In Broadcast - November 2012 - 75

ISSUE 14 - NOV/DEC 2012 | WWW.INBROADCAST.COM

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Sisvel’s Universal 3DZ Tile Format
Sisvel Technology has recently developed an evolution of their Three Dimensional Tile Format, dubbed Universal 3DZ Tile Format…
The Universal 3DZ Tile Format te c h n o l o g y a r o s e f r o m a collaboration with Triaxes, a Russian company specialising in auto stereoscopic displays and algorithms for the 2D to 3D conversion. Triaxes, a subsidiary of Elecard multinational group, is speciﬁcally involved in the 3D software production and rendering. The Universal 3DZ Tile Format has been developed to maximise the 3D Tile Format potential even on “glasses-free” 3D televisions. This technology requires the use of a great number of intermediate images among the original kept for the right and left eyes to be sent to the autostereoscopic panel. In fact, an autostereoscopic screen must direct each pixel to the matching eye considering any possible position of the viewer. For this purpose, a thin ﬁlter on the monitor, called the “barrier”, through which a great number of autostereoscopic images can be pictured to represent all (or at least most of) the points of view of the set. Therefore, on a screen like this, users will see only one point of view with classic stereoscopic content in the left and right images, and a slight shift in the ﬁeld of vision could result in a swapped image. In orde r to ge ne r ate a n appropriate number of images it is therefore necessary to employ a depth map, which is a greyscale representation of the pixel depth in the image. Usually, the synthesis of the map comes from the complex processing starting from the left and right views. Afterwards, only one of the two separate views is sent to the television along with the corresponding depth map, in order to provide enough information on the point of view and the depth of the video. Generally, the higher the left and right images’ resolution, the more accurate the related depth map. This is one of the advantages introduced by the 3D Tile Format – it provides a better balanced horizontal resolution compared to other frame compatible formats like side-by-side or top-and-bottom. Moreover, the Tile Format is perfectly suited for the depth map insertion because it is still possible to use the right bottom empty space of the composite frame. This way, the ﬁnal composite frame 1080p of the Universal 3DZ Tile Format will provide the required information to display 3D contents either on stereoscopic TV with glasses or on autostereoscopic TV. Bear in mind that since its inception the Tile Format allows the 2D vision on regular HD TV offering backward compatibility with 2D. Therefore, the 3DZ Tile Format not only gives the chance to transmit superior quality 3D content in comparison with today’s existent formats (which are 20 years old), but it is compatible with all kinds of displays on the market, qualifying as the sole real universal format. The diagrams describe the transition from the two views to the creation of the correspondent

Incorporating Sisvel Technology’s 3D Tile Format in the broadcast chain

depth map: this takes place on the broadcaster’s side in real-time through the “Depth Gate” software developed by Triaxes. Therefore, the autostereoscopic TV has no need to compute the depth map itself, as a depth map is already generated and transmitted in the broadcast signal. The advantage is that the broadcaster can directly control the outcome of the depth map computation, often with better results than normal TV sets. The inserted depth map transmitted within a standard HD channel is

sent to the set. So, at receiving side, TV sets can utilise a more accurate depth map to display the contents in autostereoscopic mode without any further processing. As a consequence, the final results will often be a much more entertaining and immersive 3D image than one with automatic depth map synthesis. ■

Triaxes Depth Gate generates an image depth map on the broadcast side

The broadcast 3DZ Tile Format includes the highly accurate depth map

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In Broadcast - November 2012

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