Production companies seek to make 3-D practical
Jul 9, 2010 3:35 PM, By Michael Grotticelli
AMV's new 3-D truck made its debut at the NAB convention in April as part of the Sony 3-D production exhibit, but it has yet to produce a live show.
Mobile production companies having to make the migration from an established video format to the latest technology in favor—aka "The next best thing"—have always struggled with the initially high incremental cost differential of deploying the technology and how to get clients to pay more for their services.
The quickly emerging advent of 3-D production has brought even more cause for uncertainty. There's certainly added cost, but also extra crew, training and the physical logistics of adding new camera positions to venues that are hesitant to give up premium seating to the requirements of 3-D crews.
"The cost of doing a 3-D production is rather high, even by early HD standards," said Eric Duke, president of All Mobile Video (AMV), which is building a 3-D truck called "Epic 3D" that will hit the road next month. He said the cost to his company and to clients could be two to three times more expensive than HD because of the manpower required.
"When we went from SD to HD, maybe we added one more person to the truck. With 3-D, we're adding one person per rig, plus a stereographer, plus a processing engineer," he said. "So you could be up to 10 people on top of the standard crew that is necessary to produce a standard HD event. And if we do a 2-D/3-D simulcast, we need a second production switcher and TD. That brings a whole new set of challenges. There's a big difference between 2-D and 3-D in terms of acquisition and making it all fit into an overall production."
NEP Broadcasting's new SS32 includes a dedicated 3-D convergence area, adding extra crew and cost to the production.
NEP Broadcasting, based in Pittsburgh, recently hit the road with two new mobile production trucks specifically equipped for live 3-D television. The veteran company retrofitted its existing SS31 truck and built the new SS32 specifically for 3-D production. Both production trucks will be used to produce 3-D events across the country, beginning with ESPN's 3D coverage of the "Home Run Derby," set to air July 11 on ESPN 3D.
SS32, NEP's newest mobile 3-D production truck, will serve as the primary mobile unit for ESPN's 3-D coverage. The truck is equipped with the latest 3-D imaging and camera rig technology from PACE. With a variety of PACE 3-D rigs that include Sony cameras and Fujinon lenses, EVS XT[2]+ servers, Sony SRW and Panasonic DVC Pro tape machines, a Sony MVS-8000X switcher and a Calrec Alpha audio board with BlueFin, SS32 can handle any size production.
The upgraded SS31 can serve any type of production and is equipped with the latest technology including a variety of 3-D rig options, EVS XT[2] servers, support for 10 tape machines, a Sony MVS-8000A switcher and a Calrec Q2 audio console.
Discussing the cost of building such trucks, George Hoover, chief technology officer for NEP Broadcasting, said that overall it's about 2.5 to 3 times more expensive than a typical 2-D HD truck. "For starters, a 3-D camera setup costs between 3-3.5 times that of a 2-D set up, requiring two cameras, two lenses, a 3-D rig and image processor," he said. "Then there's also double the number of record and replay channels on the video servers. So overall, 2.5 to 3 times is not way off using the technology of today for comparison."
Game Creek Video, in Hudson, NH, is also set to roll out two new 3-D trucks this year. The first to be finished will be called "Larkspur" and will support ESPN's "College Game Day" broadcasts while the second truck will be used by the YES network (home to MLB's New York Yankees). Both trucks will include Grass Valley Kayenne video production switchers, a full 3Gb/s infrastructure and will be capable of a 3Gb/s, 1080p production by the spring of 2011.
Pat Sullivan, president of Game Creek, said the transition from HD to 3-D was not that much more challenging than the migration from SD to HD video signals. There is, however, a big learning curve that needs to occur.
"With the transition from SD to HD, no equipment that passed a video signal in SD could be used for HD," he said. "We also made the decision not to use analog audio consoles in our HD trucks. Therefore, our SD units became virtually obsolete once the majority of our productions were being done in HD.
"We have done two 3-D productions from HD units built in 2004 and 2005 respectively," he said. "The challenge in 3-D is all in the camera rigging systems and related signal processing for 3-D. Once those are simplified and made more compact, 3-D production will be significantly less complicated. And that's happening as we speak."
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