With Quantel at the forefront of many recent high-profile 3D jobs, its forthcoming V5 software release reflects feedback from its customers on the projects that have passed through the Quantel pipeline.
At the heart of the new workflow is a brand new 3D timeline, which makes it easier than ever to work with 3D content. The 3D timeline allows each eye to be viewed and worked on individually or both at the same time, adding enormous flexibility for many typical 3D post production requirements. For example, states the company, this makes 3D subtitling (such as done by Modern VideoFilm on Pablo for ‘Avatar’) very straightforward as the subtitle can be applied to both eyes simultaneously and then quickly positioned in z-space.
Taking advantage of the power of the new timeline, Quantel is also introducing some new 3D-specific tools which fix common acquisition issues such as incorrect colour balance between eyes, and the keystoning which results from converged shooting.
All existing iQ and Pablo systems will be upgradeable to support the new Stereo3D timeline and tools as part of the Quantel V5 software release planned for July 2010. More details on the software, including its new multilayer colour correction, here.
The company is also demonstrating what it says is the world’s first complete 3D broadcast production workflow, from ingest to desktop editing and craft editing to playout at NAB. The NAB demonstration includes live ingest from a Panasonic AG-3DA1 stereoscopic camcorder into a Quantel sQ server, desktop browsing and shot selection of the 3D media and instant transfer to Quantel’s brand new 3D craft editing workstation for stereo finishing. Finally, its also showing live playout to common 3D multiplexed formats including, if required, Left-Right, Over-Under or Line-Interleaved Stereo3D distribution formats.
