Name
Demystifying the use of Compression in Virtual Production
Date & Time
Monday, October 21, 2024, 5:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Description

Virtual Production (VP) technologies are revolutionizing on-set filming and live concert experiences by using large LED walls to display background scenes, coupled with automated camera tracking and 3D synthesis tools for real-time rendering. These advancements enable dynamic interactions between artists and virtual environments but introduce challenges such as image tile synchronization, color balancing, and the need for lossless compressed source material, which demands significant storage and bandwidth. This session introduces a methodology for assessing the impact of lossy compression standards, such as AV1 and H.265, on VP image quality compared to lossless compression formats like HAP and NotchLC. By evaluating footage displayed on a 4.5m x 2m LED wall using a Red Komodo 6K camera across various scenarios, we reveal that AV1 at 100 Mb/s maintains high quality with a VMAF score of 93.9, closely matching lossless compression quality while reducing bitrate by 24 times. This approach could help streamline VP infrastructure and support the use of compressed media in high-quality productions.

Technical Depth of Presentation
Advanced
Take-Aways from this Presentation

Recipes for successful compression configurations to achieve visually lossless VP In multiple VP use cases, compressed image quality is not perceivably different from lossless image quality A protocol for automatically measuring picture quality in Virtual Production

Presentation
Manuscript
The New Paradigm of Software Architected Broadcast Facilities: