Fuji Introduces 720p 3D Camera
 

This camera at $500 will probably get me hooked, even if the preliminary review is not the greatest: Fujifilm introduces Finepix Real 3D W3 camera, we go hands-on -- Engadget .

Video
 

Any clue what 720p stereo video really means? 1280x720x2, 640x720x2?

Fujifilm W3
 

Some images and clips can be found here:

http://www.optyczne.pl/index.php?art=180

and here:

Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3 Hands-on and First impression, we have 3D Samples for you!!! Akihabara News

I think it is 2x1280x720. They need 9:16 for 720p. The easiest thing to do for a small portable device is pick it in native resolution and output it that way. All that processing eats time (needing more MIPS=$) and battery, not to mention lowering image quality. The sensors have plenty pixels for it and the HDMI 1.4 is not needed for the two sides squeezed on one frame. That would make me think that they are using the frame packed HDMI 1.4a I/F. They probably needed to and did sped-up the processor(ing). I doubt any reviewers would pick on that. Here aree some more specs: http://www.fujifilm.co.uk/presscentr...ex.php?id=1420 .

Resolution
 

Opening the Akihabara and the Polish clips with Stereoscopic Player and looking at the filter graph, these seem to be native camera AVI files, motion JPEG codec at 50 megabits/sec, 24 fps, containing two streams, each 1280x720. That works out to 3.125 megabytes/sec per eye, or about 130 kbytes per frame of JPEG.

The Akihabara clip with the bubble girls is unconscionably bad...huge compression artifacts. The Polish riverboat scene is much better, although there is still quite a bit of noise and fringing around edges (follow the lettering on the boat hull.) The riverboat clip is massively out of alignment horizontally and to a lesser extent vertically. I hope that's not a "feature" of the W3. Also the riverboat scene appears to be interlaced...was this really shot with a W3?

Parameters of the riverboat 3D AVI:

Video #0
ID : 0
Format : M-JPEG
Codec ID : MJPG
Duration : 29s 0ms
Bit rate : 25.2 Mbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 24.000 / 24.000 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 1.140
Stream size : 87.1 MiB (50%)
Title : FUJIFILM AVI STREAM 0200
Video #2
ID : 2
Format : M-JPEG
Codec ID : MJPG
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Resolution : 24 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Stream size : 81.0 MiB (47%)
Title : FUJIFILM AVI STREAM 0200

While the quality of the 3D still images is acceptable and comparable to a SDM setup, the movies are terrible. The actual resolution is far below 720p.