I’ve been looking for a good book, written more recently and starting by covering how our stereoscopic vision works and then how its way of functioning can be taken advantage of in order to create the appropriate stereoscopic 3D content. A book that starts from the basics on how and why we see with depth and what it means to create a suitable digital content in 3D, that can be comfortably viewed in stereo 3D. It has turned out to be a quite hard task, but finally I was able to find such a book and it is called 3D Movie Making: Stereoscopic Digital Cinema from Script to Screen written by Bernard Mendiburu. The book is mainly targeted at people interested in 3D movie productions, but at the same time it covers all the basics of stereoscopic depth perception quite well and I found a lot of interesting things that I was not aware of. Of course it will be best if you are interested in 3D photography and 3D movies as this is the main focus of the book and especially how they are being produced and the specifics that the 3D format introduces. Even if you are interested only in stereo 3D gaming, you’ll still find a lot of information to help you understand how to achieve better results when tweaking the depth and convergence settings inside the game and why some games may give you problems even though they might seem to be rendered just fine in stereo 3D. The book also has an extensive list of references to useful websites and products – both free and commercial, that can help you in a lot of different 3D projects, especially if you consider to start shooting photos in 3D or even working on a stereo 3D amateur movie. For me the book was a great read and I’ve read it completely in one day, although it is over 200 pages, as it was indeed an interesting material to read and I could not stop myself until I’ve completely finished it. For me it was mostly stereo 3D gaming up until recently, but I’m starting to develop more and more interest in shooting photos and videos in 3D, so the whole book was full with useful information, and I can definitely recommend it to anyone really interested in stereo 3D…
This summer should be big for all the major TV brands that are going to release the new wave of 3D-capable HDTVs, or at least everyone hopes it to be like that and expects this to happen, but will it turn out as expected or not is another thing. It very much depends on how many early adopters will go for the 3D technology on a TV for more general use and not just for specifics like gaming in stereoscopic 3D which is something that you can even do at the moment with a 120Hz monitor. A 3D-capable HDTV will bring you a bigger screen which is best suitable for movies, but you’ll be getting the whole thing – 3D photos, movies and games.
If you’ve been watching closely nobody besides Sony is talking about stereo 3D gaming, but Sony is doing this related to their PlayStation 3 console only, but what about the PC users? I mean at the moment playing games in stereoscopic 3D is the best thing you can do on a 3D-capable display and this is just because there is enough content. Basically almost all 3D games can easily be played in stereo 3D with the help of special software such as Nvidia’s 3D Vision, DDD’s Tridef Ingnition or iZ3D’s Driver and you don’t need games that are specially made for S3D, although that does help. Unfortunately there is no information regarding how and if we are going to be able to use these new 3D-capable HDTVs along with out computers to play games in stereo 3D or watch 3D movies! And considering that at the moment S3D gaming is the major driving force for the adoption of 3D-capable monitors why it seems that the TV manufacturers tend to completely ignore the most important factor?
Regarding videos things are not looking so bright, there is practically very little quality movies and other video content available in a stereoscopic 3D format and that is a serious issue. Hell, there are not even stereoscopic 3D trailers being officially released for movies that are being shown in 3D cinemas, something which is considered promotional material as should get you interested to go see the full movie in a cinema. There are mostly amateur stereo 3D videos that are being freely distributed or very few short demonstrations and that is all, the free content I mean, but even if you are ready to pay you are still out of luck. You’ll have a very hard time finding anything good in the form of stereo 3D movie that you can enjoy on your 3D-capable TV, unless if you want to go for crappy anaglyph videos, but for these you actually don’t need a special TV. Blu-ray 3D is soon going to be available, but at first there aren’t going to be a lot of movies for it. Starting at the summer we’ll probably have just a few titles by the end of the year, so in 2010 it might not be worth the investment for a 3D-ready HDTV, along with a Blu-ray 3D player just for watching 3D movies and there are not much of these. You might consider going way cheaper and just go watch them in a 3D cinema and wait some more, but that is if we are talking about getting a 3D-ready setup just for Blu-ray 3D this year…
And then comes the 3D TV where I suppose everyone is putting their trust into bringing the interest in 3D-capable HDTVs to a mass level, starting with the FIFA World Cup Football Championship 2010 in South Africa that is coincidentally going to start this summer. And there is a lot of trust put in the sports programs being aired in 3D that are supposed to bring crowds of fans of different sports in front of the TV, instead of them going to the stadium. But hey, don’t forget that not everyone likes to watch football or any other sport so that is leaving a big hole and leads to some common mistakes being done when there are global sports events happening – relying too much on the sports fans for pushing products, services and technologies. I’ll talk about the first 3D channels that we are expecting to start being aired very soon in a bit, but when I do that you’ll notice that all of them do plan to have sports events in 3D and that might just not be enough. After all you know the saying – the content is the king, and without the appropriate content 3D might not turn out so big at the start. And yes, I know there are already quite a lot of 3D-capable TVs available, but most of them are actually not been used even once for displaying 3D content and if you ask why, the answer will be very simple – no attractive 3D content being available. Anyway, let me get to the 3D TV channels that are coming later this year and in 2011 that are already announced and expected to be the first and enough with my pessimism…
Sky Channel 3D appears to be the first of the 3D TV channels that we are expecting to see, but this one goes on air in United Kingdom only, sometime in April. And they already did some interesting tests by broadcasting a football match between Arsenal and Manchester United in a few different pubs in London, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh. And this test received quite good feedback from the people that were lucky to be actually watching the game in 3D. Have in mind that the April launch seems to be only related to having the 3D sports content being pushed to a wider number of pubs and not to the general public. And later in the year, Sky 3D will be made available to all Sky+HD customers with a range of content on offer, that will include movies, sport, documentaries and entertainment programs.
DIRECTV (names unknown), backed up by Panasonic should be starting up 3 dedicated 3D channels in the USA. They should be available beginning in June 2010, with customers of the DIRECT TV HD service getting a free software upgrade enabling them to have access to the new 3D channels through their 3D-ready television sets. DIRECTV’s new 3D channels will deliver movies, sports and entertainment content. Also DIRECTV is currently working with AEG/AEG Digital Media, CBS, Fox Sports/FSN, Golden Boy Promotions, HDNet, MTV, NBC Universal and Turner Broadcasting System to develop additional 3D programming that will debut in 2010-2011. At launch, the new DIRECTV HD 3D programming platform will offer a 24/7 3D pay per view channel focused on movies, documentaries and other programming, a 24/7 3D DIRECTV on Demand channel and a free 3D sampler demo channel featuring event programming such as sports, music and other content.
ESPN 3D is another channel that will be offering sports programs starting this summer (in USA), beginning June 11 with the first 2010 FIFA World Cup match South Africa vs. Mexico. The network plans to feature at least 85 live sporting events during its first year, but they’ll probably have other non-live sports content to fill in the holes, but the channel will most likely not be airing content 24/7 at first. Among the planned sports events to be aired live in 3D are up to 25 World Cup matches, the 2011 BCS National Championship Game, college basketball and football and the Summer X Games.
Canal+ 3D will be the first 3D TV channel in France with a launch date planned before Christmas 2010. The new 3D channel will broadcast movies, live events, sports and animation. With the current set-top boxes available to satellite subscribers of Canal+ said to be already compatible with the upcoming 3D broadcast, the only thing that remains is for the viewers to get a hold of a 3D-ready TV set.
3D Pictures is set to launch its own 3D TV channel by the end of this year in Spain. The new channel should be made available to the users via IPTV, satellite, cable, different mobile devices and so on. The channel is currently negotiating with suppliers of content such as sports, movies, concerts, entertainment, documentaries, animation, plays, circus, current affairs and high profile live events.
Discovery 3D (most likely name) by Discovery Communications, partnering with Sony and IMAX is another 3D TV channel competitor expected to launch in 2011 (in USA), but with plans to have content 24/7, unlike some early competitors. The program of the channel will feature high-quality premium content from genres that are most appealing in 3D, including natural history, space, exploration, adventure, engineering, science and technology, motion pictures and children’s programming from Discovery, Sony Pictures Entertainment, IMAX and other third-party providers.
But what happens if you don’t happen to live in USA, UK, Spain, France or Korea for that matter as they seem to be always ahead in terms of new technology – no 3D TV for you at least for now. Of course the major TV networks will soon have their 3D channels available in other countries too with localized subtitles, but that might bring other issues as 2D subtitles will not always look good over all 3D video content. And even then, there is the matter with you having to wear glasses every time you want to watch TV and that is also something that will take some time to getting used to for most of the people that are new to 3D. So in the end there are a lot of unknown factors yet ahead of the wider stereoscopic 3D adoption that everyone is betting on for starting the summer of this year.
Some time ago YouTube has added support for uploading stereoscopic 3D movies in a side by side format (left and right frame into a single video stream next to each other) and then view them in different mode. This feature has not generated too much attention, simply because there is still not that much stereoscopic 3D content that can be freely distributed. And to tell you the truth I’ve known for this YouTube feature for quite some time, but I’ve tried it just today by uploading a clip recorded with FRAPS to test it…
If you already have the stereoscopic 3D video clip ready you can quite easily upload it to YouTube and you just need to enter something specific in the field for tags at the end of the list of tags you’ve provided for your video. The tag you need to enter as a last one is “yt3d:enable=true” (without the quotes) as you can see in the screenshot above – have in mind that this tag needs to be at the end and not specifically to be the only one entered. And that is it your stereoscopic video is uploaded an being processed and when it is ready you should be able to view it in the available Stereoscopic 3D modes that YouTube currently supports.
Here s a list of stereoscopic 3D modes that the YouTube player currently support with the main focus being the anaglyph modes, but there is also support for cross-eyed viewing method that does not require special hardware and there are even experimental modes for row interleaved viewing for passive polarized display users and a few others (including option to view just the left or right video frame in “plain 2D”). As you can see so far there is not way for you to directly watch the videos in stereoscopic 3D mode if you are using Nvidia’s 3D Vision setup, but do not loose your hope as there is actually a quite easy workaround. You just need to download the High-quality or High-definition version in MP4/MOV format of the YouTube video you want and then play it back through the NVIDIA 3D Vision Video Player without problems. And if you have some issues with playing back the downloaded movie you might need to first setup the codec list of the 3D Stereo Player in order to add the installed MP4/MOV splitter/decoder in your system (Settings / Decoder / MPEG4 Stream Splitter).
Have in mind that there are some possible issues when sharing Stereoscopic 3D videos through YouTube. I’m talking about the limited resolution the Stereoscopic 3D videos are being processed at and then made available for the user. And then there is the issue wit the quality as when the video gets re-encoded with a lower resolution an bitrate than the original one being used, so watching through the player or downloading it afterwards might result in not that great quality. If you want to upload 1080p stereoscopic 3D video or even a clip with 720p quality to YouTube you should forget about that with the reason being that you still get 1280 and 1920 maximum width for the re-encoded content you’ve uploaded as stereoscopic content. So for true 720p quality you’ll be uploading video with resolution of 2560×720 that will be downsized to 1920×540 (1080p HD) and 1280×360 pixels (720p HD), so you might consider recording the video in one of these two resolution, if you plan to share it exclusively through YouTube. This way you might achieve better quality when the video is being just recompressed and not resized by YouTube, but still it depends on a lot of other factors so it still might be considered to be a trial and error at first.
