Toronto-based 3D Film Innovation Consortium has brought a host of private and public sector partners together to research stereoscopic 3D perception and provide best practices for 3D cinematography. /

A cure for nausea or headaches from 3D movie or TV viewing is in coming from Canada.

Starz Animation Toronto has teamed up with Canuck academics to ease or even end motion sickness that movie and TV audiences experience in a virtual world.

The fault, says York University film professor Ali Kazimi, lies in 3D stereoscopic cinematography.

“The reason people feel nauseous or have discomfort, headaches or eye strain is when there’s something being done improperly or incorrectly in the Stereoscopic 3D process,” Kazimi explained.

The challenge, adds Rob Burton vp of technology at Toronto-based Starz Animation, is controlling stereoscopic camera parameters to generate comfortable 3D images, where possible.

Discovering a more viewer-friendly stereoscopic film language and camera work is especially important as 3D audiences increasingly move from stationary seats in a cinema to watching stereoscopic content in homes, where neck angles and sight-lines vary greatly as viewers move round a 3D TV set.

“Unless you shoot multiple versions for different viewing venues, it’s difficult to make a one-size-fits-all model for stereoscopic 3D production,” Burton said.

To produce stereoscopic 3D imagery that leaves viewers less queasy, Starz Animation has pacted with Kazimi to make Lovebirds a 3D live action/animated short.

Burton explained Starz Animation already had a stereoscopic 3D unit in Toronto, but tended to put storytelling first before considering how the 3D production process helps tell a story.

With Lovebirds the Starz Animation crew talked extensively with Kazimi, the live action director, at the rough story-boarding stage to consider how stereoscopic 3D camera parameters might impact the story-telling, and what were the format’s potential caveats and pitfalls.

“Being able to simulate what you would get with a real stereoscopic camera in a CG environment before stepping onto a live action stage was really invaluable,” Burton said.

Love Birds, created and directed by Gary Dunn, portrays a hapless romantic bird and his first experience with dating, is conceived in a CG environment, and set against a live action background.

Stereoscopic 3D imagery helps viewers appreciate the physical size and scale of characters in a movie or TV show through the use of binocular vision.

So the Starz team and Kazimi had to consider how they wanted an audience to perceive their position in relation to a tiny 3D bird.

“Do we want the viewers to feel like their chin is on the ground looking at a bird that’s four inches tall, or do we want the viewer to feel they are on-par in terms of scale with the bird?” Burton questioned.

The decision was making the bird larger in scale in all the stereoscopic 3D camera shots to get viewers more into the two-legged animal world, starting with the opening scene.

“We chose stereoscopic camera parameters that convey the appropriate physical size and scale and, as we get into the story over the next few shots, we slowly bring the viewer down to this smaller size by manipulating the stereoscopic parameters,” Burton explained.

Kazimi adds that calculating how best to place the animated birds against the live action background when producing Lovebirds offered vital clues to the relationship between stereoscopic 3D live action and animation integration, and scaling and eye vergence.

Easing or eliminating discomfort of viewers experience with 3D content is vital, the Canadian academic insists, before stereoscopic 3D possibly gets a “bad name, and audiences get frustrated with it.

The Lovebirds shoot is part of the Toronto-based 3D Film Innovation Consortium, which has brought a host of private and public sector partners together to research stereoscopic 3D perception and provide best practices for 3D cinematography.

source: http://ca.movies.yahoo.com/news/usmovies.thehollywoodreporter.com/cure-3d-viewing-motion-sickness-works-canada

A universal unique identifier scheme is being developed for audiovisual media to streamline digital distribution. The Entertainment Identifier Registry, EIDR, is being led by MovieLabs, CableLabs, Comcast and Rovi, backed by a number of American studios, although it is also inviting international participation. Operating on a non-profit, cost-recovery basis, it aims to provide the equivalent of an ISBN reference for individual audiovisual assets.

EIDR has been developed to address the need for a universal identification system for all types of audiovisual assets in the entertainment industry, making it easier for businesses to search, track rights and report revenue based on the unique identifier of an asset. The expected results are increased accuracy of information for consumers and more efficient back office processes.

“Most companies today are either using proprietary or disparate organic systems to catalogue their entertainment assets, making the process of tracking content across multiple systems very difficult,” said Steve Weinstein, the president and chief executive of MovieLabs. “EIDR can provide the missing communication link between businesses.” The initiative is currently dominated by American media interests, but he said “We look forward to expanding EIDR membership to companies throughout the global content ecosystem, which we think is critical to the success of the effort”.

“A standard, low-cost approach for content ID is needed as the industry continues to move towards providing consumers with access to content anywhere, anytime and on any device,” said Dr Paul Liao, the president and chief executive of CableLabs. “EIDR will help our members deliver content to their subscribers through their video initiatives, including TV Everywhere.”

Initial members of EIDR include movie studios and distributors Deluxe, Neustar, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Walt Disney and Warner Bros, as well as the Motion Picture Association of America.

Members of EIDR will have open access to the registry and be able to supply media to the registry for identification. For distributors, access to unique identifiers will help eliminate confusion between assets with same name or different cuts of the same video, helping to ensure that the right products are distributed to the consumer.

The identifiers used within EIDR will function similarly to universal product codes that are used to identify physical packaged goods and the ISBN code for books. The registry will catalogue and assign a single, unique unit of identification to movies and television assets, from entire films down to clips and compilations, both for physical and digital video media, including different audio and video encodings.

EIDR will interoperate with other identifier systems, such AD-ID, which is used to identify adverts. It aims to provide a core service to vendors who wish to develop extended offerings such as rights management and extended metadata services. The EIDR data model can be readily extended to cover new and emerging objects and relationships as the industry evolves over time.

At the most basic level, an EIDR is registered for a ‘work’. EIDRs for new objects can be derived from it or associated with a previously registered object. The reference is purely functional, without any implication of ownership. Each EIDR will be an opaque identifier string, consisting of a standard prefix, a unique suffice for each asset and a check digit, for instance: 10.123/1234-5678-9ABC-DEF0-K.

The registry will be a single centralised database, organised into a hierarchical reference system that links relevant pieces of media to one another. It is being developed as an open, standards-based effort built on the established Digital Object Identifier system, created by the International DOI Foundation. Some 50 million DOIs have been assigned and the system is used by around 10,000 organisations worldwide.

EIDR will also use the open-source registry software from the Corporation for National Research Initiatives. “Our technology was specifically developed for the management of very large numbers of digital objects on the internet and its use in EIDR can be of great benefit to the entertainment industry,” said Dr Robert Kahn, the president and chief executive of CNRI. “The use of DOIs and the underlying Handle System technology, coupled with CNRI’s recently released Digital Object Registry software, will significantly advance the management of audiovisual objects and their complex relationships on the internet.”

Web service application programming interfaces will provide support for developers of third-party applications and services, such as workflow integration, reporting, and enhanced metadata.

Partners will also be permitted to take a snapshot of the registry and mirror it internally to meet their own business and technical needs.

The EIDR coalition is organised as an industry non-profit governed by a Board of Directors representing industry stakeholders, supported by a Technical Advisory Board consisting of representatives from members of the coalition. The registry is inviting participation from other representatives of the international movie and television digital distribution ecosystem.

source: http://informitv.com/news/2010/10/27/uniqueidentifierscheme/