OPTICS ADVANCES BRING VOLUMETRIC VIDEO TO LIFE

London, United Kingdom - It's a classic idea – fully immersive, encompassing video, offering a viewer the ability to look up, down, around, even behind. It's a logical next step in the evolution of full-motion video presentation, so simple and analogous to normal human vision, that the concept itself does not so much require imagination to grasp, but rather simply begs that you forget about the last 140 years of recorded film. Or perhaps just forget about the screen it's been stuck in.

And yet, the technical obstacles to capturing and presenting fully immersive video are massive, accounting for the fact that there is no straightforward way to capture a 360º sphere. There's always a camera behind that lens that obstructs your view. Until recently, the very concept of presenting fully 360º volumetric video had been dismissed as an attractive but, alas, unattainable goal, a pipe dream shattered by the all-too-concrete laws of optics and physics.

A small, dedicated team of developers and optics professionals, however, have been working for the past ten months on making dreams come true. “Technically, what we're showing on computer monitors today, we shouldn't even be able to film. We shouldn't be able to shoot scenes like these and obey the rules of physics,” explains EnterNetica president Andronik Nazaretian. “In fact, we can't shoot these kinds of images without bending the rules a little bit, without making certain mathematical assumptions and applying specific heuristics to fill in the gaps in a scene.”

At a rare, invitation-only technology preview last month, EnterNetica offered a teaser of the fruits of the last year's labor. In a dimly lit, windowless room in EnterNetica's London headquarters, reporters, financial partners, and EnterNetica developers gathered for the first ever exhibition of Vovid, the tongue-in-cheek nickname for EnterNetica's VolumeVideo technologies.

“I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It takes a lot of trust to go all out supporting an R&D initiative, especially on technology that probably won't fully mature for another 15 to 20 years,” commented EnterNetica investor Pierre Sauvage. “What I saw here today just took me aback – this is a new format that's going to explode as soon as processing power and physical hardware is able to support it.”

And processing power (or lack thereof) has been the limiter really preventing volumetric video from taking off in the past ten years. The technology for digitally joining still images to create immersive panoramas has been available for decades. It's this digital “stitching” of inidividual 180º or less images that current VR panoramas (such as Apple's Quicktime VR) are based on.

Volumetric video goes a step further however. Unlike volumetric photography, which digitally joins two or more still captures to build an immersive surrounding, volumetric video only has a single 180º video feed on which to infer an entire 360º scene.

“This is a blessing in disguise. We can't simply turn the camera around and shoot the environment behind us like with volumetric photography. But since we're working with video we've got an entire history of data about our environment upon which we can guess our surroundings,” explains videographer and lead developer Zhenya Lebedev. “Using a combination of background persistence, motion tracking, and pattern extension we can rebuild a close approximation of what is going on at the edges of our field of view. Naturally there's a degree of uncertainty, but you'd be surprised just how much is predictable.”

Of course, this technology is not suitable for just any environment; certain conditions have to be met to ensure ample reconstruction of the surroundings. The video camera has to be constantly moving, panning to gather as much current detail about its background as possible. For some applications this simply isn't an option. However, in other environments it comes close to flawlessly capturing the action.

“Surprisingly, we've had a lot of success underwater. Scuba divers with a waterproof capture setup have provided some of our most impressive video, because while the backdrop is always changing, its evolution has a very fluid, predictable nature. We also have processed some great clips that were shot by a team climbing in the Azores. And of course there's my favourite – skydiving video shot by one of our own team. It's an unreal sensation being able to view a real skydive at any angle…probably the most authentic experience short of actually jumping off an airplane,” explains Mr. Nazaretian.

“What we're really excited about is where this technology is going to go in coming decades. We see a lot of potential for volumetric video in medicine and transportation. We're also speaking to interested parties involved in national defense and law enforcement. Although probably the most high-profile use of volumetric video will be in film and sporting events. In twenty years, you're going to start seeing films shot and presented using volumetric video. And the coolest thing is, no matter how many times you watch a volumetric video film, you can always watch it again and catch something you didn't see before.”

About Volumetric Video
EnterNetica's Volumetric Video technology uses a single 180º fisheye lens mated with an ultra-high resolution digital video camera to capture a continuous video feed. This video feed is then analyzed and, using a variety of heuristics and prediction algorithms, a best-guess 360º volumetric recording is produced. This volumetric recording can be cropped to a single computer monitor or projected on a spherical or hemispherical display.

This technique does not provide a perfect volumetric video feed – rather it outputs a “likely option”. Some environments are better suited for volumetric video filming than others – environments that are too dynamic, or where the camera is not constantly panning, do not transfer well. However, even in cases where there is insufficient data to fully predict the surroundings, an acceptable approximation can usually be added, either automatically or manually. In worst case scenarios, the camera's field of view can be clipped to less than 360º.

The two major limitations to volumetric video are processing power and current optics technology. Advances in the near future allowing for lenses with a field of view in excess of 180º, as well as greater resolution CCDs and more powerful parallel computing platforms should alleviate the current weak links in volumetric video.

About EnterNetica
EnterNetica, an international research and development company specializing in 3D photography and videography, is also a leading producer of imaging, editing, and presentation solutions, including the VolumePhoto volumetric imaging format. Additional information about EnterNetica is available at www.enternetica.com.