Mistika adds Equaleyes, gets royal approval
SGO Mistika has added a new feature, Equaleyes, to its toolset, which the company says provides fully automated functions for correcting discrepancies between left and right images, caused by differences in cameras, lenses and stereo rig systems. BSkyB, for one, is impressed after using it to post its 3D coverage of a certain recent Royal Wedding.
Miguel Angel Doncel, CEO of Mistika’s manufacturer SGO, explains further: “Equaleyes is designed to ensure that of a given post production budget or schedule, the smallest amount of time is used up on the technical aspects of alignment, conforming including all the mundane, but necessary processes as well. This allows the majority of the time to be spent creatively.”
Mistika’s Equaleyes technology builds on Mistika’s ability to rapidly align stereo images, with the results being immediately playable and usable in realtime. Equaleyes provides an automatic assessment of the geometric errors between left and right images, using advanced proprietary image recognition technology. This assessment then generates settings to correct not just positional, rotational and scale differences, but also “key-stoning” challenges. The assessment takes barely half a second to compute after which, the corrected shot can be played, or used immediately in real-time, with no further rendering.
In addition, Mistika also features a two-step colour matching algorithm. The first will colour-match the majority of stereo 3D shots by creating an overall colour grade to match one eye to the other (or both to a common point). The second step, where needed, executes a pixel-by-pixel match in order to repair stereo oddities such as polarised light that creates spot-differences in textures between images.
The practical effect of Mistika’s unique Equaleyes technology, coupled with it’s amazing real time processing of the result, has wide-ranging implications to massively improve the efficiency of stereoscopic productions. BSkyB was among the first broadcasters to be able to make use of the new technology in its ground-breaking coverage of The Royal Wedding.
Nicholas Recagno, Stereoscopic 3D Mistika Artist who also worked on the Royal Wedding project at BSkyB says: “Equaleyes is a massive time saver for Stereo 3D post and ensures that only the best 3D ever leaves a Mistika suite.” Working to an incredibly tight timetable, as the coverage was broadcast on the Tuesday after the Royal Wedding weekend, meant that correction of stereo material and offline editing had to happen in parallel. The offline editor worked directly from the camera rushes while, at the same time, BSkyB’s Mistika systems corrected many hours of rushes from every camera. At the completion of the edit session, Mistika created an instantaneous 3D conform from the camera rushes it had loaded, along with the stereo corrections that had been added. BSkyB’s lead stereographer Francisco Ramos said: “It would have been impossible to correct that amount of material in such a short space of time, to Sky’s exacting standards, on any other system. Mistika remains without a doubt, the fastest and most productive finishing and workflow system around.”