Depth Charge
2D-to-3D Conversion Is Pricey — and Results Can Be Dicey
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By Todd Spangler — Multichannel News, 7/12/2010 12:01:00 AM
Before Warner Bros.’s Clash of the Titans hit theaters this spring, after the smash success of Avatar, the two-dimensional film was converted to 3D in just 10 weeks — and it showed. Reviewers likened Clash’s 3D effects to a pop-up book.
“We’re never going to do anything that fast again,” said Rob Hummel, CEO of Prime Focus in North America, which handled the postproduction conversion of Clash of the Titans.
As the TV industry’s appetite for 3D programming escalates, there’s a seemingly quick fix available to programmers with libraries of ratings-proven content: 2D-to-3D conversion.
The immediate benefits are compelling. Conversion quickly fills a market demand, makes the most of content libraries and might be a boon for 30-second ads.
But executives agree there’s a crystal-clear certainty emerging in the 3D world: There is no quick fix. Moreover, conversion can be prohibitively expensive — shooting in 3D is cheaper in some cases — and results are unpredictable. In worst cases, poorly rendered 3D can make people sick. “The mistakes can be horrendous,” said David Broberg, CableLabs vice president of consumer video technology.
It’s a special effect that requires time and artistic attention, and can’t be produced automatically in the way that one video format is transcoded into another.
Proponents of 2D-to-3D conversion argue that the technique has a future, and that costs will certainly come down. And most executives agree that if done properly, conversion can deliver a wow-inducing, immersive experience — and provide a way to get 3DTV content to critical mass.
Discovery Communications, for one, is considering conversion to supplement the programming lineup for a 3D channel expected to launch in early 2011 with partners Sony and IMAX. But given that the process today is expensive and somewhat unpredictable, Discovery will use the technology “sparingly,” with most material natively produced for 3D, said senior vice president for digital media distribution Rebecca Glashow.
“We have an enormous archive of incredible moments that literally cannot be recreated … but we’re going to be judicious about what shows will benefit from the conversion,” Glashow said.
Skeptics of 2D-to-3D technology said presenting badly produced 3DTV could give viewers a bad first impression, endangering the entire category. The entertainment industry’s track record on repurposing video content for newer technology is unimpressive: Consider standard-definition video upconverted to HD, or the nauseating early days of film colorization.
“Creating fake 3D is easy,” said Nicholas Routhier, president of Sensio, a Montreal-based firm that develops stereoscopic technologies for content distribution and playback on 3D displays. “Creating fake 3D that is believable is a different story.”
DirecTV — which launched the 24-hour N3D on July 1, billed as the world’s first linear 3D channel, as well as pay-per-view and movies-on-demand services with 3D content — is avoiding converted programming.
“We’ll continue to analyze and evaluate the 2D-to-3D conversion technologies,” said Steven Roberts, DirecTV’s senior vice president of new media and business development. “But we don’t think the quality is that great yet and the cost is still really high per minute to convert it, as opposed to shooting it natively.”
For N3D, DirecTV acquired some 3DTV content and produced some original material, including concerts and other music, documentary-style art and dance programs, and some sports that were not being produced in 3D, Roberts said.
In July, N3D programming — all of it produced specifically for 3D — will include Guitar Center Sessions With Peter Gabriel and Jane’s Addiction, Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia, and N Wave Picture’s S.O.S Planet, African Adventure: Safari in the Okavango and Encounter in the Third Dimension. The channel also is featuring special events such as and an exclusive national broadcast of Fox Sports’ 2010 MLB All-Star Game in 3D on July 13.
Advertising is one area where DirecTV sees promise for 2D-to-3D techniques. Viewers don’t necessarily expect an immersive, dazzling display from the commercial breaks, Roberts noted: “A 30-second spot is different from a 60- or 90-minute movie.”
For programmers, the 3DTV cost equation must also account for the fact that — at least for the next year — just a fraction of U.S. viewers will have the requisite 3D television sets and glasses to watch that programming. Only around 1 million 3DTVs are expected to ship in 2010 in the U.S., according to the Consumer Electronics Association.
“The interest in 3D is greater than either the number of homes that are ready for it or the production capabilities that exist to create it,” HDNet general manager Phil Garvin said.
Producing native 3DTV is expensive enough. Live sports in 3D, for example, cost as much as seven times to produce as conventional HD, according to Garvin. Non-live programming could range from as little as 50% extra to as much as fivefold the cost.
HDNet has produced some shows in 3D, such as Bikini Destinations, and is a partner for DirecTV’s N3D channel, but Garvin said there is no clear economic rationale today for launching a linear 3D channel. The costs for 3D conversion can be staggering. Prime Focus’s quoted range for 2D-to-3D conversion is $74,000 to $110,000 per minute, depending on the type of material. Another Hollywood post-production company, In-Three, asks for $80,000 to $100,000 per minute for video “dimensionalization” — rates that may be cost-prohibitive for cable networks, vice president of business development Damian Wader acknowledged.
While automated systems are important tools, “the fact is, artists have to be making the depth choices. You can’t leave that up to an automated process,” Wader said. In-Three worked on Walt Disney Pictures’ G-Force and this year’s Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton.
Turning 2D video into 3D is a mixture of art and science. The depth of the objects in each frame must be estimated to create a second-eye image. Objects are outlined in a process referred to as “rotoscoping,” and the background exposed by bringing them to the foreground must be backfilled. Otherwise, viewers will encounter an “occlusion problem.”
Automatic 2D-to-3D conversion will always make mistakes, according to Sensio’s Routhier. That’s because machine conversion makes assumptions about depth from visual cues, such as brightness. “A lamp in the background will be misinterpreted as being in the foreground, because it’s bright,” he said.
HDlogix CEO Jim Spinella, whose company sells a system that can convert conventional video into 3D, conceded that “there’s certainly a lot of hand-tuning that needs to happen” in conjunction with an automated system. But he contended that his company’s conversion system can reduce the amount of labor-intensive tweaking needed. JVC and Digital Dynamic Depth also offer automated 2D-to-3D conversion technologies.
But some content shouldn’t be stretched into 3D, no matter how many post-production dollars are poured into the process, industry experts said. Fast-moving action or video with fast cuts between scenes can induce dizziness or headaches in viewers.
Some cable executives eager to convert sometimes have a change of heart. “I’ve told them, ‘I can save you some money: There’s no point in converting this,’” Hummel said. Prime Focus has worked with programmers such as A&E Television Networks, which wanted a one-minute 3D test clip from History.
Added CableLabs’ Broberg: “You can’t change the pace of the editing or the lighting or the camera angles. There are literally rules that need to be followed with 3D.”
Cable operators feel it’s important that content converted from 2D into 3D should be labeled as such to properly set viewer expectations, according to Broberg.
On a separate track, some 3DTV manufacturers are integrating real-time 2D-to-3D technology, to let home consumers view whatever they want with a simulated 3D effect. The market for 2D-to-3D conversion will grow from about 5 million 3DTV sets in 2011 to nearly 50 million by 2016, according to a forecast from research firm Insight Media.
But given that 3DTVs are positioned as a high-end item, other consumer-electronics companies don’t think embedding a conversion feature into sets is a good idea.
Said Julie Baumann, national marketing manager for Panasonic’s display division: “It just doesn’t look good, and it may sour people on the experience.”
What’s most challenging for TV producers is the number of unknowns surrounding 3D in general — what works and what doesn’t. “We’ve got a lot more to understand,” said Chuck Pagano, ESPN’s executive vice president of technology, engineering and operations. The sports programmer carried 25 FIFA World Cup soccer matches in 3D, and plans to present about 100 live events in the first year of ESPN 3D.
“I keep saying the same thing: We’re just narrowing the gap between what we know and what we don’t know,” Pagano said.