system for VIDEO

[specialawesome]

Hi y'all - I m a 3D film producer, having worked on VFX on many you've seen and producing/directing on a few you probably haven't...

I need a system for production. Ideally this system will do 2 things:

#1 it plays back 3D encoded media - this has to be circular polarized ----- anaglyph, shutter glasses etc etc are not acceptable.

We can and will be encoding the media when the proper tools / file formats etc become apparent - this will be part of our post-production process. Long story short is that this will be a system for editorial and effects work which will give us 3D viewing. We would assume that this will be render (compress / encode) then view but would like this this to EVENTUALLY become a realitime solution as in my viewer in Final Cut or Shake will be in S3D. I know that a few options out there right now seem like they could do the former, most promising appears to be the iZ3D - they publish some code and offer a video viewer app.

#2 in an IDEAL world this system will EVENTUALLY allow us to view the output of 2 cameras in realtime - thus 2 digital inputs i.e. HDMI/DVI in addition to the 2 outputs for the monitor. In this case the encoding would have to be realtime.

Could anyone who is using their 3D system for video viewing and/or encoding share their advice and ideas etc. I need to get a system which will do what is possible today, and I need to look forward to the future as to what changes are happening that will allow me to get the additional capabilities I need.

[WheatstoneHolmes]

Maybe if you contacted Peter Wimmer of http://www.3dtv.at" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Mister Wimmer programmed the highly regarded Steroscopic Player and he also has another program called Stereoscopic Multiplexer, I don't know if they have come as far as inputing 2 HDMI signals yet, but you could talk to them and see.

I'm NOT a broadcast/movie professional But I have been doing video since the old Amiga VideoToaster days!

There is a PC/MAC HDMI card that accepts and can switch/mix 2 HDMI cam inputs called BlackMagic Intensity http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

I'm little league right now, using Stereo Movie Player http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stvply/index.html to capture from 2 webcams.

I do have an HDMI camera also but can't afford it's twin yet.

[cybereality]

Hi, welcome to the forum. You have some interesting requirements for a production system and what you really seek is not commercially available I'm afraid. However there are a couple of off-the-shelf solutions that may work out for you if you are willing to create your own proprietary software.

As for your #1, there are two passive polarized monitors on the market. The IZ3D and the Zalman Trimon, both available for under $400. The IZ3D is linear polarized and works based on 2 overlapping LCD displays. The Zalman is circular polarized and uses xpol based horizontal interlaced micro-polarization. I've got the Zalman and it displays video very nicely using the Stereoscopic Player. The colors are rich, the image is crystal clear, and the ghosting is minimal. I've never used the IZ3D, so I can't comment on that, but I feel that the Zalman is production ready. The only downside is that the resulting image is interlaced (which doesn't bother me at all though), and also it has a smallish "sweet-spot" where you see the optimal stereo effect. Other than that I think it will suit your needs in terms of displaying stereo content. Also, it works on interlacing so it would be fairly straight-forward to create a plug-in for Final Cut Pro or Shake in order to get real-time previews in stereo. There is nothing on the market (that I know of) that will do this, but if you have a programmer (or hire one) I don't think this would be very hard to do. The IZ3D team is also very active here on the forum, so you may be able to contract them to create this for you.

As for #2, I'm afraid you are in no-mans-land. There are some proprietary solutions that may exist, I think Cameron may have built a system like that for Avatar. But I don't know of anything you can buy that will fit your needs. Obviously that would be the holy-grail of S3D production, but I think that may be a few years away. I imagine there may be some DIY methods of rigging something like this together but I'm not sure if that would be production ready. I would be interested to hear other people's thoughts though. I mostly use stereo3d for gaming, I know there are some amateur film-makers here, maybe someone else has a better idea.

[BlackShark]

For viewing, you are describing interlaced Xpol displays.
The cheapest ones are the Zalman consumer monitors. I've got the Zalman 22" and it works great but it's only a consumer monitor so it's not color calibrated.
The monitor only supports interlaced sources in it's native resolution (1680x1050 2D / 1680x525 3D) (not side by side L|R input like professional Xpol displays)
For displaying 3D content, you'll need the correct software that is able to grab the two views and convert on the fly to the display's native format.
Peter Wimmer's stereoscopic player (PC) does this very well for video files. It even works in windowed mode.

IZ3D offers an other passive 22" 3D display solution but this one uses linear polarisation and it offers full resolution (1680x1050). iZ3D has an open source media player able to display videos (PC). Not as many features as Peter Wimmer's player but works well enough.
The drawback with iZ3D is the lack of presently available support in professional apps. iZ3D offers the conversion algorithm for free (they're inside the media player source code). So support should be possible but i do not know any editing application/ that suppports the monitor.

For direct 3D viewing inside your video editing application, if your editing application has a stereo3d management and display feature / plugin available then there's a high chance the display will be supported, but you have to check first.
I do not know final cut or shake (i do not have a mac) but i have seen many people at Dimension3 expo doing video editing with 3D preview, so i guess there are some professional stereo3D video editing software available on the market.
As a backup solution, you can still do a work around by manually creating an anaglyph preview straight in the timeline (i do it with Sony Vegas) just to tweak the stereo3D effect, then revert back to normal to edit colors. It's not ideal but it works.


If you want higher resolution or want the straight side by side L|R input, you'll need to look for professional xpol displays from Hyundai, Samsung or JVC, but the prices are way higher.
I have seen some realtime 2xinput to 1xinterlaced converters on inition website. But these are designed for professionals cameras and professional displays only since they use HD-SDI inputs and output side by side L|R over hdmi.
http://www.inition.co.uk/inition/produc ... bCatID_=81" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[DavidGhast]

The only production-ready solutions on the market are in the hundreds of thousands, and thats for each component, and your limited by the tech they use instead of the tech that exists. Unless you got millions in funding to have these companies spoon feed you a solution, or have the the knowledge and skill and about 6 months of free time to R&D your own, then your SOL.