FascinatE project 2nd review

I’ve just returned from an intense week at the FascinatE EU FP7 project review  at Fraunhofer HHI, Berlin, you can find some detail of the project here. This is our second annual review by the European Commission review team, I blogged about the first one at the time. As part of the review we’ve demonstrated a bunch of components from the project, many of which are now integrated after a great deal of development work over the last year and some very long working days and nights over the last couple of months.

This time we’ve been pretty ambitious and ran the review in parallel with a first public demonstration of the system combined with a test shoot at the Arena concert hall in Berlin. The test shoot is of a dance project by the Compagnie Sasha Waltz & Guests and the Education Program by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle performing a choreography of the Carmen-Suite by Rodion Schtschedrin.

Fraunhofer HHI’s OmniCam (omnidirectional camera) at the Arena

At the centre of the FascinatE project is the OmniCam, an omnidirectional camera developed by Fraunhofer HHI. This latest version of the OmniCam utilises 6 Arri Alexa-M, high dynamic range HD cameras developed as part of

Arri Alexa on location at the Arena

the project. The Alexa-M is a modular version of the Arri Alexa which is also used on the project as a satellite camera to cover particular regions of interest.

The University of Salford team is responsible for much of the audio for the project working closely with Technicolor in Hannover. We are capturing object based audio, so that the system is ‘format agnostic’, using a number of methods depending on the microphones available to us at the event. Here we have the orchestra close miked, a sparse mic array hanging from the venue roof and two Eigenmikes in place close by.

The public demo consisted of demonstrations to journalists at HHI followed by on site viewing of the OmniCam and other technologies used on the project at the Arena where we are carrying out the test shoot. The genre couldn’t be more different to the first test shoot where we filmed Chelsea vs Wolves at Stamford Bridge last year and brings its own set of unique issues not least the challenge of fitting the test shoot technical and logistical requirements around the artistic direction of the event.

The review went well we showed demos of various components linked together: Kinect gesture recognition connected to video pan tilt and zoom, audio object manipulation and rendering over a 16 speaker third order ambisonic rig, second screen manipulation, HD video over IP and many more. Here are a few pictures of the week.

UPDATE:

FascinatE just received very positive feedback from the reviewers “looks very good”, “excellent work”, “great presentations”. Thank you!

Demo of second screen control of FascinatE’s ultra hi-res panorama video

Demo of gesture control over pan, zoom, tilt, commentator choice, region of interest selection etc with accompanying third order ambisonic audio

Part of the third order ambisonic audio rig used in demos. Football reproduction in 3D over 16 speakers sounds just amazing.

The venue from behind the seating.

The Arena in Berlin

The Alexa-M back end, these are connected by 100m of fibre to the 6 Alexa-M front ends on the OmniCam, 20GB/s in each direction

DVS video capture of OmniCam output

The front end of the Alexa-M on the OmniCam

Fraunhofer HHI’s OmniCam equipped with 6 Arri Alexa-M cameras. Seriously high end bit of kit!

Arri Alexa on location at the Arena

Fraunhofer HHI’s OmniCam (omnidirectional camera) at the Arena

About these ads