Stereo3D Preview output from camcorders

[Petri Teittinen]

Got an idea for monitoring with active glasses: a 3D-enabled laptop PC.

I'm getting one in for a review from Asus sometime next week. Should be interesting...

[Pavel Houda]

Originally Posted by Petri Teittinen

....

But are you limited to monitoring in anaglyph 3D only? I have Nvidia's 3D Vision Kit with active glasses, but have no idea whether they could be used in this setup.

There are many ways to monitor 3D starting from anaglyph and using glasses, using 3D laptop, etc. I chose to use the Vuzix stereoscopic glasses, because they have a controller attached, that allows me to see either the anaglyphs or side-by-side for alignment and general camera monitoring, or select 3D viewing. It has a built-in de-anaglyph and side-by-side to 3D converter. The added benefits are that it saves battery power, since the display is a major power sink (right after the disc drive) and lets me see the "viewfinders" in bright light, which is otherwise a major problem for me. I made a video showing my final rig and posted it here: YouTube - Part 4 - Articulated Amateur 3D Rig Experiment - Partially Red & Cyan 3D HD Anaglyph and here:

Part 4 - Articulated Amateur 3D Rig Experiment - Partially Red & Cyan 3D HD Anaglyph on Vimeo

.

[Petri Teittinen]

Nice rig and nice video, Pavel. Thank you. One question: which model Vuzix glasses are you using? Is it the Wrap 920?

[Pavel Houda]

Thank you. The glasses are "Vuzix Wrap 920." The resolution is only SD, but good enough as a viewfinder and quick quality checker. Setup can be done with the PC display or any external display or TV equipped with either the VGA or HDMI ports.

[Steve Shovlar]

Nice video Pavel but I have to admit to have almost burst out laughing with you in those glasses! Lol!

Now this seems to work well for you and I will look into these glasses. Trouble is though I am not sure it would go down a storm wth me at the front of the church filming the bride from behind the vicar! The bride and groom would probably fall about in histerics if I had that setup.

I still think a good quality small tablet pc attached by hotshoe to the rig, with a Hoodman hood to keep the light out, is a good way to go. There's a few 3d laptops out there now, just needs a company brave enough to produce a 3D ready tablet PC!

[Pavel Houda]

Thanks Steve. I am fortunately little older and much less concerned about people laughing at my looks. The most important think is that it works well. I am not a professional either, so I don't need to impress people with the gear, just with the results. This allows me certain freedoms and happiness's, many people cannot have. I understand why you like the tablets. BTW, Asus and I think MSI just announced new Win 7 tablets with couple of USB ports and Win 7. They all take the ideas from iPad. That could be a good option for folks like yourself. Look over at Engadget. I really, honestly cannot even see the LCD screens here, in Southern California, outdoors, most of the year. This way I solve several problems at once - making sure that both camcorders are aligned and working correctly, saving battery power and being able to see under just about any condition, while being able to look around. When I was taking some of the mountain biking video's, I realized that there would be no way to climb there with a big rig. I'd have to use a helicopter to get there with big 3D rig.

[Steve Shovlar]

HI Pavel I really hope you didn't take any offence because none was meant.

I wish we had the same problem in the UK as you have in California. All we get here is rain, overcast skies with the sun poking through every few days or so. Dreadful summer yet again in the UK.

A shame those glasses are not 16:9 720P. Seems strange that they are 4:3 and only SD. I looked on their site and they don't seem to have anything in that direction.

I'll take a look over at the Asus site to see when these tablets are due. They must be of a higher quality than the Chinese Shanzhai tablets. Now if they were only 3D ready..................

[Pavel Houda]

Hi Steve. Please don't worry. I am absolutely not offended. I just tried to explain my reasoning. When I post these videos, I am trying to inspire and help to show my experiences and keep some creativity in the technology. Otherwise it will be only in the hands of the elites, who will tell you what you should like. The fact that you want to "make it your way" is actually something I like. I was merely trying to explain why I used the glasses. I will be the first one to say that they are not perfect, but solve some issues that direct view technology just does not - for mine, and perhaps someone else's needs. It is actually more interesting to me what other ideas and solutions clever guys come up with, then about the most fancy and expensive gear. So as far as I am concerned, do it your way and share your experiences. Thanks.

[Steve Shovlar]

OK I picked up a 4 port USB hub today.
4 PORT HIGH SPEED USB 2.0 MULTI HUB EXPANSION SPLITTER on eBay (end time 26-Aug-10 17:53:56 BST)

Plugged the cameras in, used the hub and hey presto! The Vilv 7 inch PC tablet works. All systems are go! Now to attach this to a shoe there's a bit of fiddling about. I got one of these:
New Car Mount Holder kit Stand for Apple ipad 3G Wifi on eBay (end time 23-Jul-10 09:22:13 BST)

Which holds the tablet PC percetly well. The downside is that is has a car mount and I want to mount it onto a camera. It has a metal ball joint which is slightly oversized so I am going to file it down and fit it in a Manfrotto 3102 rapid adaptor.
Manfrotto Rapid Adapter, Converts Standard 5/8" Lightstand Tip to a 17mm Long 3/8" Male Thread. (#3102)

Instead of using the thumbscrew to tighten the ball joint I wil use one of these.
Pro Type 1/4"-20 Tripod screw to Flash Hot Shoe Adapter on eBay (end time 26-Aug-10 12:02:27 BST)

and then should be able to mount it on the camera. The tablet PC and plastic mount don't way very much at all.

Unless anyone knows a more simple way of mounting the tablet PC ( it has no thread on it to mount direct)

Thaks
Steve

[Steve LaPierre]

Originally Posted by Steve Shovlar

HI Pavel I really hope you didn't take any offence because none was meant.

I wish we had the same problem in the UK as you have in California. All we get here is rain, overcast skies with the sun poking through every few days or so. Dreadful summer yet again in the UK.

A shame those glasses are not 16:9 720P. Seems strange that they are 4:3 and only SD. I looked on their site and they don't seem to have anything in that direction.

I'll take a look over at the Asus site to see when these tablets are due. They must be of a higher quality than the Chinese Shanzhai tablets. Now if they were only 3D ready..................

I may be wrong in my thinking but usually when 720P video is discussed it is HD and digital format, whereas the SD is an analog format. It is not the pixels but the video stream digitization that presents a problem. With SD you have sync and framing pulses and the raw video but with the digital stream you are getting some compressed data format, etc. It would be nice if someone with some good expertise in this would explain it fully since I am not that person but I think it is a major point of understanding that we all need clarity on.

[Pavel Houda]

It is true that some of the older analog resolutions are SD, but digital can be SD as well. There are 18 (36) formats total. Wikipedia has good background explanation. High-definition television - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The HD/SD difference is based strictly on pixel resolution, and has nothing to do with compression, analog/digital, etc. The picture is always analog, but it is digitized in pixel uncompressed form for the HDMI/SDI outputs. For broadcast, to save bandwidth, it is digitized, compressed and then unwound back into pixels in your TV. The A/V R outputs from the Sony camcorders are analog and SD, to save pins and to make the design more practical (EMI, etc.). Some of the early HD broadcast experiments were actually analog, but took at least couple of channels.

I picked up SD glasses, to match the outputs from the camcorders. It is true that I loose even more resolution due to the 16:9 aspect ratio, but I am using the glasses more less mainly as a viewfinder. For alignment I can use the PC screen. It would be of course better to use the HD outputs and the displays/glasses (all that does exist). Unfortunately the costs and weight of the rig goes up exponentially with resolution. To handle two HD streams, I need fairly powerful PC, and if it is a notebook, it needs a USB3 I/F. This will be easy to get in a year or two, but right now I don't find it economical or practical. No doubt it will come, but I wanted something now. In the future, I hope I don't need to be making 3D stereoscopic rig out of two, poorly matched camcorders.

[Steve LaPierre]

Pavel I agree with much of what you wrote, but I was not thinking in terms of your particular camcorders. It was a guess on my part that Steve Shovlar may have had a newer camcorder that uses AVCHD and he wanted to display that directly like you could to a TV. My own camcorder has AVCHD out and SD out, the SD is analog and you can connect directly to an composite input of a TV. I don't have the cable to connect the AVCHD to a TV, something like a mini-hdmi or firewire I think. But watching the video from the SD output simultaneously as recording the AVC to a memory stick is possible and that is similar to what you are doing I think. I couldn't watch your video, download restrictions it seems.

Back to the glasses, for a set of wearable glasses to display an AVC video stream would require a lot more electronics in them than the SD video in my understanding. That was my only real point. I am thoroughly enjoying your posts on creating 3D video, keep up the good work and effort.

[Pavel Houda]

My camcorders also have HDMI (HD), or through the A/V-R connector, I can get analog c-video, s-video or component video - (SD). Either of these can be connected to TV set fairly easily. Most new TVs in the US have either HDMI or DVI ports. Just about all new US TV's are HD and generally have all these inputs. Portable PC's are a different issue. Most new ones have USB-2 ports that can be used for inputs, some have extension PC slot and compact flash inputs - that is just about it. There are generally no video inputs, so any non-USB input must be converted to USB first.

The other problem is that we are dealing with two input streams, and if they are HD, these would start taxing average notebooks at the moment. If you want to use the HDMI ports, the Black Magic design, something that Adam and others mentioned previously, could work fine: Blackmagic Design: HDLink . They also have a variety with dual SDI in and HDMI out (I believe), so it could be used for the processing as well as driving any plain HDMI HD monitor. You'd just have to convert HDMI from the camcorders into SDI for the BM box inputs. When I started, this option was not quite available. In addition, I was concerned about cost, portability and about powering all these devices on portable rig, so I took the netbook path.

I strongly suspect that all this will be a non-issue fairly quickly, as the standards solidify and the market grows, because the need is fairly clear. In the meantime I see most 3D camcorder solutions being just little too low end or too high bulk and cost, so many of us have to help ourselves.

Thank you for your kind words.

[Prech Marton]

Hello

I also like to monitor my 3D alignment, colors, etc. on the field.
I have a laptop with XP.
Now i search a cheap usb dongle, and found the EASYCAP DC60 for very low price.
2 of them will work with the Multiplexer or only DC60+ do the job?

Regards!

[Alister Chapman]

FYI the Nano3D now provides an anaglyph output option for field monitoring of two HDSDi streams. Not a cheap device but lots of bang for the bucks.