Panasonic unveiled Monday a fully operational Blu-ray 3D advanced authoring center located at Panasonic's R&D facility in the Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory.

The company said the facility was recently upgraded and equipped with the latest 3D technological innovations, based on standards developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association.

The center offers studios and filmmakers Blu-ray 3D image processing, interactive programming, as well as authoring and disc-certification services, which are capable of making Blu-ray 3D Discs commercially available by this spring.

The Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory has been working collaboratively for months with studios and the creative community in Hollywood to conduct Blu-ray 3D encoding and menu and subtitle-authoring trials.

The efforts have given the advanced authoring center expertise in guiding and advising companies during the key early planning stages of a Blu-ray 3D title, Panasonic said.

"Given Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory's vast experience with HD image processing, we are confident that we lead the industry with MPEG-4 MVC (Multiview Video Coding) 3D image compression technology," Panasonic advanced authoring center VP/general manager Jeannine Patton said. "This laboratory, located as we are in the world's entertainment capital, is proud to offer the filmmaking community the industry's first complete, end-to-end Blu-ray 3D encoding and authoring facility. Blu-ray 3D is an exciting new space for the home entertainment industry and our early research and collaboration was extremely helpful in determining what will provide the most compelling experience and optimum performance when designing for Blu-ray 3D."

--by Greg Tarr, TWICE