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Spatial AV

Intelligent modular multi-sensoric recording and production system for immersive audiovisual media

Jan. 01, 2013 to Oct. 30, 2014

The production of high quality motion pictures, especially in 3D, is an intricate and costly undertaking. For this reason, four Fraunhofer institutes, which constitute the Fraunhofer Alliance Digital Cinema, cooperate in the project SpatialAV to develop solutions that allow for the generation of high quality 3D content while at the same time keeping technical production costs low. By using intelligent and connected cameras, microphone arrays and additional sensors, such as position, inertial or depth sensors, the system can automatically adjust recording parameters and provide additional data for post-production. It is thus useful for a wide range of different production and rendition scenarios.

Fraunhofer FOKUS places an emphasis on the development of individual components for a camera that is capable of creating dome videos. Digital planetariums and themeparks often show 2D and sometimes even 3D dome movies. For the most part, the content for these films is computer generated, because no satisfactory camera solutions are available yet. Because of the significantly increased visual range in dome cinemas – 360° as opposed to 35° at regular cinema productions – a substantially larger resolution is necessary to ensure sufficiently high image quality. Conventional HD cameras with 2K resolution cannot fulfill this requirement, and neither can 4K cameras with fisheye lenses.

Together with its partners, Fraunhofer FOKUS develops solutions for dome cameras that can generate fulldome (360° x 180°) as well as fully spheric videos (360° x 360°) with a resolution of 4K x 4K or 8K x 8K. The recording system consists of one camera or a camera cluster that records content from various distances. Software developed by the Fraunhofer FOKUS researchers allows for an automatic camera calibration: It aligns the individual recordings seamlessly (stitching), adjusts differences in geometry, color and luminosity and adapts the image format (cropping), so that a homogenous picture is generated.

Sponsorship:

The project is funded within the framework of the Fraunhofer internal program “Wissenschaftsorientierte Strategische Allianzen” (WISA; Science-oriented Strategic Alliances).

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Dipl.-Inf. Manuel Schiewe
Business Unit SQC
+49 30 3463-7329
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