MTBS Interviews Sony at NABSHOW 2009!

[Neil]

Check out our interview with Gary Mandle, Senior Product Manager for Sony Electronics Inc.

He explains how their 3D displays look and shares some insight for 3D's future.

YouTube Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12aM9p8N_hQ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Share your thoughts!

Regards,
Neil

[martinlandau]

Neil I have complained for a long time to IZ3D that I would gladly sacrifice resolution to get perfect ghost free solution. In the interview you said it was pretty much ghostfree/crosstalk free - can you elaborate? It's not 100% perfect ghost free? Would you say the ghosting of the sony solution is significantly better in regards to ghosting as the iz3d? Also, in the interests of your users here, is it so burdensone to carry a laptop with 2 webcams so that you can do stereo 3d recording of this demo and the interviews you do? There is a "cool" factor when dealing with fanbois, and you are not pushing the limits not doing stereo3d interviews. As the sony exec said, CONTENT is key, you could be making more content with s3d interviews.

[koshien]

Fantastic!!! I enjoyed the high definition version of the video
Great news for real.

[DmitryKo]

He explains how their 3D displays look

A Sony manager has already been quoted with explanation of the technology in their 3D display prototypes.
See CES, Part 3/3: Sony, LG, NVIDIA thread.

[funkee]

Great interview Neil,

Too bad he is not linked to a non-professional group. It'd be nice to see confirmation of products that I could buy as a consumer. Other than that it's nice to see enthousiasm for 3D from an A-brand, LCD TV maker.
I'd love to see where this professional group is selling its stuff, for how much and for which content

[snaileri]

Your interviews start to shape up to more professional looking interviews.. I mean the technical quality and stuff..
Although, you need some training with the camera angles, don't shoot it from the front. and the camera view could be handheld and move a littlebit to change view angles.

Anyways, great information in the interviews!
I really appreciate your work.

[Neil]

Hi Guys!

Martin:

Martin, you are a character! I can't tell if you are serious or you are joking.

Let's wait until there are S-3D consumer cameras before entertaining this some more. I don't know if you have ever been to one of these shows, but they tend to be extremely crowded and everyone is pressed for time. Also, it's not easy to secure an interview. I think an S-3D recording setup with a notebook computer and a pair of webcams would be too clumsy to work in these scenarios. People may not even take us seriously if we approached them with such a contraption.

The image quality of the Sony displays is very good. However, these units are intended for production houses who can afford to spend $90,000+ on monitors (did you see the JVC interview too?). It would not be appropriate to make comparisons like this.


DmitryKo:

You are correct! I should have framed it better. When I first saw the displays at CES, I had to get the information out of them through playful questioning. I'm just excited that Sony did an on-camera interview about this without fear of going on record.


Koshien:

The video is nice, but check out the audio! Did you see the iZ3D interview? With that miraculous hand mic, it's as though there are only two people in the room!


Snaileri:

You need to thank MetalQueen for that. I also think we are getting better at this. The camera is a Canon HG21 HD camera. We will have to try different things to see what works best, we are still experimenting. The big challenge is uneven lighting situations and recognizing problems before recording begins. We will get better! Thank you for your ideas.


We have much more to share!

Can you guys recommend an encoding bitrate for 1280X720HD? We have hours of content to put up, but I'm concerned about file sizes and the willingness for people to download them.

Regards,
Neil

[Likay]

If you want to try a free (opensource) program with inbuilt codecs (even for compressing) i can propose avidemux : http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It encodes video to different formats but i would recommend trying xvid and h264.
A video with resolution 1280X720 will always tend to be big. Try pm Blackshark as well. He has good knowledge of videomanipulation/compression.

[BlackShark]

For my broadcast video compression i prefer to use Megui because it's maintained by the actual open-source codec developpers. So it's always up to date and at the cutting edge of free/open source video compression. But as a drawback it requires you to have at least some rough knowledge of the video compression workflow. Which makes it a bit complicated to use for beginners.

If you're interested in knowing more about video then i suggest you try Megui and get ready to google for guides or technical explanations because you'll need them. But as a result you'll get the required knowledge of what a digital video actually is, how it works and how to transform it into whatever you want.
That's the knowledge that allowed me to create my S3D footage.

But if you're not ready to invest that much of your time then you can use avidemux, it's also a very good open source tool that takes all the open source encoding stuff and put them all into a friendly package, much easier to use if you're not a video geek.

For codecs and settings i recommand H264 video codec (using the free open source x264 encoder : avidemux also uses it),
a 2 pass encode, H264 high profile, and a slow encoding preset and you should get the best of what the encoder can provide. The video quality will then be determined by the bitrate, about 3000kbps bitrate for internet broadcast is already very good HD video quality.
for audio the good old mp3 with LAME encoder at 128kbps is a safe choice, you could use AAC but i can't hear the difference between the two. Some Hi-Fi gurus with multi-thousand dollar sound systems say they can, I can't.

These settings will probably be at the top end of the quality you are really looking for for putting on an internet website. So if you feel the filesize is too big, don't hesitate to lower the audio bitrate to 80kbps (or even down to 64kbps with AAC if it's just an interview with no music or much noise) and try a lower video bitrate, somewhere between 1500kbps and 2000kbps should be close to the lower limit for HD720p.

For the video container you have the choice between .mp4 and .mkv, both will work great but i have a personnal preference for matroska due to the container advanced multistream muxing and tagging tools being much better and easier to use.
(although mkv files are much less reckognized by youtube-like websites)

[BlackShark]

i haven't even asked you the quastion i wanted.
I'd like to know something about the video quality.
On my zalman screen the polarisation filter has faults : it works perfectly in the horizontal plane but is not consistant on the vertical plane.
I need to be at a very tight height if i want a ghosting-free image. Has sony's polarisation filter solved this issue and works perfectly at any height ?


edit 2 :
does sony uses a standard screen resolution to keep the costs down (3D resolution is halved vertically) or do they use special screens with double the vertical resolution to get full 3D resolution ?

[yuriythebest]

Amazing interview. Neil it's awesome that you are making these videos- I can get used to this


yeah I'm also somewhat skeptical regarding if the resolution is cut in half wih sony's solution since it's interlaced after all. Still it's great they are making em and on such a large screen the lower resolution should still look quite impressive. Now if sony can send me a free sample

[martinlandau]

Hi Guys!

Let's wait until there are S-3D consumer cameras before entertaining this some more. I don't know if you have ever been to one of these shows, but they tend to be extremely crowded and everyone is pressed for time. Also, it's not easy to secure an interview. I think an S-3D recording setup with a notebook computer and a pair of webcams would be too clumsy to work in these scenarios. People may not even take us seriously if we approached them with such a contraption.

I understand you are pressed for time and do wish to be taken seriously. I don't know if I can convey to you why I think Yuri is one of the coolest people on the internet, he has a stereo youtube show that is recorded in S3D - that says A LOT about him and earns him great respect from my viewpoint. It makes me want to go to him for reviews and ideas and recommendations and such, and to pay attention to what he has to say. Now I understang carrying around a tripod with 2 cameras attached instead on one may not seem "normal" but I think most of us are here to push the boundaries. As far as being pressed for time, I don't think it would be much harder to set up a 2 camera tripod as compared to a 1 camera tripod. You can perhaps wait for a consumer level solution that you don't have to build yourself, but it could be a year or 2, and the facts are you could be doing stereo3d recording right now.

As to people taking you seriously, WOW, I don't even know how to respond. If a business promoting a stereo3d solution will not take you seriously because you are trying to record interviews and content in stereo3d, and even HE admits they need more stereo3d content, what does that say? I used to attend many functions like this for IBM, the geek Yuri with his 2 camera stereo3d tripod would be the guy I would want doing an interview about my IBM S3d monitor, not the guy who was conforming to the average for the industy - I want the guy pushing the limits who has a big fanboy population to be marketing my product. Granted I don't have the stereod 3d industry connections you do, but do you really believe that if you interview stereo3d people with a stereo3d recording rig, you will be laughed at? You could be right, but if that is true, how sad that even the very people within this industry trying to develop and sell products would laugh at someone trying to make s3d content that can be used on their products - what was the old saying - catch 22? the chicken or the egg - the content or the product to display the content.

To me Neil, and I do like you and you know I went to bat for you at Nvidia to help you and yuri, but to me you just aren't as cool not filming in stereod3d when the technology is available, I have this Iz3d monitor and I want to watch stereod3d interviews, you could do it today, and not have to wait a few years for other luddits to catch up with us trend setters. I think doing stereo3d interviews would immensely add to your coolness factor and give you a real niche before anyone else invades that marketing space, but if you wait too long, that fish might get away from you. Users you could win today, users to be used for advertising revenue on this site, may be lost the more you delay. For me personally, if all you are offering is 2d interveiws, and someone else starts doing s3d interviews, guess where I am going? Not with the guy playing it safe and wanting to be average. Please don't take it personally.

Do you want to show up at these interviews with the 2d guy with 5000 users on his site, or the s3d interview guy with 50000 users because all the users thought he was the coolest? Which one is the product manager going to want to give the intreview too?

[yuriythebest]

Hi Guys!

Let's wait until there are S-3D consumer cameras before entertaining this some more. I don't know if you have ever been to one of these shows, but they tend to be extremely crowded and everyone is pressed for time. Also, it's not easy to secure an interview. I think an S-3D recording setup with a notebook computer and a pair of webcams would be too clumsy to work in these scenarios. People may not even take us seriously if we approached them with such a contraption.

I understand you are pressed for time and do wish to be taken seriously. I don't know if I can convey to you why I think Yuri is one of the coolest people on the internet, he has a stereo youtube show that is recorded in S3D - that says A LOT about him and earns him great respect from my viewpoint. It makes me want to go to him for reviews and ideas and recommendations and such, and to pay attention to what he has to say. Now I understang carrying around a tripod with 2 cameras attached instead on one may not seem "normal" but I think most of us are here to push the boundaries. As far as being pressed for time, I don't think it would be much harder to set up a 2 camera tripod as compared to a 1 camera tripod. You can perhaps wait for a consumer level solution that you don't have to build yourself, but it could be a year or 2, and the facts are you could be doing stereo3d recording right now.

As to people taking you seriously, WOW, I don't even know how to respond. If a business promoting a stereo3d solution will not take you seriously because you are trying to record interviews and content in stereo3d, and even HE admits they need more stereo3d content, what does that say? I used to attend many functions like this for IBM, the geek Yuri with his 2 camera stereo3d tripod would be the guy I would want doing an interview about my IBM S3d monitor, not the guy who was conforming to the average for the industy - I want the guy pushing the limits who has a big fanboy population to be marketing my product. Granted I don't have the stereod 3d industry connections you do, but do you really believe that if you interview stereo3d people with a stereo3d recording rig, you will be laughed at? You could be right, but if that is true, how sad that even the very people within this industry trying to develop and sell products would laugh at someone trying to make s3d content that can be used on their products - what was the old saying - catch 22? the chicken or the egg - the content or the product to display the content.

To me Neil, and I do like you and you know I went to bat for you at Nvidia to help you and yuri, but to me you just aren't as cool not filming in stereod3d when the technology is available, I have this Iz3d monitor and I want to watch stereod3d interviews, you could do it today, and not have to wait a few years for other luddits to catch up with us trend setters. I think doing stereo3d interviews would immensely add to your coolness factor and give you a real niche before anyone else invades that marketing space, but if you wait too long, that fish might get away from you. Users you could win today, users to be used for advertising revenue on this site, may be lost the more you delay. For me personally, if all you are offering is 2d interveiws, and someone else starts doing s3d interviews, guess where I am going? Not with the guy playing it safe and wanting to be average. Please don't take it personally.

that actually made a lot of sense. Yeah going around with a laptop+webcam might seem amateurish, yet nothing noobish about a dual miniDv camera rig- I would love to see some 3d content from Neil in future.

Yuri is one of the coolest people on the internet

I hope to make many more 3d episodes so stick around!

[Neil]

I'm sorry, but these views just aren't realistic.

First, it's not about MY time, it's about the interviewee's time. Second, it's a minority of people who can actually view the 3D content in their home, and we want to appeal to 2D consumers more than existing S-3D consumers. Third, this is an occasion where S-3D would jump into the gimmick factor. I don't see S-3D adding to the story here because the on-the-go quality would be so horrible and so unprofessional looking, I wouldn't want anything to do with it.

Look at our 2D movie quality. Even with traditional equipment, we are working on perfecting our technique. 3ality, we are not!

MTBS is not interested in being first. We are more interested in being the first to do it properly, and it's just not time for that.

Yes, Yuriy is cool!

Regards,
Neil