World's First Integrated Twin-Lens 3D Camcorder
ElectricSteve writes "Shooting in 3D has traditionally required a complex, bulky and fragile rig using two cameras and additional hardware to calibrate and adjust them. Panasonic's straight-forwardly-named Twin-lens Full HD 3D camcorder looks to radically change the 3D game, with integrated lenses and dual SDHC memory card slots allowing you to capture 3D footage immediately, with just one device." So there ya go, get started making your own Avatar.
I can't WAIT to see all those cute kitten videos in 3D!!!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
So where do I get the blue aliens and the monsters and the vehicles and ...
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
nuff said
...some things don't need to be shooting off the screen at me.
Maybe it's about time that the standard consumer camcorder takes video in full HD for a decent price? I'd like to see that first. But no, focus development on something comparatively few people care about and are willing to pay for, not something that should have been done a couple of years ago.
Now not only can our relatives bore us with their hours-long videos of their cruise, but they can also leave us with (worse) headaches and intense nausea! Now that's what I call progress!
Does anyone know of decent suppliers of 3d viewing equipment? Say glasses/monitors? I've found some sites in the US but they aren't cheap (especially with shipping to UK).
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
3D handheld shaky-cam shots. My eyes can't wait!
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Great, now every porn flick is going to look like a Gallagher concert.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Stewardesses - now in actual 3D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87WgmGHz9U4
There may also be "other" applications. I'll get back to you on that.
The hype claims "While it's far cheaper than building your own 3D rig, the SRP of US$21,000... ", but that is far from accurate. You can build your own quite decent 3D system with two inexpensive (around $100 bucks each) Canon cameras, some free open source software, and very simple hardware. See http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/sdm/index.htm for details.
Plus, adding insult to injury, the article raves about this $12,000 camera working with two inexpensive SDHC memory cards rather than more expensive P2 memory cards. Doesn't the $12,000 price tag rather defeat any savings in memory cards?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I really just don't understand this whole 3D movie thing. It's about as interesting as VR gloves in the late 90s; a neat idea, but really nothing but an expensive, impractical gimmick.
I think I'll sit this out until someone invents the Holodeck, or at the very least, makes something that doesn't hurt my eyes or make me wear glasses.
"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. " ---Henry David Thoreau
"Dr. Tongue's Evil House of Wax"
"Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Stewerdesses" [marginally NSFW]
And, of course, "Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Pancakes".
Now that we have a consumer-grade method of creating 3D footage, I'm waiting for ocular implants so the 3D footage can be streamed directly to my brain!
I've always thought it would be pretty awesome to have a 3D HUD to life without having any goggles; it would just be built right into my synapses! I suppose the challenges would be streaming the data to the ocular implants; I have a feeling bluetooth wouldn't have enough bandwidth to handle the feeds.
Ah, found the third one. Actually it was "Dr. Tongue's Evil House of Pancakes".
"Would you like some more ... PANCAKES?"
It is good to see that the digital video world has caught up with the Victorian era, in which stereo photos were extremely popular.
Of course, it did take a while before the RealD technology became available, making high quality COLOR 3D video possible. It would be interesting to see someone do a steampunked version of the camera.
Before we receive some epic amateur porn.
Go to Toys R' Us
Now, this is perfect for some homemade pr0n videos.
Minti: What's that huge shuriken in your back?! Kin: It's the instrument of my victory.
Panasonic was demonstrating a stereo NTSC camcorder at the NSA (National Stereoscopic Association) convention in Portland in 1987. It used LCD shutter glasses to view the video on a standard NTSC monitor. They were showing video shot at the Viewmaster factory in Portland (since closed).
Cameras need better mic options.
The site is focusing on still 3D, but the cameras will do video as well and there is nothing to stop you from taking the two stereo videos and putting together a 3D video, it's not much different than combining 3D still pictures. Pick a supported Canon camera that does HD video any you can get 3D HD (or go cheap for 3D standard video).
In fact, that the Panasonic uses two separate SDHC memory cards rather tham on card makes me suspect that the Panasonic system is doing pretty much what this much less expensive system is doing; recording each camera to a different card and then putting the 3D images back together later in software.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
With hookers, and blackjack...
> So there ya go, get started making your own Avatar.
But with a better plot, please.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Did anyone else notice, how the lenses seem too close to each other?
Looks like everything recorded by that thing will look like a dog’s perspective (eye-distance-wise).
YOU’RE WINNER! ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Stereo Movie Maker
Yeah, there won't ever be a good consumer HD video camera as long as they have to be portable. Packing it into that size, you're not going to have enough light-gathering ability without resorting to a small, noisy sensor.
Your pixels are just over a tenth the size of SD pixels (due to wide-screen aspect), and SD camcorders are already struggling to gather enough photons.
The solutions are to use wider field of view or larger lenses. That's it, really. The problem is fundamental, not limited to "how accurate the sensor is". You can only count the photons you receive, even a perfect sensor is going to have unappealing measurement uncertainty compared to a perfect sensor with a larger lens system.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I have some vision issues (wear glasses, have had surgery, was born cross-eyed, etc). I can't for the life of me remember the exact medical term, but I don't have depth perception like average folks. When the optometrist does the depth-perception test with the little dots, and one is supposed to pop out at you, I see no popping.
Now, I've watched Avatar (twice - once in non-3D and once in RealD) and thought it was great. I could see the 3D, but it wasn't anything crazy. It really just emphasized the focus point of the camera, and made things appropriately blurry if they were not the thing being focussed on. Trees closer to the camera loooked like they were closer to the camera. But I already knew that, because they're, well, bigger. I guess it added a bit of perspective, but nothing spectacular.
My question, thus, being: Is 3D really THAT great, that we want 3D TVs and camcorders? Or am I missing out on the full AWESOME of 3D becasue of my vision issues?
To me 3D still seems really gimmikey and more of a distraction than an actual addition to a film
I use 64-bit Linux, and my Unix time doesn't roll over until Sunday, December 4, 292,277,026,596, you insensitive clod!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Does it/Do they look bigger in 3D?
At some point, yes, our relatives shall bore us with their hours-long videos of their cruise, and leave us with (worse) headaches and intense nausea.
But at a current price of US$21,000 it won't be soon.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
For a 3D TV to work properly you should use it in a dark room (with dark walls) and preferably with a big screen otherwise you'll get insane headaches.
That's because otherwise you'll perceive not just the TV flipping but the whole environment around it and your body is not just used to that.
They should release just 3D glasses with lcd (oled) monitors within the glasses, that would be much cheaper and practical.
It's also better to expect the 240Hz TVs that are scheduled to release.
It only has one eyepiece! Talk about a huge oversight for a 3D camera! With all the engineering that went into this camera, it's amazing they missed this one.
3-D won't take off as a serious tech until two way brain computer interfaces are as commonplace as cell phones are today. No one want's to have to deal with 3-D that requires you wear glasses or contact lenses or what not, it would be more easily accepted if you could just stream the data to your visual cortex along with all of the other sensations that "realistic fantasy reality" entails.
Flittery jittery images in bulky headache producing glasses that appears somewhat 3-D won't compare to simulated optic nerve data being fed by a computer.
I will wait for the iBrain or the iMind before I go "Full 3-D".
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
If you are doing still shots or landscape, then that is more than sufficient. I have a collection somewhere of a bunch of stereo pairs I took during a vacation that way. They seem to be as good as any more expensive method. And if the 3d-ness isn't what you had hoped for, then you still have two shots.
[quote]wheres the 3d porn?[/quote] You mean 3d amateur porn.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Mod Parent Up. I can't tell you the number of "HD" consumer grade camcorders I've seen that output the requisite number of pixels, but they're so noisy and flat with improper color separation that you might as well be grabbing video in 320x240 and upscaling to 1080p. In fact, not seeing what the insides of these camcorders look like, that's what they may very well be doing.
Most DVD's look amazing on high end TV's, and that's because the original SD signal is so clean and crisp. HD level consumer camcorders don't seem to get anywhere near the visual output level of a professional SD camera. In essence, you're losing potential visual clarity (and a heck of a lot of wasted Hard Drive space) so that you can slap an HD logo on it.
Digital still cameras seem to have abated on the whole "I have more megapixels than you" war, and now are competing more on actual visual clarity. I can't wait until camcorders achieve the same thing.
The ______ Agenda
For the best reading experiance, imagine the post above is responding to a comment about color televisions.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Glasses are fine in the theater but I don't think this is going to take off at home until we can view stereoscopic content without glasses. As far as I know, this is impossible because it requires each eye to receive a slightly different image. That's the whole point of the glasses, to show one eye something different from the other. Anyone got suggestions as to how it could be done?
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This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
There's a reason professional cameras have mic in lines - sometimes even two. You can't stuff a little piezo mic into the camera body and then think you're going to get marvellous sound quality; and most people aren't going to care either.
The people who would use these types of (semi-)professional (3D or otherwise) HD cameras are going to have a boom mic dangling above the people they need to get on track - you could try and stick directional microphones to your camera with duct tape and you still wouldn't get anywhere near the quality.
Wonder if you can load Scorpion Stare onto it?
"radically change the 3D game" ... to which video game are you referring?
What if they made Cloverfield in 3D?
I once had a signature.
Yeah, there won't ever be a good consumer HD video camera as long as they have to be portable
Why would a digital camcorder need to be much bigger than a digitial stills camera of similar image quality?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Shouldn't the parallax be consistent with the zoom level? How is that possible when the distance between the oculars is fixed?