Stereo3D Preview output from camcorders

[Pavel Houda]

Originally Posted by Steve Shovlar

Pavel, there are definately 7 inch tablets running windows with two USB2 ports. It would be easy to make a mount to fit on the camera as a monitor.

........

That is a great option Steve. Thanks for pointing it out! Are you going to get something like that?

[Pavel Houda]

Part of the reason why I ended up with the notebook, was that I want to use the Vuzix Wrap 920 glasses as a viewfinder, and VGA is the only real connection they have to computer. The glasses are great viewfinder, alignment and balance checker, as well as 2D viewer and 2D to 3D converter. You can input side-by-side or anaglyph video into them, and they can either display it the way it is input in 2D, or convert it into Left/Right eye views - so that you can see the stereo video of the two camcorders, and do on the spot corrections. Since I like to use inertial stabilizers, the glasses are ideal primary viewfinder during capture. I placed on Vimeo and YouTube the final section of the "trilogy", showing the glasses and attempting to describe the advantages. The links are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFYa25w4tUo , and

Part 3 of the Articulated Amateur 3D Rig Experiment -Partially Red & Cyan 3D HD Anaglyph on Vimeo

. I have the rig mounted on the Steadicam Merlin and it works well.

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Pavel Houda

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFYa25w4tUo

Unfortunately, that video is set as private, so you are the only one who can see it on YouTube.

[Steve Shovlar]

Originally Posted by Pavel Houda

That is a great option Steve. Thanks for pointing it out! Are you going to get something like that?

I have to find the right one at a low price. 10 inches is too big for a monitor mounted on a rig to carry. Need a 7 inch with two USB 2 sockets. I have found 7 inch tablets with one USB 1.1 and a USB 2 OTG but that's no good.

Also need to know if Stereoscopic Multiplexer will work on Windows CE. Anyone know?

I'll keep looking and if I find a tablet solution will post it on here.

If it does work we can all have an extremely cheap completely portable 3D monitoring solution as the tablet will have its own built in battery. A pair of anaglyth glasses and we are all good to go anywhere.

[Pavel Houda]

Originally Posted by Adam Stanislav

Unfortunately, that video is set as private, so you are the only one who can see it on YouTube.

Whoops, sorry, I forgot. I always start in "private" mode, to preview what is there and to block it until it is actually processed. It is "public" now. Thanks for letting me know.

[Pavel Houda]

Originally Posted by Steve Shovlar

I have to find the right one at a low price. 10 inches is too big for a monitor mounted on a rig to carry. Need a 7 inch with two USB 2 sockets. I have found 7 inch tablets with one USB 1.1 and a USB 2 OTG but that's no good.

Also need to know if Stereoscopic Multiplexer will work on Windows CE. Anyone know?

I'll keep looking and if I find a tablet solution will post it on here.

If it does work we can all have an extremely cheap completely portable 3D monitoring solution as the tablet will have its own built in battery. A pair of anaglyth glasses and we are all good to go anywhere.

You will need to find a tablet running Windows XP, Vista or "7". Windows CE is a very different OS. The system requirements for the "Stereoscopic Player" as well as many other details about it and about the "Stereoscopic Multiplexer" are on their web site: 3dtv.at - Stereoscopic Player System Requirements . The S/W is very well documented and flexible. The dongles that I used also require one of the listed OS's for their drivers. Please let us know when you find great H/W device. The smallest devices I found here were Sony's PCs, and these are pretty expensive for the value. The tablets sure sound ideal....

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Pavel Houda

It is "public" now.

Good. I gave a thumbs up. :)

[Pavel Houda]

Dekuji Adame!

[Steve Shovlar]

Originally Posted by Pavel Houda

You will need to find a tablet running Windows XP, Vista or "7". Windows CE is a very different OS. The system requirements for the "Stereoscopic Player" as well as many other details about it and about the "Stereoscopic Multiplexer" are on their web site: 3dtv.at - Stereoscopic Player System Requirements . The S/W is very well documented and flexible. The dongles that I used also require one of the listed OS's for their drivers. Please let us know when you find great H/W device. The smallest devices I found here were Sony's PCs, and these are pretty expensive for the value. The tablets sure sound ideal....

OK I found this from China. It has Windows 7 installed. Not sure if the processor is beefy enough. Thoughts?

10.1'' touch screen tablet pc MID Intel N450 1.66GHZ on eBay (end time 10-Aug-10 15:06:17 BST)

It costs £288 ( $435). Three USB 2.0 ports.

Type Tablet PC
Screen Size 10"
Processor Brand Intel
Processor Type Intel Atom
Hard Drive Capacity 160GB
Memory Capacity 1GB
Graphics Card Type Integrated Card
Processor Main Frequency 1.66GHz
G.Weight/ Package SIZE 1.7KG/29×20×18CM
Place of Origin Guangdong, China (Mainland)
Display 10.1 TFT LCD widescreen with resolution of 1024x600
CPU Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz
Bus Frequency 1GB DDR2 667MHz
Chipset Intel NM 10 high speed chipset
Camera 1.3MP
Graphic Card Intel945GSE+ICH7-M/NM10 EXPRESS
Network Connection built-10/100 internal card,wif,802.11b/g,+3G
Interface 3xUSB 2.0, 1xVGA, 1 x SD/MMC card reader slot
Battery Capacity 3200mAh
Color Silver

[Steve Shovlar]

I found an excellent 7 inch tablet PC which runs Windows 7. It has two USB2.0 ports.
It is about perfect, except it doesn't come that cheap.
eo a7330T Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) - TabletKiosk
$1,145.00

Pretty sure this could be mounted with relative ease onto a rig. There's a protective sleeve for it in the accesories section.

Thoughts?

[Pavel Houda]

That is a cool one Steve. My son just told me about this brand - supposed to be good. myviliv.com . They actually have several cool devices, but would need to be augmented with USB hub. If I were to get one of these, I would make sure that it is returnable. Between the dual USB stream handling, muxing, image processing, display processing, scaling and filtering, this maybe a lot for many of these low power portable CPUs, even though processing just SD. Some people complain that these are too weak even just to browse. From these little things I would feel comfortable with the Alienware, but that is not a tablet...

[Steve Shovlar]

Pavel, if you pick up one of those Viliv's let me know how it goes.
My Easy Cap dongles arrived today but I have just wasted about 5 hours trying to get them to work. Got them off ebay but pretty sure they are Chinese copies of the original device and came with NO DRIVERS! Spent hours trying to source the correct driver with no luck as of yet. I just can't get an image to appear in Multiplexer from any of the different combinations I choose.

As the source of the video is HDV from a couple of Sony HDR-HC5's, I notice the only choices I have in Multiplexer are SD PAL ( which is what I want for this region) Could you please post your settings for Multiplexer so I can see where I am going wrong?

Thanks
Steve

[Pavel Houda]

Hi Steve. Sorry that you are having problems. I am using SIIG dongles that I picked up in a local store, because I needed Win 7 64 bit drivers, and not all the dongles have them yet. I got fooled on eBay buying from certain far east country twice already, that makes it "shame on me", and I will not do it again.

The Stereoscopic Multiplexer is set up for 720x480x16 bit capture, TriVid Capture devices, UYVY 4:2:2 subsampling, 29.97 fps (both the resolution and the frame rate are useful for US only),

Renderer: (RGB, 32bpp, 1440x -480), AVI Decompressor: XForm In Connected to Smart Tee (UYVY, 16bp, 1440 x 480), SForm Out connected to Video Tenderer (RGB, 32bpp, 1440x -480);

Smart Tee: Input connected to Stereoscopic Multiplexer (UYVY, 16bpp, 1440x480), Capture not connected, Preview connedted to AVI Decompressor (UYVY, 16bpp, 1440x480);

Stereoscopic Multiplexer: Input 1 connected to TriVid Capture (UYVY, 16bpp, 720x480), Input 2 connected to TriVid Capture (UYVY, 16bpp, 720x480), Output 1 connected to Smart Tee (UYVY, 16bpp, 1440x480);

TriVid Capture 0012: Capture connected to Stereoscopic Multiplexer (UYVY, 16bpp, 720x480), Preview not connected, VBI not connected, Audio not connected, Analog Video In connected to TriVid Crossbar 0016, Analog Audio In not connected;

TriVid Capture: Capture connected to Stereoscopic Multiplexer (UYVY, 16bpp, 720x480), Preview not connected, VBI not connected, Audion not connected, Analog Video In connected to TriVid Crossbar, Analog Audio In not connected;

TriVid Crossbar 0016: 0:Video Composite In not connected, 1:Video SVideo In not connected, 2:Audion Line In not connected, 0: Video Decoder Out connected to TriVid Capture 0012, 1: Audio Decoder Out not connected;

TriVid Crossbar: 0:Video Composite In not connected, 1:Video SVideo In not connected, 2:Audion Line In not connected, 0: Video Decoder Out connected to TriVid Capture 0012, 1: Audio Decoder Out not connected.

You can refer to the block diagrams on their site and draw yourself the connections.

Configuration Wizard: Left capture device: TriVid Capture, Right capture device: TriVid Capture> CApture format: UYVY, 720x480 {wrong for you} pixels, 16 bits per pixel > Frame Rate - Use default rate {for you 25 fps?}, {nothing else checked, I am not flipping anything, but if your cameras are flipped or in mirror rig, your setting would be according to your rig}; > Ignore timestamps > Finish.

I don't have the EasyCap, did you try to get the driver from their distributor? They suggest on their site: http://www.usbeasycap.info/support.html that there are fakes?

Sorry for your trouble...

BTW, if you have any driver at all, for the IC inside the dongle, you should be able to see it's output video with the Stereoscopic Player and test each one that way. Once you can see the video from each dongle, you can go back to the Multiplexer. Once the Stereoscopic Multiplexer is set, you do not need to open it up, just open the player, and see either the output of each dongle or connect to the output of the multiplexer, which, as I said, does not need to be opened first.

[Steve Shovlar]

Thanks for all that info Pavel. I will go through it all whe the new dongles arrive.

That software download page doesn't have any drivers on it. None of the links work.

I have now orderd up two official EZCap dongles with the very latest software. I have a feeling Vista is the problem as my PC runs that and the drivers I have so far installed don't support it. Soon find out when the official dongles arrive. Cost me 3 times as much each but false economy buying cheap fakes.

EzCAP 116 (easycap DC60+) Full retail. 1yr warranty on eBay (end time 08-Aug-10 13:26:33 BST)
is the brand new official version.

By the way do you use the s-video connection on your dongle, or the yellow, red and white cables?

Cheers
Steve

[Pavel Houda]

I knew that the link has no actual drivers,I just thought that they can point you to UK distributor who might help you. The H/W may still be compatible with the drivers you will receive with the new dongles. In that country of origin they can fake copy stuff really well. In the distant past, when I was an Engineering director in a PC Company here, we had a shop there copy one of our computers to such detail that the design engineers couldn't immediately tell that it was a copy, so the S/W may work. H/W doesn't carry any Copyright notice.

One of the guys in Germany has told me, that the EasyCap DC-60+ works fine, as long as it is the plus version, so you should be fine.

I use the S-video connection. The difference in resolution/quality is amazing from the Composite (yellow) connection. Since the Multiplexer doesn't support HD, the S-video is as good as I could get. There are too may losses through the de-interlacing and possibly side-by-side compression as it is. I would recommend anaglyph for alignment and SBS for checking color, brightness and other video attributes. HD would be best, but for me neither the Stereoscopic Multiplexer, nor the Vuzix glasses could handle HD anyway. If you need HD,some of the other suggestions above, like the one proposed by Adam, are better, but are more expensive and not quite ready. If you use the 7" display, it will not have enough pixels to display HD anyway.
The Red and White cables are audio, I don't use them at all. I just have couple of very thin coax connections from each camcorder for the Luma and Chroma S-video signals. I wanted minimum interference of the cables with the stabilizer gimball. You can see that in the video.

Best of luck,

Pavel