Today might be the day television as we know it heads into a new dimension. 3D is gaining significant buzz with the release of Avatar in theaters this winter, and the momentum is bringing the technology into your living rooms. ESPN announced that they are going forward and launching a 3D TV network with plans to air a minimum of 85 live sporting events during its first year, starting with the 2010 World Cup this June.

ESPN has committed to the 3D network for one year. The sports network, owned by the Walt Disney Company, has been testing 3D for more than two years, even showing a USC vs. Ohio State college football game in select theaters.

But, ESPN isn’t the only one taking the big step.

The channel, which has an expected 2011 start date, will be a 24-hour channel broadcasting a variety of programming. The ESPN network will only operate during scheduled 3D broadcasts.

I can’t wait for Shark Week 3D!

Sports in 3D could be very interesting. To really achieve the desired effect, I imagine the camera positioning will have to change from your typical broadcast. Cameras will have to be immersed in the playing field, with people coming to and from the camera. A football soaring through the air into your living room could be a spectacular effect. A running back charging down the field, toward you could put you right in the game. You’d be that last DB, bracing for a tackle and then "BOOM!" a teammate comes out of nowhere to keep your bones intact.

When ESPN 3D goes on the air at the World Cup this year, how will we see the goals? Will there be a camera placed in the net? Will we still watch everything from the sidelines? and how will that affect the desired 3D effect? As the resident hockey fan, I have to ask how an NHL broadcast could even work in 3D.

In December 2009, The Dallas Cowboys partnered with HDlogix and brought fans the first ever 3D broadcast. The result: a demo that lasted only seven minutes. 80,000 people in attendance were given the glasses necessary to view the game in 3D and a majority of them didn’t even bother putting them on. Without the glasses, the image on the screen looked blurry - which fans booed loudly - and after only six minutes and fifty seconds the 3D broadcast was halted.

Many people know what 3D can do, but remember, everything in Avatar was strategically planned and manipulated over years of testing and developing the technology. 3D works very well with pre-produced programming and it could become the next great advancement in video games. How will the 3D technology translate to live broadcasts? I’m eager to find out. 

Let me clarify that I am a big fan of 3D technology. It serves its purpose in theaters, IMAX, and could be the next great tool in corporate communications. However, I am skeptical about 3D TV. I feel there are some drawbacks and the first that comes to mind is wearing the special glasses.

Two hours at a movie theater? No problem. Every time I walk into the living room? Not so sure. Lets not forget you’ll need a new 3D HDTV (or a conversion box), so the big screen you bought last week won’t work. Paying a premium for 3D on top of my monthly cable bill? No thanks.

As exciting as this is, lets not forget that it has taken years to get the majority of the public to make the switch to HDTV, which was the big talk of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) just six years ago. When HDTV was unveiled, it changed the way we watched television. Now, the public is supposed to commit to another drastic change in broadcast television? As great as 3D is, it’s going to take just as long for the general public to be convinced as it did for HDTV; and by that time, there’ll be a newer, bigger, faster, better technology that will change the way we watch television...again.

In case you haven’t heard the News: The word pixel is a short hand term for “picture element” and pixels of various shapes create a video display. Picture display settings must match image source configurations to avoid image distortion.

Finally Found a Home

So what does it all mean? Well we have finally found a home in the ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee), the industry group that defined the high definition (HD) video specification and the sooner everyone is switched over to HD video the better (which by the time I get this finished will have already officially happened). Because HD always uses square pixels in the final display format (not always true in the various acquisition formats), most of these issues (image distortion due to inconsistency between source and display pixel aspect rations) will go away. There are basically only two consumer frame sizes (1920x1080 and 1280x720), and both are widescreen aspect ratio, so creating and displaying video in these formats will be easy once standard definition analog video has gone the way of the woolly mammoth.

Of course, technology marches on and the next big buzz, buzz, buzz is always around the corner. In fact there is already trouble in paradise, as it is rumored there are experimental displays capable of wider widescreen aspect ratios, and higher screen resolutions (2K and 4K images, in the vernacular); I also mention this because a discussion about rumors of things big and wide seems strangely appropriate for a blog underscored by references to a certain pop icon. Anyway, we still have quite a way to go, but for the time being, HD is our baby, and we can do it all for our baby, to coin a phrase. Okay I’m reaching pretty far now…go to Plan B - here’s another chart!

How to Keep it Beatin’

Armed with this knowledge, you can keep the heart of rock and roll beating. The trick is to make your display match your source material. Although some people may prefer to watch video stretched or squished, keeping the letterbox or pillarbox off the screen, I prefer to see the video perfectly matched to a display device in the proper ratio. The problem is that today’s content is all over the place. Even though most currently available TVs are 16:9, there is a plethora of legacy 4:3 content on TV, and on stored media like DVD or VHS tapes. Most importantly, if you are creating video for business like I do here at Quicksilver (marketing, training, etc.), you want to be extra sure that the video looks right. I recommend thinking about aspect ratio from the earliest stages in the production process. Nowadays, whether shooting/posting in standard or high def, I would produce everything in the 16:9 aspect ratio unless there is a really good reason not to. Also make sure your aspect ratio is correct over all the deliverable formats. If the video will playback from DVD and a computer file (like WMV or Quicktime), two different videos must be created for each format.

Naturally, setting your AV gear up to display properly is also imperative to how it looks. And there are many places where a setting can screw up the ratio (and other parts of the picture as well), for instance, your DVD player, TV, computer, and cable box all potentially have settings that can affect the picture. As far as my preferred settings - for regular old television, if you subscribe to HD channels, I suggest you leave your TV in widescreen mode and have it throw up pillarboxes on 4:3 material where necessary. Some TVs and cable or satellite tuners have modes that dynamically change the ratio depending on the source material. I personally find this annoying because it switches continuously during commercials, and it sometimes interprets wrong. If you are not sure if your setting is correct (it can be difficult to tell with certain kinds of content), look for a program that contains a perfect circle. If the circle is an oval, then your settings are wrong, simple as that.

So in this not-so-perfect world, I say good luck and feel free to be square – it’s hip you know! Here is one last chart for the square…

Don’t Make Me Do It!

If you have stuck with me for all three parts, I’m happy to be stuck with you; therefore I have a $20 gift card waiting for the first person who correctly identifies all of the Huey Lewis references contained in the three parts of this blog. Enter your response as a blog comment and feel free to ask questions if you need clarification. Good luck!

Jeff Maslouski is manager of post production and is truly capable of putting a room into a hypnotic trance with his excruciatingly precise explanations of all things technical.

In case you haven’t heard the News:  The word pixel is a short hand term for “picture element” and pixels of various shapes create a video display.

If This Is It?

Not all pixels are created equal, in shape that is. Confusion arises because some pixels are square in shape, while others are rectangular. Computer displays always employ square pixels, but video (such as on a TV or a DVD) usually employs rectangular shaped pixels. The ratio between the width and height of the rectangle is called the pixel aspect ratio. Square pixels are said to have a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio, that is the height and width are equal. However, there are many video standards with different pixel shapes, both in the rapidly diminishing analog world and the new frontier of digital video. For example, one commonly used standard definition acquisition format – known as D1 or DV format, can represent either full screen (4:3) video or widescreen (16:9) using the same screen pixel dimensions (720x480). The pixel aspect ratio for 4:3 video is 0.9, which creates a tall, skinny pixel; with a slight change of heart, the same pixels interpreted with a 1.2 aspect ratio makes a short fat rectangle that is used for a widescreen video (called anamorphic). In order to see the forest for the trees, the device onto which the video is displayed must be set properly to know how to interpret these pixels. The terms full screen and widescreen are common consumer electronics formats that relate to the aspect ratio of a television screen, which brings me to an important point.

Sometimes Bad is Bad

Another perplexing factor is that the “frame aspect ratio” of a display is really independent of the pixel aspect ratio of a particular piece of video. The frame aspect ratio of a television, no matter what kind, is either full screen 4:3 ratio, or widescreen 16:9 ratio. Nearly all modern LCD and plasma flat panel TVs are widescreen, having a 16:9 frame aspect ratio. Widescreen ratio is the same or similar to the origination formats for high definition video and film, and really makes for a superior viewing experience (great for Sports IMHO), but, not everyone has a widescreen TV yet. Computer displays are still available in 4:3 formats, but most manufacturers are moving aggressively into widescreen (actually most computer widescreens have a 16:10 ratio…I can hear your collective groans of confusion and frustration, you need a couple days off to digest this right?).

Walkin’ on a Thick Line

Actually more like bars than lines…I’m talking black bars around the edges of a video. Everyone has probably viewed a program where black bars were added to the top and bottom of the picture (letterboxed), or to the sides (pillar boxed). This is necessary when displaying video in an (frame) aspect ratio that is different than the source aspect ratio. If you are showing a widescreen video on a fullscreen display, the total size is reduced, leaving empty black nothingness at the top and bottom. Conversely, when fullscreen video is displayed on a widescreen display, black bars appear on the sides, as the smaller picture is centered on the larger screen. And then there is the most awesome situation where a letterbox has already been imbedded into a 4:3 video and when you put it into a widescreen display, you get a black box around the whole video – it’s like watching a TV at the end of a long dark hallway!
Of course, different manufacturers have come up with other ways to deal with ratio conversion, including a number of zooming and stretching algorithms that distort the video in different ways so as to get rid of the bars. Take away the keys because this drives me crazy, especially when a fullscreen video is stretched side-to-side and everybody looks fat (or at least much fatter than they are in real life!). The opposite is true when squeezing widescreen video onto a 4:3 screen and everything is squished. It frequently looks similar to how things (reportedly) look after ingesting certain hallucinogenic compounds, leading me to conclude that I want a new drug!

Picture This

When viewing video on a computer, there are some different considerations. Since computers always display square pixels, everything should always look correct right? First, I have seen many a computer screen that has been forced into the wrong aspect ratio. There are a number of reasons this might happen, but most computer graphics cards should be able to display both widescreen and fullscreen ratios, you just have to set your resolution correctly. Also, video that originated in a non-square aspect ratio needs to be properly converted to a square pixel ratio (which requires changing the video dimensions) or it will not display correctly. You don’t have look too hard on the Internet to find video that is improperly formatted, crappy video is especially prolific on the web! But me, I believe in love and pristine video, do you? Even if you are hard at play, take some time to figure this just take some time to figure this stuff out and you too will have faith in the power of pristine video.

Here is a handy guide showing how various aspect ratios look on different displays.

Jeff Maslouski is manager of post production and is truly capable of putting a room into a hypnotic trance with his excruciatingly precise explanations of all things technical.