Things are hotting up in the 3D market - multi channel shooting and rendering in real time too...

Glasses free competition on the Increase

Here's a short test using Cinema4D and Edius 6.5 to create an animated stereoscopic title sequence.


Stereoscopic title test sequence

Here's a little clip I made for Xuefei Yang and EMI Classics. Xuefei is an accomplished classical guitarist, I have had the pleasure to work with many times - you can see her here in 2D on my Vimeo site:


Xufei Yang Rodrigo


Xuefei Yang Bach


Fei recently recorded a Bach album of her own transciptions for guitar, and I suggested we film her playing one of the solo pieces from the album.


The shoot took 20 minutes - not exactly ideal, without lighting or any particular set up, just before a recital in London, with a camera displaying some awkward focal errors. (see earlier blog )


The editing was mostly undertaken using Edius, 3D particles made in Nukex with additional Magic Bullet "Looks" I also created some lighting effects in Particle Illusion which were placed in the background surfaces -

The matte painting is fairly rough, (also in Edius) however, I simply wanted to experiment with depth and mattes, to create a 3D space - some of these images are very compelling.

Personally I really dislike over sharp, shiny images in general, preferring a filmic feel with mushy edges - so going fully against what everyone recommends for stereoscopy, I'm into blurred backgrounds and soft squidgy images - ART - and sod the theorists - 


Xuefei Yang Bach violin concerto in G minor "Presto" 3D

Today,s the day that Edius 6.5 appears, so we are back in the saddle for serious 3D cutting - I'm also waiting for New Blue to update their titler to full Stereoscopic, which they promise to do soon - making it possible to create full depth titles rather than "fake" extruded 3D.

I just wanted to note the passing of Robin Gibb.  I worked with him last year on his Titanic project -


Although he was best known for his work with the Bee Gee's, he was responsible for writing many more songs than you can imagine, performed by many great artists.


Good vibes to RJ and Dweena.


Paul x.

Here's another groovy track from "50Hz and uP"  - "Gud Shit Man"


Play Track

Strange T Shirts:

     Victorian Divers, Control, X-Ray, Crew Shirt, Banks, Smokin' and LunG

I designed these images for Tee shirts and Shorts - they iron on and last for

about 20 washes - (cold) much longer if you wash little. The designs are about

a quarter A4 or 7"x4" or 18cmx10cm - can make much bigger - 

Mediainfo is a great free application to investigate media file properties, I've found it very useful on many occasions, particularly with AVCHD or 3D MVC files allowing you to check data rates, codecs and so on.

Get it here:http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en

So my NEW SONY TD10 arrived today - guess what? the package has been opened, the cables are not correctly assembled in the box, the remote control plastic bag has been opened, and the box looks tatty.


So, here we go again - looks like I've been sold second hand "as new" - my request for a partial refund has already been sent.


VERY VERY CRAP INDEED - 


However, the camera appears to function well, no sign of the focus issue, so maybe I will keep it!

GO PRO 3D HERO RIG


Just be aware of this, whilst most software handling 3D such as Edius, Vegas and of course GoPro Cineform studio editing software will correct for the physical alignment errors between the two cameras, the resolution loss out of the box is quite high - namely 60 lines at 1080.




This was in response to a client measuring the displacements between two GoPro HD Hero cameras with serial numbers from the same batch.


Vertical displacement: 5.56%
Zoom error: 0.05%
Keystone error: 0.21%
Rotational displacement 0.3 degrees


-------------------------------------------------
GoPros Response to the measured displacements:
All cameras will naturally have slight differences in the captured image, and is not any manufacturing fault.  There is no way around this.  The GoPro cineform studio editing software will automatically calculate the convergence setting to best suit the recorded files.  With the software further manual adjustment of the horizontal and vertical convergence is also possible.
-------------------------------------------------
Alignment is by cineform software and as such a loss of resolution of around 40 lines at 720p and 60 lines at 1080P may be experienced based on the above measurements.

3D Particles in Nukex.

I'm working on a simple 3D promo clip which was shot in 20 minutes - 4 passes of a classical guitar piece - filmed before a concert - no time, and little space or room for direction or set build.

I've decided to create some 3D particles and "place" them within the 3D space as background, mid ground and foreground layers. I tested some simple particle files from a 2D source ( Particle Illusion) and, whilst they worked, and you can set the Z depth position, the particles themselves are 2D and therefore appear as a flat "plane" rather like a 2D caption panel positioned in Z. Obvious of course, but often this can work as an intentional effect, but if you want real 3D immersion, then the particles themselves need to be filmed with a Stereoscopic rig and emitted in 3D space.

So, let's look at doing this in Nukex.

Simple Stereoscopic Camera set up using the 
built in Snowbox particle generator.

Settting up this simple stereo rig and choosing the basic IO between the cameras will depend on perceived depth, the size of the source plane and the distance from the cameras to the subject. With an anaglyph viewer node it is easy to check the overall depth of the scene. It is also to be accepted that parallax and convergence can be adjusted in final post. My two cameras look like this:

3D view of cameras looking down and through the
falling snow particles

If you find anything within this blog which helps you in any way
please feel free to donate.

 

So today, my TD10 wings it's way back to Amazon for a refund - Sony wanted me to pay for a repair as the camera came from Amazons "Warehouse Deals" section and was described by Sony as "second hand" therefore falling under the Amazon Warranty. I will in fact buy another unit from them, as right now the TD10 is even cheaper! 
This really is surprisingly good customer service from Amazon, no quibble at all, I simply asked them how to proceed with my warranty with them, and they said send it back for a refund! They added " It doesn't need to be shipped in its original box!"
I'll let you know how this proceeds....
Shock - Amazon received my camera in one day, free collection service and have refunded my account - what excellent service - now to buy a new one - I'm not going for the TD20 - too expensive for a domestic item - so today I ordered a new TD10 from Amazon - it "should" be OK, but at least it is "new" and is therefore covered by Sony's full guarantee.

How to Split Stereo MVC files that have been imported by Sony PMB software to seperate left and right channels using Sony CMU.

If you use Sony PMB software to import files from say a TD10 to your edit system, and then find you want to split the files into separate L&R streams, you will find that PMB imported files will appear as "unsupported" in Sony CMU and will be skipped.

I prefer to use Edius to split files, however, CMU is free, so..

1) Open your source file folder, locate each xml file for each clip, they will be named: file number.m2ts.modd - one for each clip. 

2)Rename the extension for each xml file with the extension: file number.cmuprops

3)Now set the default programme to open the xml file as Notepad. 

4)Now open the first xml file and edit the last string in the file as per the pictures below. All we are adding is CMU 2.0 to the last but one string.

change .m2ts.modd file extension to .cmuprops

add "space CMU space2.0"

should look like this, then save in notepad.

Open CMU software and process away! If you are nervous doing this, save a copy of the original xml extensions.

If you find anything within this blog which helps you in any way
please feel free to donate.

 

After rooting around the net I find this issue with the TD10 is pretty common, and that Sony don't appear to have the capacity to re adjust the camera, some report that the engineers are not able to view the right and left outputs and compare them - so having built a stereoscopic camera, they do not have the means to view the output? CRAP.


Still in limbo here, no word from Sony "have they received my camera yet" meanwhile I looked at Joseph's files here: TD 1 clips which are raw files from his JVC TD1 which look very good indeed - 

One must always remember that the "Base View" ( traditionally the left eye ) is the full specification part of the MVC coded file, whilst the right eye is the "Dependent View" which by the nature of MVC coding is relatively "additionally lossy" compared directly to the Base Stream - this shows as softer chroma and luma detail, but will not be responsible for focal errors.

My next question is: "does the Sony HXR-NX3D1E NXCAM Professional 3D Compact Camcorder - which houses the same optics, produce the same poor results?"


Time to get one on test and find out. 

Damn, Issues with the TD10 - I have a disparity in focus and detail, between the two eyes of the camera. After shooting last week, I've started to post the job, and, after running some AE camera rig tests, I was shocked to see that the right "eye" is seriously out of focus. So here we go, reset the camera, re rerun the 3D auto lens adjust - works pretty much like the EX series of cameras, creating a LUT (look up table) so it knows the focal curve of each lens. Well I simply cannot get it good - the two lens' are behaving differently, so maybe a back focus issue here - looks like a visit to the Sony workshop is due, the camera is 6 months so still in warranty - I also checked turning off the steady shot - no difference there either

  LEFT LENS

RIGHT LENS

These two images are close ups taken from the time line showing what each lens sees at the same time, notice the coding artifacts. If I manually adjust the focus to bring the right lens into focus, the left is then soft. There are also detail differences with the right channel displaying poor, smudgy chroma encoding as well as a softer noise floor - so all in all, the two channels are well out of line.

Also, if I set the manual focus control to full Infinity - everything is soft - not right at all.


P.S I also checked the data rates of the MVC from the camera - both streams are max 28Mbs - seperated right and left streams using Sony CMU are both the same 13.7Mbs so no difference in the stream capabilities at all.