Washington presentation of High Definition 3D
show executed by Creative Video

When the Saudi Aramco Oil Company http://www.saudiaramco.com chose Creative Video of Washington http://www.creativevideo.com/ to project its new promotional video to an audience of oil executives and foreign and domestic government officials it seemed like a simple enough job. We do projection for medium to large audiences all the time and for that reason the oil company with the world's largest reserves of crude oil contacted us. We then learned that the project is in 1080i high definition ... and three dimensions ... and to be presented at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum's Lockheed Martin IMAX® Theater! http://www.nasm.si.edu/ This was going to be a little more complex.  

To show in 3D the source is on two synchronized tapes and viewers can experience the effect by wearing special polarized glasses.

 Our mission: position two stacked 250 pound Digital Projection 35HD projectors in the IMAX® Theater's active projection booth, focus, align and then install polarizing lenses to achieve the 3D effect. Seems simple enough but when we got to the actual installation the problems began. The first was the size of our truck. The Air & Space loading dock has a maximum height of 20 feet for trucks to reach the loading dock. The projectors each weighed 350 pounds in their cases and our truck was 21 feet tall. This meant sliding them down as carefully as possible on the truck's small loading ramp. We then had to roll the projectors, HD decks, and related equipment into and all the way through the loading dock area.

 Once we got to the theater we used the theater's chain and motor to lift each projector up to the booth. Fortunately, the theater has a heavy-duty cart to move the projectors into place. The next hurtle was stacking the projectors and then raising the rear ends to down shoot onto the huge IMAX® 70 foot-wide screen. The theater's head projectionist, Keith Madden, helped fit their polarizing filters used for the IMAX® 3D films onto the HD video projectors. The next challenge was timing our two Sony Betacam HDW-2000 HDCAM decks to roll synchronously. Jason Vaughn, our staff technical director worked closely with our vendor in California since this is a function that  the machines can do but the manuals do not really tell you how. Fortunately, after several calls across the country we were able to get the internal menus set and we began mounting the polarizing lenses and the delicate alignment process. Since the theater was showing its IMAX® movies all day long this had to be done between shows. 5 minutes here 10 minutes there. Best of all, you had to wear the polarizing glasses while you made the adjustments to the projectors which meant glasses on and off dozens of times in each break.

     After the museum closed the exhibit halls filled up with well dressed VIPs. The event was an important one for Saudi Aramco so they had us videotape the proceedings for use in a documentary on the event. Creative Video's senior cameraman, Peter Roof covered the event shooting Digibeta with audio technician Cameron Bartlett.

 The 3D HD show started twenty minutes after the museum closed for the day and the last IMAX® movie ended. The program began with a spectacular moving light display by Atmosphere, Inc. Benji Tschudin had to squeeze in four moving light systems and two lights projecting the Aramco logo into the same projection booth. Since both the light show and 3D projection had to work in harmony the 20 minutes between the end or the last show and the doors opening for the first Aramco show left no time for a rehearsal. Up to this point, the synchronous operation of the decks worked fine. What we learned, the hard way, was the decks built in protection for the video heads also disables
 the synchronous operation.

    There was supposed to be a brief  introduction of the video lasting just a minute or two. It turned out to be six plus minutes and the decks kicked out of play pause and when brought back onto the heads the time codes no longer matched. Our projectionist/engineer, Kirby Whyte dialed them back to matching time code but did not know that the synchronous roll was not going to occur and the decks would be in free run. Fortunately, the first show was for eight Aramco staff members. The 3D effect looked pretty good except at the edit points where one image would change a frame or two before the other. Between shows we once again called California and were told that once the synchronous roll was set up, the decks could not come off heads. Now they tell us.

    The theater filled with VIPs for the second show and this time the decks started correctly and the 3D effect, combined with the HD video, was spectacular. The show was a eight minute tour of Aramco's facilities and applications. In 3D, the aerials and animations made you want to firmly grasp the arms of your seat. Stunning landscapes shot on several continents made you feel you were standing there. You could almost walk through factories and city streets that popped from the screen.

 You don't get a chance like this every day, so being a part of a leading edge presentation was a real learning experience. Aramco's video producer has already contacted us about doing other 3D HD events around the country. After the show he admitted that the video's producers spent a week fine tuning the premiere in Saudi Arabia and we did it in a total of six hours over two days.

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