Integrated Twin Lens FULL HD 3D Camera Recorder from Panasonic

ouch. This is what a lot of companies rush in too. They thought 3D TV would be a future investment, but theres been so much negitive conflicts with the look of 3D in live action and broadcast shows, and eye strains from 3D goggles.
 
How is anyone going to edit that footage?

Actually it is pretty straight forward, you can actually do it on FCP with a $400 plug-in from Dashwood. Much of the bad press about 3D offering negative viewing experiences is pretty much based on the fact that the shooting or editing the convergence point was based on poor decisions.

While I do believe that 3D offers another whole level of services our industry can offer to the rest of the video using world, it will not be the sole service, i.e., replacing 2D, for a very long time to come. This camera will allow for the training of stereographers for the future and offer ancillary industries some needed services.

Best,

Jan
 
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Hi Jan,

Very interesting - Will the editor require a special screen/monitor? Or will he simply wear a pair of 3d glasses throughout editing?

thanks!
 
this camera just give you standard left and right view, as would other devices.
And due to its price ans specs, i doubt it has any futur. You can do better than this $20.000 camera for probably less than $5000.
(the pana is not even HD !!!, i use 2 Sanyo FH1 for my tests and i got 3D 1080p60 for 800$ , so between 800 and 20000 there must be something to be done)
You can use any setup valid for sterescopic editing.
There is no real need to edit in 3d, the story board stay the same in 2 or 3d.
If your cameras are properly aligned while shooting, there is absolutely no work needed to correct the picture before or while editing.
The most difficult thing while shooting is to keep convergence of camera ok.
This was easily done with device like the NuView (you can hardly find it today) but it can still be done for cheap with a small lcd monitor and a video mixer (you just superpose the two signal, and see what is ghosted or not). You can find cheap 2 non synchronised composite input mixer for about $700, that can fit any camera with analog composite output. That will drive you about $1000 just for monitoring but it will make your life WAY EASY while shooting.
http://www.colorado-video.com/mixer.html
just add 2 mid-range cameras like a canon XH-A1 + XH-G1 (one is genlockable on the other one) and you are still way under 20.000 and you got HD.

you just need to edit you movie for one eye, the replicate the work for the other eye.
Some application like Adobe Premiere allow to close the project, replace the shots from the left eye with the one from the right eye (with same file names) and recompile everything (just delete all the tempoary files first) , so no additional work is required except moving some files over the disk.
some other application like Avid are more finnicky about source files, so you cannot play this trick so easily.


usually glasses and screens come together and you need to make sure you can use in your editing apps. currently there is only 2 technologies, frame switching with shutter glasses, or polarized screen (like the zalman) +polarized glasses (like the realD).
since you cannot anticipate what technology will be used to display the movie in theater (except if you plan to make private projection with your own equipment), it is not really important which one you choose.
for example the Zalman screen+reald polarized glasses works very well with youtube 3d and stereoscopic player.
(i made a test to see how it goes on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFS44jbU2AA)
but this one is amazing too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GcLW0g_c1s
It is not yet supported in premiere (unless you cheat, so it is possible, while tricky).
there is a codec called Cineform that can do 3D, but the price is VERY expensive ($3000) while the same 2D codec is less than $1000.

there are other solution (like autostereoscopic screen) that require no glass but quality of display is poor and price way too high.
The only cheap one i know is the small 7" screen that comes with the 3D camera from samsung, and cost around $400.
You can use regular screens with shutter glasses but you will need a special display card (like a nvidia Quadro serie for frame flipping) + shutter glasses.
And again make sure you editing apps would support this feature.
Personally i go with zalman 22" screen+ reald glasses because there is more room for
fiddling with the applications , glasses are cheap and light, result is excellent, and total price is really low (the screen is as low as $300 and can be used as regular monitor), and if you go for polarized glasses, this is the same setup that can be used for large audience display, keeping the cost reasonably low. (about $3 a pair of glass, $100 a pair of filter for 2 DLP projector, $400 for a silver screen).
So with less that $1000 you can build a 3d theater.
If you just want to go with big plasma or lcd screen and DVD player, page flipping would be a nice solution, so you would need a device that
is able to send the infrared pulses to the glasses. These kind of devices usually simply extract the sync signal from the video to drive the IR transceiver. Unfortunately , going digital (HDMI) makes thing a bit more complicated, while you can still extract the signal from an analog outupt while feeding the screen with the digital connection.
Page flipping is pretty universal since it can works on most regular screen. But with a total of 30 fps (15left+15right) it has always be considered painful to watch for long period. So if you can get 60 fps ( 30 left +30 right) it is a lot better.
Unfortunately 60fps is not possible on DVD , but it is on bluray or harddisk based players. You just need to make sur the screen is able to display this rate.
Today screen release for 3d go as high as 120 fps.


Another nice coming solution is DLP controlling the glasses, so no need for silver screen or infrared controlled glasses.
The glasses are controlled by a pulse of light sent by the projector (only one needed) , the image displayed over any surfaces.
The drawback is you still need special expensive glasses, special DLP projector and there is few feedback about the performance of this new technolgy, but if you can wait , this looks like THE solution.
The problem being the 3d is hot this year and you will find many company ready to milk the cow, claiming for novelty on an already 150 year old technique , before the "avatar" smoke disappear.
all these companies are ready to sell you anything (provided it is stamped 3d and darn expensive) without real path forward or support.
so my advice is look what exist now for years, try it and make your own experience before throwing money to the sink.
 
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Hi,

I read nosys70's post and felt that I needed to address some of his points as it seems clear to me that he doesn't fully understand what the Panasonic camera is. I hope this helps everyone.


this camera just give you standard left and right view, as would other devices.

Which other devices are you speaking of? Two separate cameras, sure but control the lenses at the same time, same focus, same length, convergence etc. And the output to the VF can be selected as right eye, left eye or overlay. That is nothing like two separate cameras.


And due to its price ans specs, i doubt it has any futur. You can do better than this $20.000 camera for probably less than $5000. (the pana is not even HD !!!, i use 2 Sanyo FH1 for my tests and i got 3D 1080p60 for 800$ , so between 800 and 20000 there must be something to be done)

First the Panasonic AG-3DA1 is HD, and it is 3D. You are thinking that the level of camera that the 3DA1 is, is similar to the consumer camera which you reference. I am sure that with enough careful work with the cheap cameras you can get a picture in 3D, but are the signals locked with metadata, and lenses? Can you zoom both lenses at the same time and focus them at the same time to the same exact focal point? Can you adjust convergence, and see it in real time? And there are a couple of other things that I cannot discuss, other than to say there is not another product like this and two separate cameras don’t even come close. And I believe it does it have a future, so perhaps we just have to agree to disagree, and we can meet back here next year to see the proof.

You can use any setup valid for sterescopic editing.
There is no real need to edit in 3d, the story board stay the same in 2 or 3d.
If your cameras are properly aligned while shooting, there is absolutely no work needed to correct the picture before or while editing.

If indeed you are going to be shooting in 3D it is best to look at your footage on as large of a monitor as possible, especially if blowing up to projection screens. Convergence is critical as focus and you certainly do want to make your audience work too hard to watch your film. James Cameron used a 103” Panasonic Plasma. If there are any errors in convergence, or color, certainly editing can be a place to be make those changes. Or how about making corrections for a window violation, this too can be a post operation but better if controlled on set. Keep in mind that telling the story in 3D is vastly different than 2D. And yes you can edit the left eye and conform the right eye to the left eye, but to not see if you have any nauseating cuts on the timeline is really a huge mistake; you don’t want to go there.


The most difficult thing while shooting is to keep convergence of camera ok. This was easily done with device like the NuView (you can hardly find it today) but it can still be done for cheap with a small lcd monitor and a video mixer (you just superpose the two signal, and see what is ghosted or not). You can find cheap 2 non synchronised composite input mixer for about $700, that can fit any camera with analog composite output. That will drive you about $1000 just for monitoring but it will make your life WAY EASY while shooting.http://www.colorado-video.com/mixer.html

There is no way I would check convergence for an HD picture on an SD mixer. While the technique is clever it really doesn’t have much value in the HD domain. And keep in mind that this is a fairly simple review of what convergence does. Convergence is what places the subject in to the 3D field of view, foreground, mid or background. And using a synchonized Analog switcher for $700 is not a very realistic thing to use when trying to check on HD convergence. This is as critical as focus, especially if working with 2 3D cameras on set and you want to be able to cut between them. The convergence point has to have objects in the same location in the scene.

[QUOTE just add 2 mid-range cameras like a canon XH-A1 + XH-G1 (one is genlockable on the other one) and you are still way under 20.000 and you got HD. [/QUOTE]


I think you may be overlooking a big item here, the inter-ocular distance needs to be about 2.5” apart, if you are going to have a hard set distance, or the two imagers need to be adjustable. Just having the two cameras does not do that. That Canon camera is almost 6 inches wide, which means that the inter-axial distance between 20 of them would be somewhere in the 5” range instead of the needed 2.5” range. You can’t get the two cameras close enough together.


Can you simulate in post? Well a little, yes, a lot, no. And then again you need to keep your lenses iat the same focal length, and those lenses should be matched not only for the same spot in the zoom, but also in the Chroma Aberration Compensation and focus. Now I am not saying that you cannot do this, I am just saying that the result will be nowhere near the quality that will come out of an integrated system like the Panasonic camera.

you just need to edit you movie for one eye, the replicate the work for the other eye. Some application like Adobe Premiere allow to close the project, replace the shots from the left eye with the one from the right eye (with same file names) and recompile everything (just delete all the temporary files first) , so no additional work is required except moving some files over the disk.
some other application like Avid are more finicky about source files, so you cannot play this trick so easily.

3D Guys have been doing this for years and you can get a feel for it by reading a couple of books. One I highly recommend is Bernard Mendeburu’s 3D Movie Making.

The problem being the 3d is hot this year and you will find many company ready to milk the cow, claiming for novelty on an already 150 year old technique , before the "avatar" smoke disappear. all these companies are ready to sell you anything (provided it is stamped 3d and darn expensive) without real path forward or support.
so my advice is look what exist now for years, try it and make your own experience before throwing money to the sink.

While the first 3D Movie was shot in 1922, and was a B & W feature called the Power of Love. A good historical run-down is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_film. Not sure that with films it is 150 years old but certainly stereographic pictures are possibly that old. But the only similarity is in the fact there are singular frames in a film but making a film in 3D is vastly different than taking a stereo picture.

And for the small 3D cameras that are out there for $500 and less, again, they are nothing like this camera. I am pretty excited about the AG-3DA1 and the people that I have shown it to are also pretty excited.

I hope this aids in understanding the differences.

Best regards,

Jan
 
many thanks for making your point clear.
On the bottom line we do not disagree. Your camera is probably a wonderful tool and will probably find its target.
My point was that 3D media is worked underground by thousand of people who developped (mostly for free or at loss) all the tools we know today.
And now the subject is hot (means big money possible) , the big shots are coming with very expensive (and probably high quality too) devices , claiming it is the only way.(let's call that the niche market effect, we have seen that few years ago with the panoramic picture, where 8mm fisheye lenses and other fishy product were popping up like mushrooms)
Yes, if you will shoot the next 200 billion dollars movie, probably a $20.000 camera is not a budget problem. It is probably not even a problem, because like for avatar, you will have the budget to create your own camera (2x reds ?) with stellar capabilities.
what i say is for most "amateur" you can find on this forum, 20.000 is enough money to get 2 cameras including real time 3D monitoring, the editing PC, plus a complete 3D theater. Ok , quality will be surely lower, and you will synchronize your lenses with a rubber band but some movies reached the big screen and were shots with DVX100, and the public doesn't even care or understand the difference.

So my post was not intended to attack any product, just to mention that 3D is still a field where DIY is the king.
It is just an advice to disc, camera, screens, glasses, projectors makers , please try to go down to our level, do not wait for a chinese company to proof you are wrong.

because frankly, take 2 mid level camera ($3000 ea), you got all what you need (even some in excess, since the most of the electronic of the second camera is probably useless), install that in a new body to host the additional sensor, bridge the second lens to the first one (i am eletronician so i know it is pretty simple to do) and sell it for $8000 .
and make a $60.000 model for the big guys so everybody is happy.
and then probably you could count me as one of your customer.
 
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Actually I think we are not on the same page as I think you are making it sound all too simple to do with 2 separate cameras and frankly I don't see that it is all that simple. Lot's of things to do, just making sure that the lenses are at the same focal length and focus.

I do appreciate the fact that the 3D underground has been there producing, but I have to say that all of those guys that came up to me at the HD Expo last week and when we talked it through, they understood, how much easier the process will become with this camera.

Not saying that there won't continue to be guys doing this on a nickel, because there will, but you don't have to be shooting a Billion dollar blockbuster to afford this camera.

Best,

Jan
 
"this is to complex for you simple human, we just need you as believer"
this is the kind of answer i expect from Marketing reps, but unfortunately, i am
particularly gifted about techologies so i am not in position to take you word
for definitive truth, but i sincerely hope it will work for the others so you can make a success out of this project.

just for history, Avatar has been shot with "something" made out of two separate cameras as all the 3D movies existing up today. and well , it seems it was not so bad.

the problem is the way you see the problem.
ask an engineer if he can slave a lense to an other one, he will answer "yeah, that's easy"
ask a marketing guy if he can build a 3D lense, the answer will be be" Mmmh, you know, it is not that easy and it will cost the hell"

I know i am on the wrong side, since engineers are usually poor and marketing reps are usually richer.
But i am pretty sure i have a lot more fun.
 
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I feel like this camera has potential to become a player in first adopters like the upcoming ESPN 3D channel and porn (yeah, I said it). It will probably also be used as a B camera in Hollywood.

I personally think that being the first guy on the block with this camera will be a mistake for any consumer. I base this purely on technology and company track record. Panasonic has been a company that has been shy with firmware updates. They almost never add new features and only additional hardware support when necessary. Instead, In a few years there will be an "A" version of this camera that will not surpass the competition, but will add key features that will only amount to the camera keeping pace with the rest of the industry.

I for one would not like to be stuck with a $20,000 camera a year from now when the 3D standards have become more clear and I find out that I am on the outside looking in.

I am still wondering why we are seeing a 3D camera that .00000001% of people can view the footage correctly. This seems like a page out of Sony's playbook. Let's push our TV and Blu-Ray sales with a camera.

Instead...

Why are we not seeing a 4/3rds video camera? Why are we not seeing less expensive 2/3" cameras? Why are we not seeing more light efficient sensors with faster reset times? Why are we not seeing more creative firmware updates that enable exciting new feature? The list goes on.

On this forum RED has gotten blasted at times for not delivering their products on time. But the fact of the matter is, no one else is delivering a single product to challenge them.
 
your are right, and thanks for Panasonic to at least trying by delivering what nobody else has already.
BUT, who wants today purchase a 20.000$ camera ? (not even a consumer product, since it is made on request, this kind of requirement makes me really nervous)
even RED is cheaper, and all the new high end cameras (like the video DSLR, the SI2K, the Scarlet) are targeting a price range that is way under.
Clearly, the trend is not to expensive tools whatever the feature it offers.

and seems keeping dual lenses in sync is not so hard anyway
http://nexus404.com/Blog/2010/02/11...cture-frame-stereoscopic-dual-lens-recording/
 
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Not sure where nosys70 is coming from, but $20000 seems amazingly cheap for what this is offering. It's obviously aimed at low budget 3d movie makers, not at hobbyists etc.

Can't see the point in comparing the price to 2d cameras, it's totally different. Sure, if they start selling thousands of these then maybe they could reduce the price, but I suspect that this is currently being put out there to encourage the take up of 3d for films which haven't got $millions to spend.

Even so, it's way out of my budget for what I do, but I wonder if there are some clues to a future version of the HMC150, it says that the 3d camera has full HD and the body appears to be similar to the HMC, presumably it also has 2 SD slots. Maybe we will get a HMC150 with 2 SD slots and full HD soon?
 
why 2 SD slots ? either it is not a dual cam concept and it has ONE SD slot and record 120fps (60+60) with fully synchronized frames or it is an half baked concept of putting 2 cams in one body and in this case i still build my own for cheaper with a larger choice of lense, codec etc...
Once again , i got nothing against the panasonic camera, but my point is
3D movie is worked for almost 90 years,now and the day Avatar exploded the charts, all kind of 3D product popped up, claiming hi-tech thingies or concepts.
hey Sony, Panasonic, JVC, where have you been the last ten years ?

Stangely, Avatar has been shot with the good old dual camera setup , and except an amazing marketing campaign and the result of having returned a filthy amazing amount of money, there is few in that movie that deserve the buzz it gets.(pocahontas , space age version, ok nicely done)

A nice example is the the way things are pushed on the market.
100, 120, 200 Hz TV set exists for years. They were pushed without success on the market with the so called advantage of "motion enhanced picture" (strangely exactly at the opposite of the 24p, film look effect so hip today). they got mitigated succes.
Now they are coming back with same feature (120hz capable) but now it is called "3D compatible" at a time where God knows what it could means and believe me the price is nowhere near what you could find for the same screen last year. And i still have to find one that come with glasses instead a sticker with a blue skinned alien and 3D logo at the top left corner.

We need people that come with technological breakthroughs will, not for another marketing opportunities to make easy moneyby putting a new name on the same old sh...
or else in 6 months 3D will be again a thing of the past.
 
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