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Sony’s IBC exhibit was, as ever, packed with tech for all
corners of the industry from enterprise level cloud media via Ci to virtual
production and content verification with the PXW-Z300. RedShark was also
intrigued by a small but busy demo tucked away at the back of the stand
featuring a monitor for viewing pseudo-holographic content.
The Spatial Reality Display (ELF-SR2), first launched over a
year ago and seemed at that time to targets industrial applications with a cost
(over $4000) reflecting this. Plus, you’d need serious GPU power to process it.
However, on the Sony stand it was shown paired with a pair
of VENICE Extension System Minis. This new accessory for the VENICE 2 was
announced earlier this year and has a footprint the size of an average
smartphone
“We’ve already had users put our original VENICE Mini on
helmets or the front of motorbikes for cool action videos, but the Extension
Mini is about four times smaller so we thought it would be cool to put two
together,” Sony’s Stuart Newton told RSN. “In fact, when we paired them side by
side, the distance between the sensors [the interocular] is perfect for 3D
stereoscopic capture.”
The monitor at the show was screening previously recorded 3D
content but Newton said you can connect two Extension Minis and live stream 3D
to the monitor. “This would be ideal for creating content for something like
Apple Vision Pro. Primarily we expect people to use the Extension Mini in
singles, but you can also put these cameras in an array and do full 360 with
each Mini recording at 8K.
Now available in two sizes (27-inch and 15.6-inch) the 4K
LCD Spatial Reality display is built with a micro-optical lens over the screen
which divides the image between your left and right eyes, giving an
auto-stereoscopic (3D) experience. A proprietary high-speed sensor follows your
eye movement “down to the millisecond”, sensing pupil position which an
algorithm then crunches to process content for each eye “without lag”.
“The spatial content market is starting to take shape,”
Newton added. “I think we’ll see a lot of new spatial content from VR/AR
devices coming out and a lot more 3D content for movies.
An all-seeing piece of kit
There was a European outing for the Ocellus camera tracking
system, Sony’s first such product which released ahead of NAB this year.
It provides marker-free camera tracking through five image
sensors and comprises a sensor unit, a processing box, and three lens encoders.
The sensor unit is small and fits directly on top of the camera body.
“Traditional camera tracking works by tracking physical dots
in a space to calibrate camera movement,” Stuart Newton explained. “This
marker-less system uses sensors to create a point space that maps out the
entire space indoors or outdoors.”
It does this using Sony's Visual SLAM (Simultaneous
Localisation and Mapping) technology.
“You could attach the module to small Venice Mini and move
the camera out of sight so some of sensors are blocked off from seeing the full
field of vision but since it's already mapped out the space it still knows
where it is.
“It's basically an all-seeing piece of kit.”
While it can be used with non-Sony cameras, it is optimised
for a Sony chain because its hardware enables the throughput of metadata
(including about focus, iris and zoom) from the camera while shooting to
external devices via Ethernet.
If the lens does not support metadata acquisition through
the camera, lens encoders can be added to the camera to obtain it. The metadata
is necessary for virtual production and AR.
Newton said Sony is working on making the calibration easier
to configure.
“The good thing about this is that it will work with the
whole range of Sony cameras including studio cameras for sports or news or you
could even do augmented reality outdoors as well.”
An adjacent demo showed how the system simplifies and
automates match-moving by utilising camera trajectory data from Ocellus working
with software from Sony’s Virtual Production Tool Set (the latest version 3 of
which is slated to release this winter). New features are a viewing angle
colour correction, ray tracing acceleration, and calibration for third-party
cameras.
Recording evidence of authenticity
The new Sony PXW-Z300 was announced in March, as the world’s
first camcorder to embed C2PA digital signatures for recording evidence of
content authenticity.
At IBC, Sony was showing how it could help broadcasters to
verify footage by displaying the digital signature information compliant with
the C2PA standard.
The PXW-Z300 incorporates an AI-processing unit and an image
processing engine for human subject recognition based on face, eye, skeletal
structure, and posture information. It also features an auto-framing function
that automatically adjusts composition to keep human subjects centred in the
frame.
Live Streaming
The TX1 enables live streaming from Sony cameras.
Co-developed by Sony and LiveU, it is due for release in 2026.
The LiveU TX1 supports resilient bonded transmission for
faster data transfers using multiple network connections. It enables automatic
file transfers simply by connecting the device to a camera via USB. In addition
to USB connectivity, SDI support is also planned, enabling compatibility with a
wide range of Sony camcorders.
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