KitPlus | Articles

3D to see at IBC 2010

IBC2010 marks the fourth year when the new wave of Stereoscopic 3D took hold at the show. That’s three years of time for development and implementation. While cinema is racing ahead, taking a good extra percentage of people at the door who pay a 3D premium price – television in Europe is only just beginning. Sky is the pioneer for the UK, going on...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2010

More than meets the eye

Synchronisation is not really a problem using two professional cameras. You just loop through your reference (black) to each and you are all done. In the old days, (well not that long ago), you had to worry about PAL SCH and accurate sync matching. Today, that complication does not matter because all digital inputs adjust for slight timing errors....

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2010

3D diaries -Fix it in post. Dont go there

The more I look into it the more scary 3D is. Researching for 3D Diaries shows there are so many pitfalls and traps that would be all too easy to fall into; enough to put people off the whole idea! The answer is simply to learn about the subject before seriously jumping in with both feet. Clearly it adds a whole new layer to all parts of the scene-...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2010

3D Diaries Part 3 Mastering 3D

The 3D Masters conference was full of optimism, and caution, for the future of stereoscopic 3D. The one-day event was a near sell-out with about 250 attendees filling most of those sumptuous theatre seats at BAFTA. Despite the comfort, warmth, darkened room and good lunch, your correspondent managed to keep wide-awake to absorb the ceaseless torren...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

Eye to Eye: Video monitoring and displays

Given a decent stereo audio source and a pair of headphones, it is quite easy to imagine that you are actually attending a live performance. Not so with video; human eyes are much more demanding. Fortunately picture display technology is developing very quickly and along many different routes. OLEDsLED-backlit LCDs were about the best screens avail...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

A conversation with Peter Harman, Vinten Product Manager

Vinten is celebrating its centenary in 2010. What were the origins of the business?William Vinten was an engineer with a passion for quality. He set himself in business to repair friends’ bicycles at the age of 13, did a full apprenticeship in a machine shop, and worked for Frederick Lamplough, the steam car pioneer. But it was seeing his first mov...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

NAB2010 review

Sometimes NAB can be very predictable. For me NAB 2010, or 2010 NAB SHOW as its organisers call it, was not one of those shows. The mail that arrived at my inbox on 5 April from NAB Housing, saying there were hotel room bargains still to be had, lead me to think attendance would be well down. This was certainly not like the old days when rooms were...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Eye to Eye: Getting a grip

Getting a gripCameras and camcorders are shrinking at such a rapid rate that a lot of today's established support devices are looking completely out of scale. In some aisles of the NAB 2010 Central Hall, visitors were at perpetual risk of colliding with excited demonstrators nipping hither and yon with hand-held stabilisers for DSLRs. Most were onl...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Why do poorly composed 3D stereoscopic images give headac...

The brain is used to being able to “fuse” the two separate views of the world seen from each eye into a 3D perceived scene. However we have a closed-loop system and the eye muscles constantly pull convergence and focus depending on the region of interest. When presented with two separate image streams originating from the left and right camera syst...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

3D Diaries Part 1

Believe it!Welcome to 3D Diaries, TV-Bay’s own monthly column dedicated to 3D. Each month will feature an aspect of the 3D chain from scene to screen – all areas are affected in some way or another, so there’s plenty to talk about! But this would be meaningless if you are not a 3D believer, so this month I’ve shown why 3D is now here to stay. At NA...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

2020 television

Television has proved the most popular and efficient form of human communication since the evolution of speech and the development of the written word. The industry has come a long way in a short time and still has a huge future, whatever the delivery route or the receiving platform. My intention here is to outline the key factors influencing the d...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2010

3D home viewing

It seems the whole world is excited about the return of 3D to cinemas. Older sceptics said it wouldn’t last as it used to give them a headache. Sure, the old celluloid-based 3D delivery system had real problems and the production chain was slow and very expensive. This time is different, with rock-steady digital images in cinemas ensuring that the...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2010

Eye to Eye: Whats even newer in test and measurement 2010

A year is a long time in broadcast test & measurement, which is just as well because that is when this column previously focused on it. Given the current push to establish 3D as a permanent feature of the broadcast landscape, one might reasonably expect T&M kit designers to be heading along the same road. Hamlet and Omnitek certainly are but it see...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2010

Stereoscopic production and transmission

If ever there was a technology that has taken it’s time to mature, it is that of stereoscopic (3D) production and transmission. It is well documented that the mechanics behind the technology has been around almost since the inception of the moving picture itself and in fact stereoscopic stills technology was developed in the 1840’s. Until now, the...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2010

Eye to Eye: Acquisition and Production

Back in the days of the Audio Fair which annually graced London's Russell Hotel, my co-hack Frank Jones of Hi-Fi News put his head into the KEF Electronics demonstration room and bellowed the time-honoured question "What's new?"KEF was showing established products that year so its founder, the avuncular Raymond Cooke, responded with his own questio...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2010