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. "

Comments

I wonder

[Killjoy_NL]

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)

Re:I wonder

[gl4ss]

ME ???? SAY IT'S ME!!!

-

3D?

[Mz6]

Hmmm.. so what happens if I watch Spy Kids:3D on this? Will it upconvert me to 4D?

Re:3D?

[Walker2323]

You will see God.

Re:3D?

[kunudo]

It would show you the entire movie at once, since the fourth dimension is time.

Re:3D?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Nah, just 4 spacial dimensions. Just try to picture this: A rectangle extended into 3 dimensions would be a cube. Now extending that cube into a 4th spacial dimensions by makeing all the sides into cubes, without any of the volumes of the cubes sharing the same 4 spacial coordinates.

Warning: attemps to picture 4 dimensional objects may lead to brain damage. Symtoms are: inability to spel worts, Headaches and 1337-5p3ak abuse.
If you experience any of these symptons, don't bother to contact your doctor. you're done for.

Dubious

[Shimmer]

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.

Re:Dubious

[sinrakin]

The principle seems straight forward enough. You don't have enough 3D info in a single frame, but you have lots of frames. So as objects move, or the camera pans, you can tell by their apparent positional shift how far from the observer they are. Assuming the software can recognize and track some basic objects, it can make reasonable inferences about their depth into the scene. How it then displays the depth is another issue.

Re:Dubious

[moviepig.com]

There simply isn't enough information in a 2D image to construct a 3D image.

There's plenty of info to construct a 3D-image. There's just not enough to construct the 3D-image.

Part of the bizplan likely involves consumers not caring.

Re:Dubious

[NanoGator]

"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."

There is, kind of. Ever see those purple/orange glasses? There's an episode of Married With Children that was filmed to take advantage of those glasses. Thing is, you can't tell they filmed it that way if you're not wearing the glasses. It's not like the red/blue glasses that make a nauseating dual pattern on the screen. It looks like regular footage. I'm not 100% certain how they work, but I think they key off the highlights of the actors/objects they filmed. If I'm right, then most movies would be succeptible to this as fairly standard lighting creates those highlights. If that is right, then you could fake depth via an image processor.

Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt here, I'm using a lot of 'ifs'.

Re:Dubious

[drinkypoo]

Actually quite a lot of work has been done in generating polygonal geometry from entirely two dimensional information. If the subject rotates you can get an awful lot of info just by picking out points, recognizing them as they move across the screen, and tracking their relations. This of course is nontrivial, and the subject of much debate at siggraph. I am not a graphics programmer type, but a friend of mine (well he was a friend before he loaned out some of my shit to someone who lost it, failed to replace it, and then disappeared anyway, now he's just this guy I used to know) is and he had amassed quite a bit of literature on the subject.

Presumably they're doing the lightweight version of this, generating a more or less accurate height field from the results (geometry is not useful in this case) and then separating the colors based on the height field, giving the illusion of depth. Your brain is capable of figuring out what is or isn't in the foreground (unless deliberately fooled due to nifty camera work and/or CGI) but it doesn't make you think there's depth where there isn't. In most cases that is a feature, because you won't be fooled like Wile E. Coyote and run into a painting at full tilt if you have depth perception available to you. But, it does slightly diminish the entertainment value of video.

Re:Dubious

[varaani]

Not really that reasonable. If you look at the results of current optical flow and disparity estimation algorithms, they're really not that great. Discontinuities of the image (edges) are a huge problem, as is the whole top-down/bottom-up/gestalt-ordeal, and these have not been solved in any satisfactory manner.

To reconstruct the 3D scene generating the 2D images is effectively to solve vision, in its entirety. In real time, no less. So I would guess that they're doing something quite simple. I'd love to see it, but the information on the site is quite scarce. I'm just hoping that someone is not manually pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Re:Dubious

[Mwongozi]

That type of 3D exploits an optical illusion. With the glasses on, one eye sees a darker image than the other eye, although both eyes are receiving a full colour image.

Because one eye is receiving less light, it takes longer for your brain to process the information coming from it. By the time it has, it is combined with the information being processed from the other eye. Because of the disparity in processing times, the two images combined are a short amount of time apart.

Thus can be exploited by rotating the camera around an object. By the time one eye has processed it's image, the camera has moved slightly, and the other eye processes its image quicker. This, the disparity in angles created a 3D image.

It only works when the camera is moving around an object in the right direction. As soon as it stops, the scene will look flat again, although you may think you are still perceiving depth because you brain remembers the previous depth information.

Extra dimensions don't come free, folks!

[_14k4]

This "extra dimension" must be copywritten; I only paid for two. What should I do about this? Call my lawyer? Oh dear. :(

I remember this...

[iapetus]

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.

hot 3d action!

[welshwaterloo]

tsk.. I think we all know what kind of movies every ./er is thinking of right now..

Yup.. Hot Linus action... In 3D!!

Independent review?

[Joseph Vigneau]

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?

Video Games

[millahtime]

Imagine if this could work for video games.

That would make Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball all the much cooler to play

what does it add?

[trix_e]

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?

Re:what does it add?

[drinkypoo]

I'm not talking about pr0n here, obviously.

Obviously. Every porn movie is "shot" for 3D. So to speak.

More power to them!

[GillBates0]

I've always been a 3D freak - I've played Anaglyph 3-d Quake, I collect stereograms and routinely watch documentaries in 3-D IMAX.

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.

Re:Urp...

[jsupreston]

I'd be really interested in this if it were to make it to Imax. Due to my eyesight, the 3D glasses are useless to me...except for giving me one of the worst migraines I've ever had in my life.

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.

Re: 3d

[leenoble_uk]

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.

And this is new?

[Kenja]

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.

Meh

[JMZero]

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.

TrueForm TM

[dnoyeb]

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.

Enhanced for stereo, colorization...

[dpbsmith]

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...

More detail

[Overt Coward]

Article containing more info

Choice quote:

But the result isn't quite like viewing something truly filmed in 3D. Most of the 3D effects are "from the screen backwards, (with) no off-the-screen effects," Harman says. This could be a disappointment to aficionados of 1950s guilty-pleasure flicks, who know that the whole point of watching a 3D movie is to see various objects (mostly monsters) popping out of the screen.

Lots of Research on this

[Roger_Wilco]

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

Test image

[pr0nbot]

I've found a good test
image
for this technology.

Re:Flash

[lightsaber1]

Except this one looks like it's flashing in the middle of the room....watch your head.

Trick: Watch Your Own Footage in 3D

[wls]

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.

Another VisuaLABS

[wash23]

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.

VR?

[Quarters]

I'm also(sic) firmly believe that VR and 3D displays are the Next Big Thing (TM)

The early 1990's called. They want their overused hype back.

I've Done It

[ChrisMaple]

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.