The Spanish company Kronomav, a manufacturer of robotic machines for the movement of movie and television cameras, has developed a system unique in the world for broadcasting events in stereoscopic 3D format.
The platform for stereoscopic recording developed by the company is called “Rig 3D”. It is the only one in the market that is completely robotized and adaptable for any movie or television camera.
Rig 3D remotely controls the lenses (zoom, focus, iris), convergence and the separation between cameras. It also memorizes positions (using presets) in order to make filming easier in cases where conditions or factors in the shot are repeated, and selects an axis as master and converts other axes into slaves in order to make dynamic scenes from the data provided by the zoom or focus.
The true innovation comes from the design of a series of robotized mechanisms and postproduction algorithms that—using the images taken by the two cameras which make up the filming system—very precisely adjust in real time the different parameters of the images, both from a geometric standpoint (rotations, displacements, etc.) as well as in filming (lighting differences, saturations, etc.)
In addition to the 3D recording system, an artificial vision system allows the result to be seen instantaneously, and an on-line postproduction system can correct all of the defects inherent in this type of production (aberrations, colorimetric differences, convergence problems,…). This also takes place in real time or, in other words, at the same time as the filming.
With Kronomav’s robotized systems for image capture, the cost of recording content in 3D is not greatly different from a production in conventional 2D.
Other products developed by the company in addition to Rig 3D are: K2 Motion Control (motorized traveling with repeatable movements) and Weathercam (with frame integration).
Kronomav’s Rig 3D was chosen last September as one of the best products at the 2009 IBC fair (International Broadcasting Convention), which took place in Amsterdam and is considered to be the most important in the world after NABSHOW held in Las Vegas. This makes the company an international point of reference in specialized equipment for the audiovisual sector.