Quantel gave a technology demonstration of SynthIA – a brand new, ultra-high quality Interaxial Synthesis tool that enables the interaxial distance between the two camera positions of a S3D clip to be altered in post production.

This breakthrough development means that many S3D shots that previously would have had to be discarded as unusable can be ‘saved’. Typically the biggest problem in S3D is with over-wide camera spacing, which can result in too large a z-axis depth range to be comfortably accommodated by the viewer. SynthIA enables two new stereo frames to be synthesized from the originals, as if they were shot with a reduced interaxial distance. The image quality is superb, with no perceptible difference between the original and new synthesized frames.

Rescuing shots with interaxial synthesis is only one of SynthIA’s capabilities. It can also affect foreground and background objects within a shot differently. This is possible because SynthIA understands where all the objects are in S3D space by recognising differences in disparity of every element in the frame between the left and right ‘eyes’. Different objects within the clip can be individually ‘moved’ in z-space to alter the balance or point of focus.

Stereo D LLC are the world’s leading 2D to 3D conversion experts, and are currently engaged in converting major archival titles for re-release in 3D. They are finding SynthIA invaluable in refining 3D positioning of dimensionalized objects within scenes to ensure a flawless S3D result.

SynthIA technology is expected to debut in a Quantel Pablo over the coming months.