Virtual studios have been used in TV station program production for many years. With the development of display technology, the green screen used in virtual studios in the past has gradually been challenged by LED displays. The "virtual studio" refers to shooting in a virtual environment by personnel, and post-production to synthesize the background after shooting, which can produce more realistic and immersive effects than traditional studios.

In the past, virtual studios were mostly equipped with green screens (blue screens), with actors mostly performing in front of the screen, and the background was produced through post-production. Although the use of green screen (or blue screen) is quite mature, when using green or blue screen, if the scene light is adjusted improperly, the realism of the background will be greatly reduced, and the post-production cost is relatively high; in order to improve the above-mentioned green Or the disadvantage of the blue screen, the film industry is gradually replacing the traditional green and blue screen with LED displays as the background, which can combine virtual images with real people and images at the shooting site.

Not only that, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the global film and television industry has been hit hard, and the usual on-site shooting has been restricted, and the control of staff has also become another major challenge. Compared with past real-life shooting and concerts, the LED display equipment with technical advantages solves the problems of movement restrictions and crowds, and at the same time achieves the benefits of saving on-site personnel costs and post-production costs. This advantage becomes important The alternative solution to the global film industry has further increased the demand for LED display screens in the global film and television industry. The display screen has not only become a more efficient option, but also brought revolutionary changes to the film and television industry.

In addition to the above advantages, the LED display screen can present specific images at the shooting site, with light and shadow. These images are close to reality. Compared with the traditional green-blue scene with only a green and blue environment, it allows actors and TV movie creators to integrate into the storyline. Feel the atmosphere and immerse yourself in various scenes. Furthermore, since the state of the scene is not restricted by weather or time, it is like capturing sunrise and sunset scenery in a short period of time, which greatly saves shooting and production costs.

Photo credit: Dream of the animation

Macroblock's small-pitch LED display overcomes the bottleneck of past shooting and attracts dream animation to work together

In fact, in 2020 alone, there will be 100 virtual studios under construction or already constructed. Not only are the virtual studios built with LED displays gradually adopted for the shooting of large-scale foreign film works, the film and television industry in Taiwan is also actively keeping up with this trend. Among them, the heavyweight animation team "Dream Animation" has gathered together with major LED display and driver IC manufacturers to create the first LED display virtual studio in Taiwan.

It is not accidental that the two sides hit it off. It is reported that Dream Animation used the LED display as the shooting scene as early as the filming of the period drama "Tea Gold", and experienced the advantages of LED display for saving post-production time and cost. In this TV series with the background of Dadaocheng in 1950, because the words "Yongle Market" will appear on the shooting site, the crew uses two methods to prevent the words from appearing in the background. Among them, the virtual animation is displayed on the LED display. It only takes three days for the post-production, and the other one is on the scene, and it takes the first half of the time to modify the animation method in the future.

Although the crew has realized that the LED display can create many advantages for the shooting scene and post-production costs, the LED display with a larger pitch (P5) was used when shooting "Tea Gold", which meant that when the LED display When the screen is used as the background, in order to avoid the problem of LED light particles appearing on the camera screen when the camera shoots the display screen, a certain distance must be maintained between the camera and the screen.

As a leading manufacturer of LED display driver ICs, Macroblock found the shooting pain points faced by the industry, and further used technology to overcome the problems. Macroblock believes that the crux of the problem lies in the fact that in the past LED displays served the human eye; however, in film industry applications, LED displays served high-resolution cameras.

To this end, Macroblock and the Dream Animation team jointly created an LED display virtual studio to provide a more immersive and natural shooting environment, equipped with a visual refresh rate of 3,840Hz, a dot pitch of P1.25mm, and a resolution of three 4k. The LED display screen is used as the shooting background, and is matched with the real-time camera tracking system (Real-time Camera Tracking System), so that the image presented by the LED display screen is linked to the camera frustum (Camera Frustum), and the spatial perspective of the virtual scene can therefore be The on-site camera trajectory is seamlessly matched, and the reality is finally merged with the virtual scene and the characters without any violation.

Photo credit: Aggregator Technology

In addition to the small-pitch, ultra-high-resolution LED display, in the first virtual studio in Taiwan, the on-site LED lighting has also been subjected to special black fogging to increase the contrast of the body to avoid the effect of shooting An unnatural situation. In addition, in addition to the P1.25 LED display, Macroblock also assisted in the construction of the P2.5 LED display in this virtual studio to meet the needs of a larger picture and a sense of coverage/immersion.(Credit: Aggregator Technology)