3D Vision Blog

Cesar Sommer has made available a new stereoscopic 3D video, a short music clip called “Fly With Me”, you can watch the YouTube 3D video embedded above or download it in Side by Side format from his website, along with some more of his 3D videos. You can also watch the 3D video on the 3DVisionLive website if you have a 3D Vision setup. The video was shot with the Sony 3D HXR-NX3D1 camera for close up shots (about 40% of the footage), the rest was shot with a custom made 3D rig using Canon 5D mark II’s for higher IO. As usual feel free to share your feedback after watching the video…

You can watch the short 3D trailer for an upcoming 3D movie called “Over the Sky” from Cesar Sommer, whose nice work in 3D format has already been featured here a few times. You can also find the 3D trailer of “Over the Sky” in his 3DVisionLive channel for 3D Vision owners, where you can also find some other of his works. The short movie was shot in collaboration with Clin d’Ailes, and although the final production release date is not set yet, it should be around February or March next year.

Cesar was kind enough to also share some details on the production of the movie, apart from the fact that he had some fun while shooting it as you can see from his impression on this photo. Most of the video was shot with the Sony HXR-NX3D1 3D camcorder, although for some scenes he also used the Canon 5D mark II stereo 3D rig he has built, although according to Cesar it was almost impossible to film the quick flying jets with it. The final movie might also have some in-cockpit 3D footage from the planes, but that is not yet finalized as shooting from the cockpit of a flying plane in 3D is something that needs to be carefully planed and executed.

The production pipeline consisted of a few steps with the first one being the use of the MVC to AVI Converter software form Peter Wimmer to split the .MTS 3D video file from the Sony camcorder into left and right AVI streams. The videos produced from the Canon-based stereo 3D rig are already in separate files for the left and for the right eye.

The next step of the production was to import the video files into Adobe After Effects for color grading and lining up the separates files, so that you can get a nice looking and properly aligned stereoscopic 3D movie in the end. Then the final step is to export the video from After Effects as a single left/right AVI file and cut it in Adobe Premiere. As I’ve mentioned already the project is still a work in progress and some extra footage will probably be shot and included in the final version, although there is still some time before we would be able to see the end result in 3D. Meanwhile you are welcome to share your feedback from the stereo 3D trailer, and ask some questions if there is something more you are interested in…

- To see the short 3D trailer of Over the Sky by Cesar Sommer in YouTube 3D…
- To see the short 3D trailer of Over the Sky by Cesar Sommer in 3DVisionLive…

Surprise 3D is a new stereoscopic 3D short film / music clip by Cesar Sommer that was shot with with two Canon 5D Mark II DSLRs and a custom made 3D Camera Rig. You can see the video on Nvidia’s 3D Vision Live Portal (should be available there shortly) or on Youtube 3D and you can download the short film from Cesar Sommer’s Homepage. The downloadable video is available in Side by Side format with Full HD 3D resolution as well as in FUJI W3 format, so that you can enjoy it without the glasses directly on your Fuji 3D digital camera. Below Cesar shares some interesting information and tips from the experience he had while shooting the Surprise 3D video…

The Post-production and Editing of the video was done in Adobe Premiere. The Pipeline in Adobe Premiere was used for syncing the clips, color correcting them and mirroring the files. The content was created for TV panels wit diagonals of up to 30″ as the IO was optimized for smaller screens, not for bigger screens like on 3D projectors. In the video I’ve paid a lot attention to the lightning and wanted to include more closeups.

After that It was exported as uncompressed AVI – and taken into Premiere for a second time to do the editing – you could also import sequences. So it was also ensured that the working project never got too big and Premiere crashed. Also the ability to save some settings and apply them to the other cuts was very helpful. At the end I added some color grading. You could also use After Effects for that…

For people filming with Canon’s 5D or 7D check out Technicolor’s new Cinestyle its free (to improve image quality for post). Of course there are other ways to mux the files together like NEO 3D or Ocula for Nuke but those are (very) expensive. But surely worth to have a look at them if you have a large commercial project – basically they do the same (as I did in Premiere by hand) but “easier” and more automated.

My next project is already in planning – I will shoot in the forest some ad-style short with a model. I’m still looking for content distributors and sponsors to realize further projects / collaborations.