SMPTE outlines 3D standard requirements

[Kimber]

SMPTE Outlines Requirements for New 3-D Standard
Specs Target Home-Entertainment Platforms
by George Winslow -- Multichannel News, 4/29/2009 11:25:58 AM MT

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers has released a report on the requirements for standards for the creation of 3-D stereoscopic content viewable on television sets and other home-entertainment displays.

The report, the product of a SMPTE task force set up last August, is a major step forward in the development of 3-D technologies, even though the actual standard is not expected to be announced until 2010 and widespread availability of 3-D content in the home may take several more years.

The task-force report deals with the requirements needed for the so-called 3-D Home Master. This is the 3-D content that producers would deliver to various distribution platforms -- Blu-ray, game consoles, cable systems, broadcasters, broadband, mobile and other technologies that might deliver 3-D content to the home.

The SMPTE is currently in the process of deciding which of its committees will handle the creation of the actual standard for this 3-D home master, said director of engineering and standards Peter Symes. The actual work on the standard is expected to begin in June and should be completed within a year.

The move towards 3-D home master standards is only one part of a larger group of standards that are likely to be created around the delivery of 3D content into the home via Blu-ray players, game consoles, cable, broadcast and other platforms.

"Each of these industries has their own bodies or bodies that deal with the formats for delivery," Symes notes. "A number of proposals have been put forward [for example] of how to do this for Blu-ray. But the important point is that the different distribution platforms will have one deliverable [the 3-D home master] as their starting point. It will allow for the efficient production of stereoscopic content because everyone will have a common target without worrying about the delivery or the display mechanism."

Another major step forward, Symes argued, is the fact that such a wide variety of companies, countries and industries came together to agree on these requirements. Over 200 people from 13 nations were involved in the task force, representing movie studios, broadcasters, cable operators, satellite-TV providers.

"There was a universal acceptance of the need to create one deliverable," Symes said. "It is a clear inflection point, if you like, for the development of 3-D in the home, because all the players were able to reach a consensus on where to go."

The report calls for the 3-D Home Mastering standard to use the 1080p format at 60 frames per second, the highest level of image formatting currently available. It also specifies that the 3-D home master be compatible with a variety of other products, including Blu-ray discs, and requires that these home masters work with earlier formats and displays so that 3-D content can be displayed on existing two-dimensional TVs and other displays.

Display technology is expected to develop rapidly in upcoming years, but Symes and others said they think a new standard should help speed the development of existing and future 3-D-capable displays.

Symes said he expects the first consumer-electronics devices are compatible with the standard to make their way into homes in 2010. Manufacturers should be able to use the standard to guide their efforts to develop next-generation displays, he said.

"This will make it easier for them because they don't have to put it down as an unknown," he said. "Display technologies are going to be evolving probably in many directions, but I don't think we will need to go back and revise the standard because of the direction of the display technology.

"They are now going to be able to assume that there is a certain kind of deliverable that they will have to display and they'll go out to find the best and most cost-effective way of achieving it."

http://www.multichannel.com/article/210 ... andard.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[yuriythebest]

it's nice however I struggle to understand what they are doing. is this going to be some standard for blu rays and broadcasting so that all of the home theater devices can view them? Cause otherwise the main standards of interlaced, horizontal stereopair, vertical stereopair are pretty much "standard".

as far as I'm concerned give me an interlaced or stereopair avi and I'm happy

[Kimber]

Yuri,

They are outlining the requirements for 3D movies to be delivered into the home from movie studios (ie 3D bluray format standards).

[DmitryKo]

it's nice however I struggle to understand what they are doing.

You're not the only one (see SMPTE Home 3D Task Force: useless).


Still, even though the encoding standards in a form of Scalable Video Coding and Multiview Video Coding extensions to the MPEG-4 AVC have been ratified, they yet have to be tested against the real-world use. Part of the problem is there were no industry-standard way of capturing 3D sequences in the TV industry, so there are quite a number of recordings that use obscure formats like two-view 1080i, something that the creators of the MVC did not to consider (see More on Panasonic 3D system).

More than that, the current research in 3D video not even limited to stereo (two-view) capture. As envisioned by MPEG 3DTV team , the scene would be captured by multi-view camera systems, and a new format that combines MVC and "2D+Depth" encoding in a single device-independed format should be the preferable way or delivering 3DTV content.


Given SPTE's dedication to make a future-proof delivery format that would need no major alterations in years to come, the task is more challenging that it may seem at first...

[cybereality]

I hope they figure out something soon because there are a lot of 3D movies in the theater this year and no way to view at home. These companies are missing out on a great opportunity here all because of a lack of standards.

[Jadentheman]

if they take too long for this standard people will lose interest

[DavidGhast]

so the master is going to be 1080p @ 60hz, i wonder how long it took them to figure that one out. the 3d industry is so random and poorly defined that there going to have to pass federal laws in order to establish any sort of order.