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DVD Player Displays 2D Movies in 3D
Anonymous Writer writes "A company called Dynamic Digital Depth that wants to bring 3D television and movies to the mainstream claims to have developed a system that allows you to watch current 2D DVDs in 3D.
They claim the TriDef DVD Player uses image analysis methods, developed by the company for their 3D content conversion service, to convert 2D video to 3D in real-time based on 3D depth cues in the original movie.
It is the same company that produced the TriDef Movie Player software for the Sharp Actius R3D3 autostereo display notebook.
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if this will be succesfull The idea sounds cool though. Maybe even more cool for the porn fans out there :) (You know who you are)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Hmmm.. so what happens if I watch Spy Kids:3D on this? Will it upconvert me to 4D?
Hmmm.
I haven't RTFA, but I'm dubious about this claim. There simply isn't enough information in a 2D image to construct a 3D image. If there were, your brain would already do it (and, in fact, already does to a limited extent). I don't see how computer technology is going to improve on what your brain can already do.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
This "extra dimension" must be copywritten; I only paid for two. What should I do about this? Call my lawyer? Oh dear. :(
I remember reading about converting 2D movies to 3D when I was at primary school. Since then I've been through secondary school, two university courses and two jobs, and I'm still no closer to being able to watch the things.
Still, I look forward to being able to read ten years down the line about an amazing new device that can display current 2D movies in 3D.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
DDD AND nWAVE PICTURES SIGN DISTRIBUTION DEAL FOR 3D CONTENT
Hmmm.
tsk.. I think we all know what kind of movies every ./er is thinking of right now..
Yup.. Hot Linus action... In 3D!!
Has there been an independent review on this technology? I notice all of the links in the story point at the vendor's web site. Until then, call me a skeptic
Or is this just an ad story?
Imagine if this could work for video games.
That would make Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball all the much cooler to play
Evolution or ID?
I can't imagine what this would actually add to the viewing experience. It's a novelty at best, and a distraction from the experience as it was originally intended at worse.
I remember going to see "Jaws 3D" when it came out when I was in high school. After the first floating fish went by and you got over the urge to reach out and try to grab it... well you had 2 more hours of that. woo hoo.
Who cares?
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
I'm also firmly believe that VR and 3D displays are the Next Big Thing (TM) - atleast I hope it is. So I say more power to Sharp, DDD and other folks who're trying to make my dream a reality.
On the other hand, I'm not convinced by their "image analysis" based on depth cues:
hey claim the TriDef DVD Player uses image analysis methods, developed by the company for their 3D content conversion service, to convert 2D video to 3D in real-time based on 3D depth cues in the original movie.
As far as I can see converting current 2D media to 3D would require a great deal of human intervention - there's only so much that you can glean from image analysis (possibly hidden edges, object sizes and other CG cues). The bottom line is that it would take a human to tell if which of the two objects on the screen are supposed to be closer to the viewer. That alone IMHO would kill any efforts to bring this to the mainstream media business - it would be more fruitful to focus on cheaper/better techniques to create new 3D media.
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Having another 8 bits of information for depth. You could then do this easily. Not sure how the hell you'd capture that info though.
To clarify my situation, I am legally blind in one eye WITH corrective lenses (20/200). The only time I've ever experienced a 3D Imax movie, I was able to see the flickering which I assume is acutally multiple projectors at different refresh rates or something similar to generate the 3D effect. Since my optic nerves didn't know how to handle that kind of image, I got a migraine that lasted for several days.
"It's a dog eat dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear."- Norm (from Cheers)
Can someone shed some light on this subject? This to me seems like the perpetual-motion machine. Some company always claims you will see in 3D w/o using glasses. Is this theoretically possible? I mean without actually recreating a 3D scene in front of you, is it theoretically possible for a 2D device to make you see in 3D w/o any special apparatus that you put in front of your eyes? It seems like the holy grail of 3D.
Must-not-watch TV!
Looks flat on my monitor. This is crud.
Just like all those digital HDTVs they keep advertising on telly. They look no better picture wise than my 14" portable.
I'd be more interested to see how the 3d display work, myself.
I worked on a system like this for broadcast TV and VHS tapes back in the mid '90s. Consumers didn't want stereoscopic 3D then and I doubt they want it now.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
to capture the information based on filters. This filter would "pre" read the clip information and then convert the "blurry" or background images and then move the primary "focal point" image further towards the "front" of the clip.
A bunch of Tech Stuff
If 3d was impressive enough to sell lots of units, they'd still be making lots of 3d movies. They aren't, because the technology for displaying 3d is still not impressive enough nor widely spread. Once there is truly impressive 3d displays that can be widely deployed, the content will come naturally.
As an aside, I'd love to see Pixar render out a version of Finding Nemo for IMAX 3D - I think it'd be amazing, and would be a relatively small cost. If it was a success, they could do their whole catalog.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
IF this technology comes to market, I could imagine some anime people thinking it would be fun to play around with this and make things look all weird (so that the background is right in your face, while the foreground is far away - or a person whose leg is near you, but whose face is far and have objects pass each other in ways that would look fine in 2D but would look weird in 3D).
In short, this could bring us a whole new world of experimental film. Interesting, if true.
-CPM
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
Yep, and we know how well ATi's TrueForm(TM) works even when it has 3D data.
Automatically changing 1 thing to another without information is impossible. You must know enough about it (have enough prior information) to make resonable assumptions about how it should look. I suspect this technology is about 30 years away. Right along side face recognition.
Equally unbelieveing.
OK, I'm curious to see it--but I don't believe a word of it. My brain is capable of converting 2D presentations into 3D using depth cues. I suspect my brain is better at it than their software is. And that wherever their software falls short, there will be an intense mental irritation factor.
In the fifties, a sound engineer whose name escapes me devoted a _lot_ of effort to applying electronic filtering to add a stereo effect to Toscanini's recordings, with the idea that he was preserving them for posterity. Toscanini's recordings and reputation have survived, but it's noteworthy that all the CD remasterings are in mono.
I don't think I've seen any upsurge of interest in "colorized" black-and-white movies, either.
I would expect automatic 3D to suffer from the same issues as colorizing: problems at the edges where things are entering the frame, problems with things that are in the background and hence out of focus, scenes that consists of thousands of moving objects (crowds, tree leaves flexing in the wind, sunlight glancing off rippling water) where the cues are imprecise and the computational effort needed to track thousands of objects is intense...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Choice quote:
Binocular disparity only works out to a few metres distance. Beyond that you use different cues. Consider some papers by my supervisor, for example: A laminar cortical model of monocular and binocular interactions in depth perception, Neural Dynamics Of 3-D Surface Perception: Figure-Ground Separation And Lightness Perception
Sure I'll be able to watch 3d live-action movies on this thing, but what about hand drawn 2d animation?
I would assume that the 3d image is generated by comparing the different hues and contrast between pixels or elements in an image. How would this work with animated characters, where most areas are colored in a same uniform color? Would it look like your're looking at a bunch of cardboard cutouts in front of a backdrop?
Then again, cardboard cutouts pretty much describe most of the characters I see in modern movies anyways...
I've found a good test
image
for this technology.
Except this one looks like it's flashing in the middle of the room....watch your head.
The website blurs the line between discussing the automatic conversion of 2D movies (like the ones I have sitting by my DVD player right now) and 3D movies recorded in a standard 2D format DVD. I have no problem believing that a 3D movie encoded into a standard DVD can be viewed in full 3D. However, I was curious about the 'patented technology', so I went to the USPTO site and read the patent. It appears from the patent that the result of conversion from 2D to 3D is that it will take various 'objects' in the 2D image, outline them, and raise them off the screen. I have a strong feeling that you will get a Duke Nuk'em 3D image out of it, not the 3D you'd expect for the price of the 3D monitor and their converter system. I can't see that catching on.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
I stumbled on to this by accident a while back. You're obviously familiar with those stereogram images (look at infinity and a 3D surface emerges from a bunch of "random" dots). The trick is to give each eye different information.
I wondered, instead of doing this spacially, could one do it temporially? The answer is _YES_.
Open two copies of QuickTime and load the same movie in each. Put the two windows side-by-side. Now, advance the right one just a few frames (the arrow keys can do it). Then start BOTH running at the same time. (It usually takes a mouse click in one window and a keyboard focus on the other window to get this to happen.)
Now you have the same movie running side-by-side, although one is just a little off from the other.
No cross your eyes and produce an overlay of the two images. Obviously, smaller frames are easier on the eyes. Eventually your eyes will focus on the overlap, just as it does with the posters, and you can easily hold focus.
Surprise -- the movie has DEPTH. It's in 3D.
The only thing I can figure is that each eye gets a little different signal, and your brain has to piece the information together; when it does, you get 3D.
Normally you can use the red-blue glasses, sterograms, or hidden patterns in dots to do this. You can also get a similar effect by watching television with one eye closed (you're taking cues based on shadows and such), or, by having one eye look through a darkened filter. Not sure why that happens, but I suspect the difference between the left and right eye kick in the extra steps that trick the brain.
to take the red and green pixels and move them slightly off a bit like a real 3D movie does. The shadows and other details will be seen as 3D.
I recall that there was photo editing software that did this to 2D picture images, so it is possible to do it to a 2D movie in real-time should the CPU be fast enough to do it.
To quote that Wendy's lady from the 1980's "Where's the beef?" I searched those sites and could not even find a demo! Is it vaporware or real?
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If you are talking about a still frame, then real 3D seems as hard as you suggest.
But in a movie, the camera is moving pretty often, as are objects in a scene. If you look at a number of frames in a row you can get a pretty good idea of depth by how things move in relation to each other, or by natural reotation of an object (liek a person turn thier face).
All the DVD player needs to do is "read ahead" as it were to figure out what depth objects should have in a given scene. I'm sure there are all sorts of cheats you can do that would add fiarly correct looking depth to an object that would fall apart if you were trying to create a full 3D model, but which work great for 3D images on a screen.
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Reminds me of the VisuaLABS scandal. This guy fooled investors and squandered millions of dollars on his revolutionary 3D television which was nothing but an off-the-shelf large screen TV with a couple of lines etched into it and some camera tricks to give the illusion of depth. The founder (Sheldon Zelitt) was a bit of a wacko - spent his time in his inventor's studio playing with "optics" - which usually meant doing bizarre and childish things like gluing magnifying glasses to pennies with superglue (I made up that example, but you get the idea). I think he also once wooed investors with a parabolic mirror magic trick which I guess none of them had ever seen. More info here.
The early 1990's called. They want their overused hype back.
I still don't think it's a good idea. Much like colorizing black & white movies, this is changing a movie beyond what the original director ever intended. Even if you're not a purist about this sort of thing, the results would probably still be lousy because it was never in the directors mind in the first place.
No, not 3D films, but I've made single stereoscopic images from multiple frames from television. A scene in which the camera has transverse motion is best; two frames can easily have the same vantage point spacing as a person's eyes. Motion of the actors works also (if everybody is moving in the same direction.) Good stereoscopic effects can even be achieved when the actor is rotating. The key is to get two different viewpoints for the same object. The effect is dramatically more vivid than anything my brain can devive from 2D television.
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Directors will complain that 3D-izing violates their artistic integrity.
"My movie was written and directed for the flat screen!"
yada yada yada
Well, there are a lot of reasons but one that many don't know about is this.
But first a bit of background.
I was actually able to see a prototype of a (very low powered) laser that draws an image onto your retina. This was like maybe 5 years ago and it was the size of a full size freezer.
By looking into something that is quite similar to a viewfinder attached to the said freezer sized prototype, you could see an image. The cool part, is that you don't actually need a background "black" and hence the image can float in the air for you while you look at other things. They predict this device could be stuck on a pair of glasses (or sunglasses) in the future ala terminator overlay style. Yes, I saw it work but at the time it was the huge prototype.
I know how regular 3D works with one image to the left and one image to the right. But one of the big problems is that your eye cannot FOCUS on the image because to you an image might look like it is close to your face (via the left/right eye difference) but the actual image is far back where the screen is. This disparity causes you to feel nauseous. But a laser (and they hadn't done this yet) could modulate to place the image focally where it's supposed to be.
To make this more clear, if I drop a pebble in a pond, the curve of the ripple is different when I am near the drop point (very curved) compared to when I am far away (almost linear). In real life, the curve of the things you look at are all different based on how close/far they are. In 3D MOVIES, the line is always the same shape but your brain is interpreting it as either closer or farther (or is trying to anyways). Whamo. Instant headaches and nausea because your brain is having trouble figuring out what you are actually seeing the object.
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According to the patent: (USPTO#) 6,477,267
The displacement of the mesh sub-points may also be defined by a mathematical algorithm to thereby provide for automatic conversion of images. Further enhancements to the method could be to add shadow, blurring and motion interpolation data to the conversion data including force paralex information and field delay and direction for motion paralex delays.
Check out the patent for a full explanation of the technology.
The image shown would "vibrate", it moved wonky, but there definitely was depth to the image. You could record the image, and play it back, and it was still there - a form of 3D that required no changes in broadcast or recording equipment, no glasses needed to view, and no special viewing system to watch - in short, it allowed 3D to be created by anyone, to be viewed by anyone (as long as they had one working eyeball!), on any standard video equipment. I have never seen this technology demonstrated anywhere else, nor did the company which presented its work (along with video clips that were fun to watch) go on to produce these boxes for sale - the technology and the company just seemed to "vanish" (is it any wonder?).
The closest I have been able to find about how this technology works can be seen here. Please note that the site has "not safe for work" imagery on it...
This site's images, along with another poster's (below) comments about "temporal 3D" via running two movies out of sync, basically gives me a clue as to what they were originally doing:
I believe (now) that the box was somehow delaying the signal, every other frame, then interpolating those frames in/among the regular video frames and sending them down the wire. This isn't a very good explanation - basically, they were doing a combination of the temporal viewing with the "flicker GIF" of two stereo views (but without stereo, just time between the two frames) to generate the image. At the time, it must have been really expensive (for the RAM to buffer the image, etc) - although I wonder if they could have been de-interlacing frames and sending/reconstituting the frames by double-lacing the de-interlaced frames to make up the lost pixels, then showing each one (because each field of the frame would be out of sync by 1/15 second - maybe enough time to do the temporal 3D? - and it wouldn't require more than simple electronics rather than RAM buffering).
Aside from the flicker 3D images on the web (ie, those two different angle 3D animated GIF's like I noted above) - does anybody else remember seeing that episode of "That's Incredible", or anything else about the device? The episode was on in the mid-1980's or so...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
In 3D films, the directors can make it look like stuff is popping out of the screen, and certainly they do, but really they shouldn't. Every time they do that particular trick you basically have to go cross-eyed to see it correctly, and doing it much causes eye strain.
Better to use 3D more naturally and converge at screen depth. The effect still looks fresh and real, and the audience doesn't get a splitting headache after a while.
Incidentally, some 3D films have been almost entirely filmed so the picture seems to be "from the screen backwards", such as House of Wax. They're a real pleasure to watch.
Changing the way a copyright protected audiovisual work is presented can raise various legal problems. Remember the DGA v. Clearplay case? There is a legal interest of the author or who owns the copytight in the integrity of their works, and it can be protected in many different ways (Moral rights, although not in the States; Lanham Act art. 43 (a); the economic content of the authors reputation; freedom of speech, etc.). I'm a lawyer, but not in the States, so please excuse my english.