Virtual Teleportation: Add Live Camera Motion to your Remote Chroma KE
VIRTUAL TELEPORTATION
Bringing your interviewee or star commentator into your studio using Chroma keying is a commonly used technique in broadcasting to create immersive environments and allow content creators to expand their creativity and link up multiple production locations. Commonly used within weather, news, and sporting applications, chroma keying allows production teams to provide dynamic graphics and content alongside the topics being discussed by the host, also often referred to as virtual production.
BRING YOUR REMOTE TALENT INTO THE LOCAL STUDIO (OR VICE VERSA)
The rise of virtual production using chroma keying has expanded this technology beyond traditional on-set news and weather graphics and taken it into the world of remote production and remote acquisition. Advanced techniques now allow presenters to be fully immersed in the set and brings about the opportunity for collaboration between remote studios or interviews in the field. With chroma keying, participants in remote locations can be seamlessly ‘teleported’ into a shared virtual space.
One or more participants are filmed against a green screen background, and their live video feeds are sent to a central production facility. There, the green screen feed is set against the real or second virtual set, making it appear as if all participants are in the same location.
As the use case for chroma keying continues to grow, there is one major draw-back. Lack of motion. This could hereto only be achieved with static cameras without breaking the illusion of the same space. Previously moving the camera in the studio would not change the perspective in the remote studio.
Introducing MRMC’s Virtual Teleportation Workflow
MRMC Broadcast has developed a new approach that allows you to add camera motion to teleportation: to seamlessly bring remote talent into your shot or studio by creating a single moving camera shot synchronised across multiple locations.
This allows for a ‘1-person shot’ to then dynamically switch to a ‘2-person shot’, adjusting the framing while live, and following your talent while moving through the scene. Crucially, having the same change in perspective for all subjects.
This unique approach is achieved by synchronising MRMC robotic heads at each location, and programming them to move in unison to add the motion to the traditional chroma key setup. This means you can pan from a single-person shot, to a virtual two-person shot and back again, combining a remote feed to a local feedback at the studio. This makes it appear as if both subjects are in the same location. Alternatively, you can link up 2 studios in different locations and pan seamlessly from one to the other without cutting. We can also effortlessly compensate for delay between the 2 locations and ensure heads are always in sync.
Shown for the first time at NAB 2023, we demonstrated how this can be achieved with the AFC robotic head. MRMC Robotic heads are camera/lens agnostic, so this set-up can be seamlessly integrated into your workflow. There is no limit to which MRMC robotics heads or arms are used, from the compact AFC all the way up to the 9-axis StudioBot XL, the only criteria being they be the same in both locations.