3D Vision Blog

One of the common complaints by the new to 3D users from the usual 3D video players such as the 3D Vision Video Player and the Stereoscopic Player is that they lack some features that have been common for quite a while on other 2D video players like Media Player Classic, KMPlayer, GOM Player, VLC etc. Unfortunately none of these few very popular and widely used media players does have full stereoscopic 3D video support, but some of them do have some useful features for people watching 3D videos as well. I’m going to be talking about the GOM Player here, as it is one of the first to implement some stereo 3D-related features in its official version and more specifically 3D subtitle support. This means that when playing back 3D video sin Side by Side or Over/Under format you would be easily properly overlay 2D text subtitles over the video in a proper format, so that you would get 3D subtitles displayed at screen depth. An easy to use functionality built into the GOM Player that everyone can use without having to go through adding additional filters and configuring them as is the case with using the ffdshow subtitles filter for example, but also not as flexible and as functional as the external ffdshow filter for subtitles.

To activate the 3D subtitles support in the GOM Player you need to right click on the video player, select the Subtitles menu, 3D Subtitles Mode and choose Disabled for 2D subtitles, Left/Right Mode for Side by Side and or Top/Bottom Mode for Above/Below videos. Have in mind that the choice you’ve selected remains until you close the player or select something else, so even if you play a 2D video after watching a 3D video with activated 3D subtitles support, the subtitles will still be shown “doubled” in the 2D video, so you would have to switch to 2D mode. Closing the player and then running it again however resets the 3D Subtitles mode to the default Disabled state, meaning the normal 2D video support.

When switching the subtitles to a different mode for 3D videos the on-screen messages overlayed on the video from the player also change correspondingly to reflect the 3D format of the video being used. What is left however is to also do the same with the playback controls of the player at the bottom of the screen that still render in 2D. So a job well done for the authors of GOM Player, but there is more to be desired in terms of stereoscopic 3D support that can be added in the software. Have in mind also that the 3D Subtitles functionality of the GOM Player is only useable for playing back 3D videos with subtitles on 3D HDTVs with manually activating Side by Side or Above/Below input mode. GOM Player does not support HDMI 1.4 frame packaging or frame sequential output for 3D content and is not compatible with stereoscopic 3D solutions such as the 3D Vision, so it is not a complete replacement for the 3D Vision Video Player or the Stereoscopic Player, just an alternative that you may use in some cases.

- To download and try the latest version of the free GOM Player with 3D Subtitle support…

Nvidia has also released an updated version of the 3D Vision Video Player Version 1.7.2 along their latest 280.19 beta GeForce driver (the latest Stereoscopic Player is version 1.7.3 and it has some extra features). The most interesting thing in the new 3D Vision Video Player 1.7.2 is the support for Windowed 3D mode along with the MVC decoding support, have in mind however that there is no MVC decoded included in the package. And although the Player can now decode MVC with a proper additional codec, it does not mean that it will be able to play encrypted Blu-ray 3D movies, for that you would still need to use a full featured Blu-ray 3D software player such as PowerDVD for example. The MVC decoding support is good to have if you are recording for example video in MVC format with a 3D camcorder or need to play back such content without having to convert it in another format, again yo would need to have a proper decoded for MVC installed additionally.

Version 1.7.2 new features:

- Added support for 3D Vision Window mode. Please view this knowledgebase article for more information on 3D Vision Window Mode.
- Added support for interlaced MVC content.
- Added support for MVC content in MP4 containers.
- Added ‘default’ option in full screen monitor menu.
- Added error message when opening encrypted Blu-ray files.
- Added option for DMX512 output to send only used channels.

Version 1.7.2 bug fixes:

- Fixed issue with Coraline Blu-ray disc.
- Fixed seeking deadlocks with left/right *.m2ts files.
- Fixed exception when calling GetDuration automation command on still files.
- Fixed that player doesn’t close file handles of jpg files.
- Fixed long load delay with certain files when ffdshow Video Decoder is used.
- Fixed error after resume from sleep mode.
- Fixed DirectX recreation error after fast user switching.
- Fixed compatibility issue with DivX Demux Filter.
- Fixed issue with H.264 AVIs with resolution greater 1920×1080.
- Fixed issue when opening left/right *.m2ts files from Blu-ray 3D discs.

- To download the latest 3D Vision Video Player Version 1.7.2…

Enabling proper 2D subtitles to be shown while playing a 3D video with the 3D Vision Video Player (or the Stereoscopic Player) may sound easy for some people, but it seems that much more have trouble setting this up properly, so here is a quick and up to date guide on how to do it. What you need first is to download the latest version of the 3D Vision Video Player or the Stereoscopic Player and the latest version of the ffdshow filter/decoder pack.

Start the 3D Vision Video Player, go to the File menu and select the the Settings option from there. Click on the Decoder setting and extend the list called Other, select the Video Processor option and click on the Add button. From the list with filters you will see in a new window you need to select the ffdshow subtitles filter and click on the Ok button. At this point you are halfway there, you’ve told the player to load the DirectShow subtitles filter when you play a video, but there are some more things still left to be done in order for everything to start working as you want it and for you to see the subtitles.

Now you need to open a video file with the 3D Vision Video Player in order for the subtitles filter to be loaded, so that you can configure it to display subtitles in 3D properly. You don’t need to open a 3D video with subtitles at this point as you will only be configuring the filter, so open the video and hit the pause button, then look in the system tray at the lower right end of the monitor for a small square red icon with the text FFV on it (you may have multiple of these, not just one, if the video is also being decoded with ffdshow). When you move the mouse cursor over these icons you will see a balloon with information, just do a double left click on the one that says ffdshow subtitles filter and you should see a configuration menu like the one above.

When you see the ffdhsow subtitles filter configuration menu you need to put a tick in the box before Subtitles in the left menu, so that you will actually activate the filter to show the subtitles and then click on the Placement menu and put a tick in the checkbox in front of the Stereoscopic option, this will make the subtitles show in both the left and right eye frames, so that they will look properly. That is pretty much all you need to do in order to make the 2D subtitles work and display properly over a 3D video, you can play with the other options if you wish to customize the way the subtitles are being shown. By default the subtitles are shown at screen depth (zero parallax), but with the help of the Parallax slider you can make them appear inside the screen or outside of it, however you should not be playing with this if you don’t know what you are doing to prevent yourself from making the subtitles unintentionally harder to read. Just leave them with the default zero parallax, it should work just fine with 95% of the cases and change the subtitles parallax only if a specific movie needs it.

Now you can just open the 3D video file with the 3D Vision Video Player like you do normally and if you have subtitles with the same name as the video file (video.mp4 for example) and a proper text format such as SRT (video.srt for example) in the same folder of the video file they will be loaded automatically and displayed on the screen over the video. If you still don’t see the subtitles, they go back and check if you’ve done everything in the guide properly. Very similar alternative solution is to activate the Subtitles from the ffdshow decoder configuration, however this will be active only when you are using ffdshow for decoding the video. By using the method described above with the ffdhsow subtitles filter you can use different video decoder and still have the subtitles shown, so the use of the external DirectShow subtitles filter is the more flexible solution.