2D Video in 3D

3D is the buzzword. This year's CES is to blame, where all the biggies got together and virtually stretched out the 3rd dimension out of nowhere almost. These 3D TV models are already coming to India, thanks to prompt decisions by market leaders Samsung and LG. Now the thing is, there is not much 3D source material to watch, unless you are one of those diligent few who have been buying and accumulating all the latest 3D Blu-rays. It's expensive, and then there also is the issue of 3D gaming, all of which requires certain software and hardware to play properly.

Thus, for today's column I would like to touch upon the concept of converting 2D video to 3D, in realtime as it plays, mainly whether its possible at all and then how good it is. This is without the Nvidia entourage, I'm talking about alternate 3D, like in the Acer Aspire 5738 3D laptop. Also depending on the screen and type of 3D technology, glasses may or may not be needed. But the screen itself has to be 3D ready, be it a monitor or a HDTV (it should be able to double the refresh rate of the original feed).

The main job then, is on the software algorithms; which will need to analyze stuff like the color, position and motion characteristics of objects in a sequence of video frames, and finally estimate depth. The result will be an artificially rendered stereoscopic view. This works great for polarized 3D, which is just one of the 3D transmission technologies there. As was much expected, a little Googling sprang up some niche names, out of which one is gaining real popularity: DDD.  These guys have a suite of software called Tridef, which basically makes photos, regular DVDs, 2D games etc into 3D realtime.

It was available on the Acer 5738, but then that laptop did not have great graphical capabilities to juice itself, thus when we turned Crysis Warheads on during the review, it framed like a screensaver. But the 3D effect was very much there, especially in games. DVDs were more of a gray area, some worked well, but then overall clearly we can conclude that this is not a farce, it really works. DDD works on any high refresh rate monitor, as it also support anaglyphic 3D (The oldest kind, one with red cyan glasses?).

Then there are loads of discussions on in video forums, and another name that pops up is Color code, which claims to be better than crummy red/cyan 3D. As of this writing we have not reviewed or checked out in depth what color code 3D has to offer, but the looks of it are interesting. The glasses are special proprietary ones, but the site claims to mail (physically send) the user a few glasses. color code 3D is what the Americans had for their superbowl, thus there must be some credibility in the technology.