Silicon Imaging, the company that enabled the digital shooting of the Oscar winning Best Picture Slumdog Millionaire, is now changing the face of stereo production. SI-3D is the world’s first integrated 3D Cinema quality camera and stereo visualization system. It shoots uncompressed and CineForm Raw 2K or HD footage from two synchronized cameras, outputs dual video streams for independent Left/Right or Stereo Mixed displays and records directly to a single stereo QuickTime file along with 3D LUT color and convergence metadata. The 3D content can be instantly edited, without the need for proxy conversion or ingestion. SI-3D streamlines the entire stereo-3D content acquisition and post production workflow.

The SI-3D system uses two remote head SI-2K Mini cameras with an P+S interchange lens mount connected to a single processing system via gigabit Ethernet where they are synchronized and controlled through the powerful and simple SiliconDVR touchscreen interface. On-set, each camera can be viewed individually or in 50/50, Side-by-Side, Anaglyph and Wiggle modes on standard 2D displays. It can also output mixed modes including: side-by-side, line-interlaced and Mesh for live 3D viewing and transmission.

The SI-3D delivers film like image quality with 10.5-Stops of dynamic range (as tested by an independent laboratory), and 12-bit uncompressed raw directly to mobile 2.5” SSD (Solid State Drives), with peak rates up to 200Mbytes/sec. Each 250 GB drive can store up to 1-hour of footage from Left or Right. The camera's form factor and flexible lens mounting system enable use lightweight beam-splitter and parallel rigs to shoot steadicam, hand-held and helmet mounted.

Various tools are used to visualize and adjust the focus, lighting and 3-D effects including alignment grid overlays, false color zebras, digital zooming, edge detection, spot meters, dual histograms, parallax shifts, anaglyph mixing and wiggle displays. For shot continuity, an integrated Frame Store, enables the operator to grab an image from playback and realign cameras using 50% overlays. There is even a Built-In Green/Blue Screen Keyer.

Unlike modern HD cameras, which develop and compress colorized imagery, the SI system captures raw "digital negatives" similar to DSLR RAW images" where they are non-destructively developed and colorized for preview using the desired "look" for the scene. These files can be edited directly in Apple Final Cut with CineForm’s Neo-3D and post processed with Iridas FrameCycler and Speedgrade XR. These tools also enable conversion to Apple ProRes 422/444 and AVID DNxHD.

SiliconDVR is designed to hide the complexity of 3D shooting by integrating the controls and recording from two sources through a single application and user interface. This eliminates the need for the user to make adjustment to two of everything. Any change of image control setting, such as gain, exposure and frame format is applied to both camera heads. Yellow buttons indicate modal interfaces or buttons that are brought up on screen and are not a part of the default button-set of that interface.

The Image area is split into 9-zones for virtual button operation called Hot-Spots. Clicking in each of the tick-tack-toe (1~3, 4~6, 7~9) zones will initiate the associated function. The False color meter, sobel edge-detection, and spot/focus meter will display only single-camera views and will not operate on 50-50 or Anaglyph displays.

The SI3D clip player allows the user to immediately review video clips recorded to any format. The clips are displayed in color with full .Look metadata applied. Single frames from a played clip may be captured in the Frame Store for use in 50-50 continuity checking as compared to the live image. The text metadata for the clip can also be edited within the clip player.

DUAL HISTOGRAM

3D STEREO PLAYBACK

CAMERA ALIGNMENT GUIDES

SPOT AND FOCUS METER

SPEEDGRADE EMBEDDED

VISUALIZATION (EDGE, EXPOSURE, 50-50, ANAGLYPH)

DIGITAL SLATE