The Coming Problems For Rolling Out 3D TV 232
holy_calamity writes "Now that Sony has announced it will sell 3D-capable televisions in 2010, people are thinking more seriously about the rocky road leading to mainstream 3D TV adoption. New Scientist says that not only do program makers lack the technology to make shows in 3D, but that little is known about the creative problems posed by shooting shows that make use of a whole new dimension, and what works for audiences. Engadget's own pundit focuses on the more predictable problems of format wars between competing 3D display technologies. Suddenly 2010 seems a little too soon."
Meh (Score:2, Informative)
Re:But...but... they need new technology! (Score:3, Informative)
Everyone's already upgraded to shiny-new HDTVs and premium HD services
According to Nielsen, only one-third of US homes had HDTVs in February 09. Most people don't care about HD, they'll just get one when their current TV breaks.
Re:console wars (Score:1, Informative)
The PS3 will have a firmware update mid-2010 that will enable you to play games in 3D on a 3D TV
Single-lens 3D (Score:3, Informative)
The article points out the most obvious way to do capture: use two independent cameras. However I recently found out about efforts to build "single-lens 3D" cameras. One example of a company working on this is I See 3D [isee3d.com] (disclosure: I'm indirectly a small-time investor). The idea is to use special high-speed shutters inside the camera (intersecting the optical path) to select left-biased or right-biased imaging. The advantage is that it is much cheaper, since you only need a single sequence of lenses, and only a single detector. This also means that it should be possible to rather cheaply build this into existing manufacturing lines. And a 3D camera of this sort could revert to 2D mode quite easily. A drawback of this type of system is that you can't alter the effective distance between the left- and right- viewing angles (which could be a big deal, depending on distance to subject and the zoom you want to use).
I think such technologies are in particular interesting because they have the chance of being integrated into consumer devices in the near term. I think 3D will really "take off" when people can actually capture 3D with their cell phones and digital cameras. Once people are able to make their own 3D home movies, they will be much more inclined to invest in 3D TVs, players, and so on.
Re:Don't do 3D crossfades. (Score:1, Informative)
Can someone translate whatever industry's jargon this is to geek English, please?
Re:Don't do 3D crossfades. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Don't do 3D crossfades. (Score:4, Informative)
Can someone translate whatever industry's jargon this is to geek English, please?
A "fade" is a technique in TV and film for changing from one scene to another. The simplest (and laziest) is a "jump cut", in which the image one your screen abruptly changes. Sometimes a fade is done by juxtaposing objects of similar geometry (i.e., pan the camera to a woman's circular parasol, cut to a shot of the sun in the same position on the screen, then pan down to the scene below.) Another option is to fade to black and then fade in the next scene (Tarantino has been doing that for his chapter breaks, and a lot of TV shows, such as LOST, like to fade from black coming out of commercials.)
A "crossfade" or "wipe", is when the image of the next scene is "wiped" over the previous one, like somebody sliding one painting in front of another. George Lucas used them A LOT when making the Star Wars movies.
The problem that Dr. Manhattan was talking about is, when you do a crossfade, you briefly have two images on the screen at once, which really messes up the stereoscopic 3D effect. For that reason, re-mastering a movie like Star Wars to be a 3D feature would be nearly impossible without major edits. If fact, you'd probably need to go back to the original raw footage and re-cut the entire movie.