The Seven Masters
 

I have just uploaded something I have spent several weeks writing, called The Seven Masters. I know it sounds like the name of a fairy tale, but it is actually a discussion of the only seven master formats we ever need to save the master of any 2D or 3D photo or video ever made (at least to the best of my knowledge), including such concoctions as Robert Rodriguez's dreadful glasses-on-glasses-off gimmicks, where he switches between 2D and 3D in the same movie.

There are of course many useful 3D delivery formats, but I am talking about mastering formats for saving your original before (and after) you edit it. And any of the plethora of delivery formats can be produced from the Seven Masters.

Please read it and comment.

That is quite a detailed document and a large undertaking. I don't understand the details too well yet, but reading it has helped me understand some more details about 3D video and I think a couple more reads of it will make things much clearer. The idea of promoting a standard for multi angle video storage is a great direction to take, and I didn't realize it didn't exist already but considering that the HDMI 1.4 spec was just released should have made that more apparent. Your method looks well thought out and hopefully will be well accepted by this community. I would be interested in knowing how this method compares to what is being used in the new 3D Blu-ray discs. I would think your method may lend itself to multiangle video storage for applications beyond movies, such as industrial and medical situations; think of the BP undersea video, if more angles were used of the leak it would allow better understanding and calculations of the overall problem; I am assuming using the lenticular imaging extensions could be applied to allow different 3d perspectives. Hats off to your great work.

Hmmm... 73 views and no comments?

That can mean one of three things:

1. I wrote it in such a complicated way that no one can understand what I am talking about. I hope not.

2. I wrote it so clearly that no one feels the need for any further discussion. I doubt that.

3. I am way over my head and people are just laughing but are too polite to tell me.

So, which is it?

Please, I need some feedback. My goal is to ultimately produce tools that will allow anyone to shoot, edit, and watch 3D videos, but I need to know if anyone actually wants it.

Thank you, Steve. I see you and I posted at the same time. I was starting to get worried that no one found it useful.

i think you started wrong with 3D. it is not 3D, it is stereoscopic.
3D is even more than stereoscopic, since stereoscopic is perspective from both eyes.
Then 3D is extrapolated from this dual perspective, but you can still create stereoscopic without 3D.
Some movies are (poorly) reedited from 2D to stereoscopic , and from quasi unanimity that is bad.
To create stereoscopy the easiest is to shoot 3D objects, but you do not really need.
Real 3D allows you to turn around the scene and get total freedom of viewing the scene from any position (including outside or inside the scene, even trough the eyes of an actor.).
Virtual reality (VRML world) are doing this since few years, but it is pretty limited to computer graphics.
Now computer graphics can be more real than reality, but it is still very expensive to produce, so not a real solution for now.
Close is the full 360 video, that use several camera to capture the full sphere. This allows you to shoot real scene with real people and real action, but limitation is you can look in any direction, but only from the camera point of view. (great for sport, less for cinema).

you do not even mentioned another real 3D that is hologram, since real holographic exists or
array of lenses that can register the deepness of a scene and allow to recreate DOF after the take.
Would all these technologies be only a dream, i would take your essay as correct, but since they exist, i think you need to go a bit deeper than the current stereoscopic hype.

Hi Adam, it was number one for me. I am pretty new to the game of 3D and read it right through. But most of it went a distance above my head I am afraid.

Cheers
Steve

Yes, holograms exist, but can they be used in video? I don't really know that much about them.

Well, I am defining right at the start of that page that I am talking about 3D photography and that I am including film and video in my use of the word photography.

I did not want to use the word stereoscopy because the system is extensible. It is conceivable that holography might be added to it when it becomes suitable for film and video. Or any other technology that can come up in the future. As long as it can be expressed as multiple bitmaps, all of which have the same width and height, it can be added.

I certainly would not mind walking through a holodeck, and designing the way to save it in a file and loading it back from the file. But I suspect it is not going to happen in my life time. Though if it does, I will be more than happy to add it to the system. If not, others will have to do that.

A french guy has already produced holographic movies (well known flying dove), but that's like sending a man on the moon, possible but very difficult.
If you stay on stereoscopy, you put a limit on what is delivered or encoded very low. (after all is just adding a second video stream to the first one, the way you encode it is just a detail).
We can record and play stereoscopic pictures since more than 100 years now, and we are reaching the consumer level. the only problems left are , can we sell it in way it is cheap and sexy enough for people to buy it.(like removing glasses). But today, steroscopy is a thing from the past you can buy in supermarket.
Augmented reality, real 3D, is the futur and all the standards stay to be defined.

IMHO, stereoscopic is the entry ticket for all these new technologies to emerge.
Augmented reality can survive with 2D only, but most technologies will need us to "see" them 3D.
and by chance, as you said, we only have two eyes.
So stereoscopy is only the interface we need to see the result, and is not a goal by itself.
Avatar is a good example, by pointing to the fact that most of the pictures seen in that movie are computer generated. Most of people just see in Avatar the "3D" movie and it is wrong.
Avatar was the good way to show that an old trick (stereoscopy) is the first step to unlock the power of what can be done (like generating worlds that looks true).
We are generating such world since a long time (remember Jurassic Park ?).
tomorrow we will get information that is recorder or generated in real 3D, and to be seen, a stereosopic output will be generated on the fly, like it is for most of the PC games you can run in 3D today.
another way to explore is the 3D wihout stereoscopy (no glasses!). you just need to track the position of the viewer and generate a 2D picture that show the correct point of view. this has been made with a simple Wii remote controle, but the main problem is only one viewer can use the system.