Think of a car moving across a background image of a nice landscape at an auto trade show. Creating this multi-projector, blended landscape video can be done easily with rear-projection, but if you use front projection, you need to track the shape of the car and remove the image from this silhouette, so you don’t see the landscape projected on the car. Now, a new product called OnlyView 3D appears to take this one step further by adding in new images that can be overlaid onto the car. If we understand this technology correctly, we think this means that as the car moves across the stage it can change color or logos. This is pretty cool.

Matt Brennesholtz
Insight Media Analyst

OnlyView 3D video control platform was introduced at the Heavent 2007 Show in Paris November 20-22 (www.heavent-expo.com) by projection and event specialist ETC (www.projecting.co.uk). This show is for corporate and trade show event people, with everyone from Audio-video suppliers like ETC and Fog Screen to ice sculptors in attendance.

The original version of OnlyView is a software interface for controlling the video presented on multiple high-brightness projectors. The software allows multiple image sources, including live cameras pre-recorded video and animations, to be blended, mixed and displayed on multiple display systems, all in real time with no delays for rendering. They claim the interface is simple and intuitive, although I am not sure my intuition stretches quite that far.

The new OnlyView 3D version of the software it is not the manipulation of stereoscopic 3D video or graphics. What this appears to be is the extension of the sophisticated blending, warping and video insertion technology from flat screens to curved and irregularly shaped objects that can actually move across the screen. The platform integrates real-time video mapping across multiple projectors onto moving objects, enabling projected video content to move along with them. The moving objects need not be flat and the projectors need not be in a straight line. Layers of projected images can be completely wrapped around objects using the comprehensive edge-blending techniques for which OnlyView is renowned. OnlyView 3D also offers improved capabilities for technicians, including easier line-up and multiple independent timelines running across multiple projectors.

Applications for OnlyView 3D will be all types of live shows and presentations - corporate, TV, theatre, concerts, sons et lumières (sound and light shows), etc., - large and small - and any scenario needing video to be tracked onto shaped objects, sets or scenery.

The product has been specifically designed for ease of use in live environments. With increasingly pressured timescales, it will be a huge boost for multimedia events and awards ceremonies that have a tendency for media content to keep evolving right up till the last minute.

So next time your mind is blown by a sons et lumières (see http://www.vimeo.com/59195 for a sample), especially a live one with multiple projectors showing images on curved, moving screens from multiple video sources, it may be OnlyView 3D orchestrating the show.

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