January 2010 saw staff at Panasonic’s high-security 3D Blu-ray Disc facility at Universal Studios a little surprised to see a handful of top analysts from around the world, including Consumer Lifestyle News, escorted around the premises on a “first time” guided tour.

PHL’s Mission

“Located in the centre of the entertainment industry, PHL’s mission is to collaborate with Hollywood studios to create new entertainment experiences by serving as a development hub for creating Digital AV related technologies, innovative AV products and new AV Content services.”

Panasonic is reportedly the only CE company to have such a facility in Los Angeles, and PHL is now the premier authoring facility in the industry. It’s here that Hollywood’s top directors come to verify and validate the authoring and compression of DVDs, Blu-ray Discs… and now, the creation of 3D Blu-ray Discs.

The 5 Key Areas of Focus here in Hollywood are:

- High Definition Codec Technology
- Standardization (e.g. BDA, SDA, AACS)
- Blu-ray 3D Title Production
- Blu-ray 3D Marketing support
- BDA Licensing operation

This fine art is by no means simple, and according to staff at the labs, directors are often extremely finicky with their “babies”… little wonder when one sees how much goes into the production of a film in the first place.

Tour of the Facilities

We are welcomed by Jeannine Patton, Vice President & General Manager of Panasonic Hollywood Labs’ Advanced Authoring Center and Masayuki Kozuka, General Manager, Storage Devices Business Strategy Office Corporate R&D Division, along with top R&D management from the Japanese Giant’s US operation.
Ms Patton underlines that the company is striving to create the “theatre experience in the home”.

Mr Kozuka is largely at the heart of Panasonic’s “3D Vision”. “Two years ago I was involved in a joint-promotion with Fox and Disney for Blu-ray. They invited me to look at their joint-project with James Cameron to produce Avatar, his next film. The system had very nice picture quality and I was very impressed by what I saw, so I made an internal report saying that I thought that we should perhaps be thinking about developing 3D,” says Kosuge.

Before being given a “small group” (7 persons) tour of the labs by Panasonic’s Senior Group Manager Tony Jasionowski, we are given a presentation on how it all works, along with some of the key issues Panasonic are dealing with in their striving to achieve excellence in this prickly field.

The process explained:

1) The Compression Room

In a nutshell, Panasonic receive the original digital “cut” from the studios, and begin by encoding (compressing) the work into a format “small” enough to fit onto a Blu-ray Disc in Full HD, while losing as little quality as possible in doing so. In a demo in the “big theatre” on-site, we are asked to discern between one picture and another as to which was the compressed image and which wasn’t. Virtually no-one could tell… and this was on a 380” digital cinema evaluation screen. This is a key part of the work. Fast sequences have to be compressed less than those with little movement or complex colours and layers. For normal HD discs, MPEG-4 AVC encoding is used. In the development of a 3D Blu-ray Disc, Panasonic uses 3D MPEG-4 MVC HP encoder system (encoder software, motion detection board).

The work of the compression labs can take several days on a single title. Sometimes, they work frame by frame to ensure ultimate quality is assured. The original size of the average film in “raw” digital format is 1.5 TB. It has to be squashed down to 50 GB. The question of course arises as to what happens when the film is in 3D. Does it take up two times more space on the disc? The answer is no. The disc does not contain 100% more data, but around 50% more data than a 2D film, meaning it has to compressed a little more to fit an entire film in HD onto a Blu-ray Disc. As mentioned before, Panasonic encodes all work in MPEG-4. “We are one of the key developers of MPEG-4 technology”, says Tony Jasionowski.

2) The Authoring Room

Following this is the Blu-ray Java authoring room, where the on-screen packaging is done. Here, picture, music and graphics are arranged along with scenario for data creation (menus, extra sound tracks, extra features, directors’ comments and so-on). In order to undertake these tasks for 3D, a 3D menu creation tool had to be developed, along with a sub-title creation tool and a 3D playback simulator.

One of the big issues of authoring 3D Blu-ray Discs revolved around the addition of sub-titles, as well as the usual “flat” menus that we have been used to with 2D DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.  With the arrival of 3D, the possibilities with interactive menus become much more exciting. We saw several fun new ideas, using three-dimensional keys to open drawers, and other interactive ideas that truly make the user a part of the action. The main issue with the addition of sub-titles in 3D is just where they should appear: nearer to you that the main part of the action… further? It appears that the best place to avoid tiring the eyes is to have the sub-titles at the same depth as the main part of the action. In the end, it is the studio, not Panasonic, who decide exactly where the sub-titles should appear on the screen.

Around 10 people work in Panasonic’s Hollywood facility authoring room. According to Tony Jasionowski, this is the only place in Hollywood doing it. Why Hollywood? “Speed and interaction”, according to Jasionowski. “We do a lot of work on ensuring the colours are right, and the studios really appreciate that”, says Jasionowski.
Multi-Video Coding (MVC) packaging means that a 3D disc can be played on a normal BD player. In other words, when a new film comes out in 3D, consumers will be able to buy the film and watch it in 2D and then get the fully immersive 3D experience later once they have the 3D player and TV.

3) Test disc creation – a number of test discs are pressed.

4) Quality assurance (QA)

Discs are checked in many different kinds of BD player to see how they work or react in real-life conditions. If any anomalies are found, the authoring room works on the disc until everything works as it should. BD motion, image quality and sound quality are all verified. In the development of 3D, special verification tools had to be developed.
The main issue in QA of course is the fact that 3D capable machines being produced by various manufacturers are “first generation” so will no doubt have some minor image or sound bugs to deal with when in play mode. With Panasonic’s BD Live testing, around 20 players are used to play new BD’s in an attempt to see is one might have a problem with the disc in some way.

The Emmy Award

In 2008, Panasonic received an Emmy award for the work carried out at this facility for “outstanding engineering achievement”, thanks to MPEG-4 AVC High-Profile development. During the tour in Hollywood, Panasonic Europe's Senior Marketing Manager (TV Group) - Fabien Roth - had a chance to hold the prize, apparently still thrilled in being part of the organisation for which it was discerned.

Panasonic's official statement:

PANASONIC FIRST OUT OF THE GATE WITH BLU-RAY 3D™ AUTHORING FACILITY

Located at Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory in Universal City, the Advanced Authoring Center is open for business, offering 3D video encoding and authoring

Universal City, CA (February 1, 2010) – Following on the announcement of a broad range of Full HD 3D TV products, from VIERA consumer 3D TVs to a Prosumer Full HD 3D camcorder, at the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Panasonic is now unveiling its fully operational Blu-ray 3D™ Advanced Authoring Center located at Panasonic’s R&D facility, Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory.  The Advanced Authoring Center was recently upgraded and equipped with the latest 3D technological innovations, based on standards developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association.  The Center now offers studios and filmmakers Blu-ray 3D™ image processing, interactive programming, as well as authoring and disc certification services, which are capable of making Blu-ray 3DTM Discs commercially available as early as Spring 2010.

Long before the Blu-ray 3D™ specifications were finalized within the Blu-ray Disc Association, Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory collaborated with studios and the creative community in Hollywood to conduct Blu-ray 3D™ encoding as well as menu and subtitle authoring trials.  This type of early collaboration and research has given the Advanced Authoring Center expertise in guiding and advising companies during the key early planning stages of a Blu-ray 3D™ title.

“Given Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory’s vast experience with HD image processing, we are confident that we lead the industry with MPEG-4 MVC (Multiview Video Coding) 3D image compression technology,” said Jeannine Patton, Vice President & General Manager of the Advanced Authoring Center. “This laboratory, located as we are in the world’s entertainment capital, is proud to offer the filmmaking community the industry’s first complete, end-to-end Blu-ray 3D™ encoding and authoring facility. Blu-ray 3D™ is an exciting new space for the home entertainment industry and our early research and collaboration was extremely helpful in determining what will provide the most compelling experience and optimum performance when designing for Blu-ray 3D™.”