NAB 2011: AmberFin to Demo File-Based Approach to 3D Production

At NAB, AmberFin will preview an alternative approach to live 3D sports production: file-based S3D using low-cost commodity IT hardware.

The revenue from the viewing audience for 3D sports is still very small and the cost of S3D production and postproduction equipment can be very high. Until now, most broadcast sports S3D productions have used traditional tape-like workflows and expensive dedicated hardware, using baseband HDSDI connectivity.

However, this alternative approach promises to drive down costs significantly. There are already very capable and cost effective S3D editing and compositing systems working in S3D that use commodity IT.

At NAB, this technology demonstration will feature complementary applications for those systems, including tape to file ingest, file transcoding, file format conversion, and file standards conversion of S3D footage.

The purpose of the demonstration is to encourage industry discussion on future alternatives to the current high-cost dedicated hardware technology model.