Mo-Sys Engineering has announced that its award-winning cinematic content server for LED volumes, VP Pro XR has been further improved to incorporate seamless multi-camera switching. The upgrade fully orchestrates multi-camera switching to overcome the typical 5-6 frame refresh delay experienced by all LED volumes when switching between cameras.
The company introduced VP Pro XR, the industry’s first cinematic LED content server solution, ahead of NAB 2021 where it picked up the prestigious Product of The Year award. Designed specifically for use with LED volumes, with or without set extensions, VP Pro XR delivers cinematic standards for LED virtual production.
“Switching between multiple cameras pointing at an LED volume presents a challenge” explained Michael Geissler, CEO of Mo-Sys. “While the camera outputs can be switched in 1 frame, the virtual scene displayed on the LED volume typically take 5-6 frames to update. This means on every camera switch there will be 5-6 frames of the previous camera’s virtual scene displayed on the LED volume, before it updates with the correct perspective view for the new camera. Effectively you get a background flash on every camera switch, which is unusable in production.”
With a new version of software for VP Pro XR, and the addition of a simple Black Magic Design video switcher, VP Pro XR will now orchestrate the delay between the operator switching between cameras, and the LED volume updating with the correct perspective view of the live camera. Importantly, it will do this at up to the full UHD4K resolution of the LED processor input, whereas previous workarounds would reduce the resolution of the content to HD to achieve the same outcome.
“Full resolution multi-cam switching is yet another unique feature of VP Pro XR joining Cinematic XR Focus for pulling focus between real and virtual elements, and NearTime for solving real-time VFX graphics quality,” concluded Geissler. “This follows on from the Cinematic XR objectives originally outlined when we launched our LED content server system last year.”
