AXON And SFP On The Move With 3D

SFP (Société Française de Production), one of the major technical facilities and service providers from France has successfully performed its first 3D live wireless production with the help of AXON's Synapse HXH160-module.
HXH160 is a HD, SD up/down/cross converter/synchronizer with audio shuffler and side curtain processor.
The side curtain processing is highly flexible and configurable, enabling some set-ups that are very useful for 3D production.
SPF, part of the Euro Media Group, and a renowned specialist in the area of mobile wireless coverage of large outdoor sporting events, was in October 2006 the first company to cover a major French cycling race fully in HD.
This year, the same cycling event has marked another achievement by SFP: the world's first live 3D HD coverage from a motorbike.
For the event, a motorbike was equipped with a HD stereoscopic camera system provided by Binocle, a French company specialised in 3D shooting. Binocle has designed and manufactured especially for this event a rig to obtain a proper stereoscopic view to capture the 3D images of the race. They also set the correct parameters for a comfortable and spectacular 3D shooting.
For the 3D transmission the two signals ('left eye' and 'right eye' sources) were combined into one HD-SDI video stream. This was done by squeezing both pictures to an anamorphic half horizontal size and combining them to one (side-by-side) video signal, which is fully compatible with the standard HD MPEG transmission system and also can directly be fed to standard 3D consumer TV sets which then will create the 3D effect. The AXON HXH160, which was mounted onto the motorbike, performed this task for SFP. It furthermore did the required synchronisation of the two streams. The HXH160 is also available without the integrated audio shuffler (HXH150) and in a 3Gb/s-version (GXG150) and GXG160).
Luc Geoffroy, CTO at Euro Media Group, said: "AXON, like SFP, is at the forefront of innovation. AXON presented the 3D solution at this year's IBC and therefore we turned to them when we required technical assistance for our 3D project. AXON came up very quickly with a compact and portable solution suitable for use on the motorbike. The project was a great success resulting in some astounding 3D footage. This breakthrough allows us to seriously consider 3D for future live outdoor sporting events.
(KMcA/BMcC)