that I think are nuts.  Here’s why (and also why I said Panasonic only “sort of” unveiled the product at CES):

The camcorder has twin zoom lenses.  What is their widest angle?  Their tightest?  Panasonic representatives at the meeting didn’t avoid the question; they said it hadn’t been determined yet.

The camcorder will be capable of some amount of stereoscopic convergence.  How much?  Again, it has not yet been decided.  Also undecided, for this one-person, compact camcorder, is whether or not there will be any mechanism to tie convergence to focus.

One Panasonic representative did point out that the spacing of the lens centers is smaller than that of an adult human’s pupils and will not be getting bigger.  Based on a rough measurement I made, it appears to be about 57 mm.  That puts an outer limit on the maximum diameter of the lenses, which, coupled with the fact that the system uses 1/4-inch-format image sensors, means it will not be the most sensitive camcorder on the market.

When a journalist at the press conference inquired about using the camcorder for cinema content, a Panasonic representative emphasized that it had those 1/4-inch-format image sensors.  He got high points from me for that answer.

So what is the intended market?  At $21,000, it seems priced too high for most consumers.  At CES DXG showed a pocket-sized $400 3D camcorder (shown here to the left) with a 3D viewfinder (something Panasonic’s AG-3DA1 lacks), albeit non-HD and with much smaller lens-center spacing.

In the professional, HD realm, 3D-One offers four 3D camcorder models, all with nominal adult-vision lens spacing, 3D viewfinders, larger image sensors, and specified lenses and convergence.  Their CP-20 is shown below.  I wrote about them here in September: http://schubincafe.com/blog/2009/09/walkin-in-a-camera-wonderland/

At the press conference, Panasonic indicated receiving inquiries ranging from dental to military applications, including sports.  But a 57-mm lens-center spacing doesn’t lend itself to long-distance 3D shooting in a sports venue.

So, who is really interested in buying what Panasonic says will be a made-to-order product?  At the press conference, the company announced a way to find out.  Starting today, they will accept orders for this device of unknown optical capabilities, but each order is to be accompanied by a non-refundable $1000 deposit.

Panasonic hopes to learn much from this first-generation product.  Maybe we all will.

Someone Will Be There Who Knows the Answer

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 – Berkeley.  So is one of the developers of Cablecam.  So is the CTO of Cable Television Laboratories.  So is a co-inventor of MP3.  So is the mysterious Mo Henry, whose credit has appeared in movies ranging from Apocalypse Now to Zombieland.

The list could go on and on.  Hundreds of top technical executives will be there. CTOs and VPs of Hollywood studios and television networks will be there.  So will the head of emerging technologies of the European Broadcasting Union.  So will the VP of standards of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and the director of engineering and standards of the Society of Motion-Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).  Where will they be?

It’s the 16th annual Hollywood Post Alliance Tech Retreat, February 16-19 at Rancho Las Palmas conference center in Rancho Mirage, California.  But every part of that title can convey a false impression.

HPA, for example, is not yet 16 years old, but the retreat is older.  When the organization that created it, the Association for Imaging Technology and Sound, went belly up, HPA’s founders thought the retreat was too important to die, so they took it over.  After 9/11, when other events went down in attendance, the retreat went up.  It has actually had to turn people away on occasion because it has sold out.

Similarly, “Hollywood” and “Post” are misleading.  The event is not (and has never been) in Hollywood.  Its participants come from all over the world, from New Zealand to Norway, and from Bombay to Buenos Aires.  If someone at the retreat is from NATO, that could be the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the National Association of Theater Owners (both have sent representatives, sometimes at the same retreat); similarly, there have been representatives from MPEG the Moving Picture Experts Group and MPEG the Motion Picture Editors Guild. More »

Walkin’ in a Camera Wonderland

MR THOMAS FAVELL'S COMPTOMETER FOR THE NEW TELESERVER

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 the convention center. If I’m hungry, some exhibitor will be providing food. Thirsty? Water, various forms of coffee, juices, beer, and wine flow freely. IBC even throws a party to which everyone is invited. But none of that is why I like it so much.

Americans tend to forget that we are not alone. Back in the days of RCA cameras, you needed to come to IBC to see those of the UK-based manufacturer Pye.

Today, we tend to think of NAB as an international show. Cameras are shown there by such Japanese manufacturers as Hitachi, JVC, Panasonic, Sony, and Toshiba. And Grass Valley’s cameras at NAB come from Europe. So why bother with IBC? More »