3D POP out Question

That's fine. Popout is actually really complicated to shoot- it basically needs to be scripted. Documentaries are predominantly an educational and immersive look at a foreign topic, while popout is about poking foreign objects at the viewer to startle them.

I stay away from popout, but you'll find it in boatloads if you watch Piranha 3D, Saw 3D--- are you seeing the trend I'm getting at?

As a test, I suggest you find a few 3D trailers on line to use as a test. Some are better than others with lots of pop. Try something with underwater scenes. Or the end of the Black Eyed Peas video. Also my TW cable has an on demand free 3D movie called Haunted Castle. The end credits (bubbles) has some of the best pop out scenes of any 3D.

Imax: Legends of Flight has lots of in your face moments though.

Have you tried revesing the images with the TVs settings? If not test try watching with your glasses upside down.

This is completely wrong and narrow minded. Sorry, but you obviously don't shoot.

The truth is that the screen is at zero parallax with respect to the 3D stereographic image. The two images will diverge in two horizontal directions. When the parallax is positive the image object in the scene will move behind your screen. When it goes negative it will move in front of the screen ( this negative parallax is what most layman call "popout" ) When 3D cameras are calibrated for stereoscopic imaging, the screen plane or zero parallax is set for the camera near the center of it's convergence to give good range of the z-axis or depth in the scene. The range of this depth is simply controlled by how close the objects in the scene come to the camera lens. The camera lens pair is at the peak of a cone of view. If the "popout" object comes close to the camera in depth but off to the side it will be outside the frustum of the cone of view and not yield the popout. If the object comes to the top of the cone of view or near the center between the two lenses and inside the frustum of the cone, you will simply get your beloved ( or hated) popout. Note that the effect you see in most advertisements of a guy coming out of the TV and extending beyond the frustum of the cone of view is an impossible image and really is false advertising. The best effect for negative parallax is to make sure the object you shoot close to the peak of the cone of view is small enough to remain inside that cone. Otherwise it gets cut off and looks unnatural and awkward. In some cases it cuts off one of the two stereo images and leaves the other which is one of the causes of "ghosts" near the edge of the picture. These, my friend. are not difficult scenes to script, just require a bit of knowledge on how stereoscopic video works and keeping your shot inside the boundaries between your camera lens and the edge of the picture at the screen plane.

The reason why most film makers avoid extreme popout in their productions (except for the occasional gratuitous effect) is that it causes eye fatigue as it makes your eyes attempt to focus crosseyed. In deep distant objects along with close up objects your eyes will be fighting between a diverged strain and crosseyed strain. This is really fatiguing. The best 3D stereoscopic productions are those that keep the extreme negative and extreme positive parallax or extreme range of depth to a minimum to prevent eye fatigue. Like any muscle exercise, different people have different tolerance for eyeball exercise. 3D stereoscopic IS eyeball muscle exercise as compared to 2D viewing. Exercise with a dumbell once or twice in 30 minutes and you don't get fatigue. But press that weight for 30 minutes and see how you feel.

I do shoot. It's not the hardest thing in the world to do, but it requires a relatively large deal of effort and planning and is harder to fit into a documentary or sport than a movie where everything's already heavily scripted

Also because it's cliche because it's been abused far too much in the past to break the fourth window. I'm not being narrow-minded about it, this is just how a lot of people see it and why movies like Avatar were such a revelation to people.

I enjoy 'popout' that is slow and sustains for a few seconds. Like flying scenes, where the head or wings of a creature extend out of the screen. And scenes in IMAX undersea docs, where fish, coral etc popout.

Oh... I guess I actually have a serious answer to this question. Check the settings under Picture -> 3d. There's a setting to adjust the amount of depth. Perhaps playing with that could help. I have mine set to zero, but that's for blu-ray. I don't know if Comcast movies differ drastically.

I'll be honest, I have almost never seen any "popout" on either of my 3D screens (JVC projector and Vizio TV). In almost all cases, the screen is a window that everything extends back from, even in cases where it seems obvious that the filmmakers intended for something to extend beyond the screen (such as gratuitous shots of bullets and throwing stars flying at the camera in Resident Evil Afterlife).

I have seen "popout" in theaters, however.

That's the way I see all 3D.

Cakefoo- I do both styles and find it just the opposite. My TV production days were filled with script first and make the shot fit the script. It was always harder to get what was called for, especially in little controlled environments like with animals and kids than to shoot straight documentary style where the name of the game is shoot it every way you can and get lots of content. Then the real job later on is picking the right balance of what you have and writing the script around what happened.
As I'm retired from TV production now, I am having a blast "playing with 3D and making my Home videos in true documentary style. But the old formula still works, I shoot about 3 hours of good content minimum for every hour that gets into the program. Lots of stuff ends up on the cutting room floor as it is either redundant to the story, too slow, or just doesn't fit the story. I'm not a McLuhan student as I believe the story is the message. Most people who get a camcorder that post in these forums are shooting McLuhan or the "medium is the message." Common non techie consumers just shoot and watch the raw footage. There is no right or wrong, it's just what YOU want to do.

I recently posted a link to a sample from a 1 hour video I just completed, pure amateur home video, to document our day at Epcot. It was lots of fun and I shot a ton of stuff that didn't make the cut. However, as one who likes a bit more "popout" than some, I did shoot a fair amount of stuff that way. The thing is, I do know how to shoot and I know how to generate that "popout" as this piece was created for my home theater, I have a large screen and this fills my room. Aside from popout, I really like shots that extend from 50% viewing to screen distance to well behind the screen. To me that approaches life like. But as I said earlier too much of that can tire the viewer. This is what John Cameron has stated. He knows that too much parallax can annoy the viewer so he keeps it to a minimum. He is a "story is the message" director and his stories are very good!

bkfk- I don't think so as there are standards in the industry, but there are a couple problems with a major player that most people know about and that is You Tube. Their encoding flips the R/L and then you have to put in a tag on your 3D uploads to switch it back so people can use standard glasses to watch. Don't ask me why they did that as I don't know. Standard glasses are red on the left eye, cyan on the right. Glad you fixed that and can enjoy your 3D. I'd say your 3D video before was a mess with it bassackwards. Not just no popout.

Glad that worked. I think the post was deleted as I quoted a previous post referring to another poster as a pretentious feminine hygiene product. In response to your question about needing to change that setting in the future, I would try another source and see if it is different than than your cable provider. I don't need to change mine and I have used 3D Bluray discs and the Explore 3D app on the TV. The Explore 3D app has Legends Of Flight as one of the movies. Also there is an app called Armchair Astronaut that looks kinda cool. My SAT tuner cannot display the 3D offerings from my provider so I don't know about that one. As for YouTube, I don't know and don't really care. But take that information with a grain as I don't shoot video.

I have the C8000. Under 3D, my option is listed as "picture correction". That option indicates that it "changes each other left and right image". It toggles the setting and doesn't indicate R/L or L/R.

Watch the ending credits of "Haunted Castle" ...

Cupid in the bubble should appear to be floating right in front of you and well outside the confines of your television. If not then something is wrong.

My Panasonic 3D set was delivered today and I put on the opening credits of Resident Evil Afterlife (My first 3D Bluray Purchase) for a quick look and was surprised by the amount of popout I saw. Some of the credits appeared to float a good foot or so in front of the screen. Others were behind it. Quite impressive though I must say although I am equally happy with lots of depth too.

I have the PN50C8000 and switched the L/R yesterday and that seemed to really help with 3D. It might be a placebo affect lol.

Do certain programs or show require switching?

Not that I've seen.

Hmmm... interesting. I don't know if it's a difference in the displays (though I get the same effect on both of mine) or if each viewer's ocular physiology plays into this, but those credits definitely do not extend in front of my screen. Now, there is depth in that sequence, and some of the credits appear in front of other credits, but they don't penetrate the screen window for me.

About the only time I've seen "popout" is during the PS3 game Super Stardust HD. When you die, your ship explodes in a huge burst that flies through the screen.

Whether things appear to pop out should be a function of one physical element only: whether the object in question is displayed within the left eyepoint physically to the right of the location within the right eyepoint on the screen.

If both eyepoints display the object at the same physical location on-screen, the object will look like it is exactly at the distance of the screen.

If the object in the left eyepoint displays physically to the left of the object within the right eyepoint, then it will appear to be behind the screen.

Settings in the BD player or display device can affect the relative location on the physical screen by shifting the image: force the left eyepoint to display 5 pixels further right than normal, and the right eyepoint to display 5 pixels further left than normal, and things will pop out a little more - you also lose 10 pixels of data (5 pixels on each side).

There shouldn't be any ocular physiology involved - that might affect how much the object appears in front or behind, but not whether it appears in front or behind.

Psychologically, well, that's a whole other kettle of fish, although I don't think it would be typical to have that affect out vs in, but again, like physiological factors, just how much.

AFAIK, IMHO,

shinksma

shinksma, would viewing angle (i.e. sitting off-center) affect this at all?

Check out the end credits on Despicable Me. If you don't see significant and sustained (several seconds) of popout (ladder extending out, etc.), there's probably something dodgy in your settings. I have an RS40 too by the way, and while I concur that most material has little in the way of pop-out (directorial intent?), that isn't the case for the end credits in Despicable Me.

On a related note, since the 3D illusion on a pop out is destroyed once an image touches the boundaries of the screen, and that most 3D in the home is viewed on screens that are far too small, could this explain why pop-out moments are relatively limited? Are 3D blu-rays mastered for in-home viewing with less pop-out that in the the theatre (with its larger screen size to distance ratio)?

It shouldn't. Think of it this way: if you displayed just a small red circle in the center of the otherwise black display, exact same position in both eyepoints, it would look like it was at the display distance. Take off the 3D glasses, it still looks like it is at the display distance (parallax = 0). Move sideways, still at the same apparent distance.

Admittedly, that isn't very interesting 3D - a single object at a fixed depth - because the sense of depth we get is from the variety of depths for the various objects in the field of view.

If we had two circles, one above the other, with the bottom one displayed as described above and the one at the top displayed such that it is physically displayed slightly right of center in the left eyepoint and slightly left of center in the right eyepoint, then it would appear to pop off the screen, especially relative to the other circle. As you move around the room the relative amount of "pop" will vary, but will never seem to go from in front of the screen to behind the screen.

Does that help?

shinksma

I think there is a trend in the production of these movies to optimize them more for home viewing, thus less pop-out. The IMAX movies can be frustrating at home because they're optimized for HUGE screens, not home screens.

I thought Step Up 3d was about the best home-optimized 3d presentation I've seen - lots of pop-out, but of objects that look natural on smaller screens, if that makes sense...

I saw James Cameron promoting the Avatar 3D Blu-ray at a conference, and someone asked him whether the 3D effect needs to be adjusted for home viewing. He said that he felt no adjustments were needed from cinema to home. But perhaps other filmmakers/studios are taking a different approach?

If that is the case, it falls at odds with all the marketing for home 3D, which shows exaggerated images of things poking out of the TV screen.

We need a free demo video that has intentional pop-out so we can test. I'm certainly not going out to buy some crap movie just cause it has lots of pop-out.

I've watched several and as others, don't feel like anything breaks the plane of the TV screen.

If the 3D effect is indeed being designed with home exhibition on small screens (or rather at large viewing distance to screen size ratios) in mind, then that is particularly disappointing. Movies have historically been conceived (and as far as I'm concerned should continue to be conceived) for theatrical exhibition. Scaling back the 3D popout effect to make them friendlier to small screens is no different than making movies friendlier to small screen home exhibition in other ways. What's next - making sure all movies are framed in 16:9 aspect ratio to avoid black bars at the top and bottom?