Multicamera 3D TV Production

This blog post isn't directly about 3D graphics, but rather multicamera 3D video production, which is an area of technology that is developing rather quickly. NEP Broadcasting, who provides the production trucks for most of the major networks remote products, rolled out the nation's first two mobile production trucks designed specifically for 3D last year (here's the news release).

The most use of the two 3D trucks has been ESPN, who's been expanding their coverage of 3D sporting events. So far, most of the events covered in 3D have also been covered by conventional 2D trucks at the same time. For some events, the 2D trucks and the 3D trucks share some of the same cameras, where the 2D trucks receives the "left eye" signal from some of the 3D camera rigs. For some coverage, such as golf, the 3D production trucks will also receive some of the 2D cameras, which are used for when depth of field is a minimal, such as when the ball is in flight against a blue sky. Because the technology is still fairly new and viewership and revenue from the 2D production well exceeds that of the 3D production, the 2D director is given control of the 3D cameras that are shared.

Chyron, in their newest character generator system, the HyperX3.1, natively supports stereoscopic 3D graphics for broadcast use. The system allows you to design, edit, and update the stereoscopic 3D graphics in real time.