3D MTS files from a Sony HDR-TD10 - Page 4

Further to my post #87, the way I confirm whether frame-packing is occurring when viewing on my Panasonic Plasma TV (a 50" 2010 Australian model), rather than squashed side by side, is to compare the visible resolution. It's unsafe to attempt comparisons just by the overall impression of video, as high contrast video can look surprisingly sharp at 960 horizontal pixels. A method I've used is to point the camera at a piece of white paper with printed black text on it. I connect the camera via HDMI to the 3D TV. I watch the alternating (at 120Hz) 3D screen without wearing shutter glasses and I can then see any particular printed word twice: the view from the Left lens, and the view from the Right lens.

By choosing a distance, text size, and zoom appropriately, the text will be just decipherable. I then switch the camera HDMI setting between frame-packed and side by side. The frame-packed view is a little clearer, as expected, by using all 1920 camera output horizontal pixels, rather than 960. This method also allows comparison of the Left lens performance with the Right lens. [For some reason my camera's Right lens focusses at a distance slightly behind where the Left lens focusses so that its image is not quite as sharp as the Left lens for the main subject the camera is auto-focussing on, but can be a little sharper than the Left lens for the background.]

I am keen to know whether Stereoscopic player or other player software does provide frame-packed 1080i60 in conjunction with an appropriate video card (e.g. AMD 7000 series) as that way I could play TD10 mts files from a pc hard drive with full horizontal resolution on the 3D monitor/TV, and with full motion fluidity (60i, also known as 29.97i), rather than at 24p.

Ok it works now! Works in many ways. All blue ray 3D HD made with pmb, and as well the latest (yesterday for me) playmemories do display in HD 3D 60i on my xbr65hd929 .... When using a recent sony player, in my case, got a bdp-s590 yesterday. Make sure you do the firmware update via the internet first...

Also, as i did think, it ALSO works with files copied directly from the TD10 unto a USB memory stick plug in the front usb slot of the 590... All 60i.

I've tried many ways of copiying and making those files, one of them played in 60p, but all the other way were played in 60i as from the TD10 directly as for quality... I've also made a 24p version with powerproducer and its sucks... Ugly jumping... Very happy that i can now just have an external hd plug to the usb port fof the player and where i can store/keep all my 3D video made by my TD10.

When played , the tv display that automatic 3D detection... As with a normal 3D movie... But automatically in 60i.

Also... I can confirm that if you connect an external device, memory stick or hd storage, via the usb port of the td10 and do copy movies onto it, then connect that external storage device on the front usb port of the s590 that it ALSO WORKS perfectly in 60i as per the other methods... :-)

Sony support don't know about this... Amazing... The SonyStore guy neither, he wanted me to try and bring back the unit if it did not work and to tell him if it works...

S.
Ps sorry for all the typos, was in a rush and wanted to let you know, thanks to the ipad 2 keyboard... :-)

I can't find a way to connect the camera directly to a Memory Stick. The Mini USB port on the camera connects to a USB cable with a male connection. I must be missing something.

I did copy clips from my hard drive to a USB stick and plugged it into both the front and rear ports of the S780. Both played clips from the TD10 in 1080 60p in 2D.

How did you connect the camera directly to the stick? Did your clips on the memory stick play in 3D?

Marty

Videoguy68, didn't your camera come with a short cable terminating in a female USB socket? Mine did.

Great to read from VE2FET that 60i 3D frame-packed playback (not just side by side I am assuming?) is proving possible with a particular Sony BD player.

I found the item in the manual but I must have misplaced it...oh well.

Marty

I don't have the manual with me, but my camera came with a long USB cable terminating in a male plug, and a very short cable terminating in an in-line USB socket, probably for the very purpose you have.

If I start with the mini USB cable from the camera, it ends with a male plug. I have a short cable with a female (Inline) end and male end. SOO, if I connect the female end to the end of the mini USB cable, what I have is still a male end and no way to connect that end to the USB stick.

I need to find the adapter. I have a box with about 2 million cables. If it is not there, I will be off to either Staples or Best Buy tomorrow.

Do you have any other suggestions? All help appreciated.

Marty

If you can't find the short cable -- mine was in a plastic wrapper -- you'll need to purchase one, unless u are somehow able to find a female to female USB adaptor. Cheers

I just came down from the attic where I went through all kinds of cables, some I have no idea what they are for--but no femele to female USB adaptor.

Off to buy one tomorrow.

Cheers back at ya.

Marty

I finally found the USB adaptor, copied several clips to a USB stick directly from the TD10 and plugged the stick in to the front port of the S780. It played 1080 60i 3D.

Once again, I copied some TD10 clips from my hard drive to the stick. These clips were imported from TD10 by PMB. Once again, they played 1080 60P 2D.

For this procedure to work properly in 3D, it appears that clips have to be copied directly to the stick from the camera. It seems odd, but so be it.

This is a good way to save clips on external media without going to the computer hard drive and then to an external drive.

It helps to know!

Marty

The USB adapter that comes with the TD10 is special and contains an internal switch that puts the camcorder in a mode for exporting content to a device, like a hard drive or disk burner. Don't lose it or you will need to buy one from Sony parts.

I haven't tried to export directly to a USB drive with a non-Sony cable, but for exporting to a PC I have had no problems. My recently purchased TD10 is an NTSC region version. I find that when I use the long grey [gray] USB cable that came with my camera, I need to connect the cable to the pc before turning on the camera. When I turn the camera on, the viewing screen presents a dialogue box inviting me to connect via USB.

I find the above process works just the same with a short white USB cable I've had for a few years, that came with some other camera. [I think it might have been a Canon Power Shot S2IS.] I can successfully import from the camera, with PMB, using that short white USB cable.

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Was able to take some 3D video with the TD10 at the beach this weekend. I found the image stabilisation very effective, and the 60i allowed fairly rapid pans without noticeable jitter/judder. A very different experience to trying to shoot at 24p.

Viewed subjectively, for my eyes, the video resolution from my camera is a little under what I think it could be be for 1920x1080, and published reviews are consistent with that. On the other hand, if I watch the video using side by side mode (effectively 960x1080), I find the drop in visible resolution quite noticeable.

Pending any general extension of the Blu-ray standard to include 1920x1080i60, I suspect I'll use 1280x720p60 for my 3D Blu-ray authoring (say with Vegas Pro). This will retain the motion fluidity of 60i and I am hoping there will not be too much loss in visible resolution. [Will be doing some comparisons with my "beach footage" burning to 1920x1080p24, and to 1280x720p60.]

It seems I'll have to purchase one of the Sony BD players mentioned in this thread if I want to play back an untouched 3D mts file from the TD10 in in its full glory (frame packed 60i), without using the camera's own HDMI output socket.

Even here you have to be careful as there are some mini to regular USB cables that won't work while others will. Some are for charge only, some are for charge + Data. Some are for Data only. And then you have the kind that are Data + media transfer that I don't believe can be used for charge. That is the gray Sony type that has the mini USB plug with some extra pins to activate the media transfer connection. How the pin connections are handled is a standard but You cant tell the difference so rely on the cable makers for the clues. That's probably why the Canon cable works too.

BTW- there is no current media 3DBD USB drive that will work with the TD10. They have had a DVD drive that's been around for years that works, the 2DBD drive is new and it should work but have to field tests to prove it. This USB BD drive from Sony does not do 3D. Best to use Vegas or PMB for burning TD10 clips to a disk. Or, use one of the Sony Players for AVCHD2.0.

Don: I am not certain if we are talking about the same thing here, but I connected a Seagate 500GB USB 2.0 Free Agent external hard drive to the TD10 using the USB adapter cable.

The camera recognized the drive, formatted it fairly quickly and copied all the clips from the camera to the drive. The clips I copied earler in the day to this Free Agent drive played 1080 60i 3D on my Panasonic GT30 via the front USB port of my Sony S780 player. It looks like I now can archive all my clips to this type of external drive and use them as needed. It sure beats burning a slew of Blu Ray disks for storage.

Great stuff.

Marty

Marty- Yes, that should work with your Sony player. That is because it recognizes the AVCHD 2.0 format files. Some members here were hoping for a Blu-Ray burner to connect directly to the TD10 like you did a USB hard drive, but these only exist now for 2D.

I carry a 120Gb WD Passport drive, with the adapter and the gray USB cable and the TD10 power supply as a packet when I travel to off load clips should I need to make space in the TD10 for more recording. Since you're not editing, storing your clips for playback is a great way to have all your library ready for show. I use hard drives for storing even my finished productions now and it's been almost 6 months since I burned a Blu Ray.

In regards to my previous posts, where Sony players down-scaled AVCHD 3D from 1080i to 720p...
I found, that a new Panasonic's line up DMP BDT220/320/500 plays Sony's HDR-TD10 files perfectly in 1080-60i in my setup. They do not block third party TVs from displaying 1080-60i 3D content.
The SDXC card taken from HDR-TD10 has been treated as a Disk - instant 3D auto play.
Playback from BD-R/ BD-RE is not officially supported, but I burned a BD-RE disk using Play Memories utility and it did show up on the screen and played in 1080i 3D perfectly. The only difference from SDXC card - BDT 220 did not start autoplay of the disk, but showed the 3D content as a list of 3D files, grouped by date. You'll have to manually start the playback. It did not play in 3D files, placed in the root of the card or on the USB drive. 3D playback over the network did not happen as well. More investigations are to come, since the manual says - it supports AVCHD 3D playback for DVD-R/-RW media.
Only 40 min of the footage for a 8.5 GB disk, but it is just a matter of personal preferences.

Yes, olegy, there seems to be a lot happening in this space at the moment. I think in coming months we'll see more equipment and software capable of handling 1080i60 (and even 1080p60) 3D; including displaying it with full horizontal definition as frame-packed 3D, rather than rescaled side by side. For example, Blu-ray players, AVRs, Displays, Player software, and Graphics cards.

I've seen some recent developments referred to in the thread 3D Tech Talk > 1080p60 per eye 3D over HDMI 1.4a will be possible in 2012 .

I found that using Song Vegas Pro for 1280x720p60 MVC rendering to a Blu-ray iso was very fluid (as would be expected) but for my eyes there was a significant drop in apparent resolution. The extent of the apparent drop in visible resolution surprised me. I was somewhat dissatisfied.

When rendering to 1920x1080p24 MVC Blu-ray , with Vegas Pro, the resolution was very good for static or near static scenes, but reduced considerably during a pan, and at times there was very noticeable jitter. If anticipating use of 24fps, very slow camera movements would be needed.

I think I'll only be really happy with 1080i60 [or 1080p60] 3D rendering, whenever that might become practical...

Can Playmemories on Playstation 3 play TD10 MTS files in 3D?

Just purchased tdr10 -- I own Sony 3d tv and Sony bdp-s770 3d bluray -- will my bluray support 1080 60i format -- also what is a good external bluray burner to purchase for making 3d blurays -- thanks for any help guys trying to get 3d memories going for my 3 month old daughter !!!

Most if the blur seen in panning of video regardless of frame rate is due to the basic design of the CMOS chip. CCD also had the problem to a worse degree. All tube cameras suffered with this to a similar degree except the old image orthocon.
Keeping pans slow is the industry solution. SMPTE has some whole chapters devoted to the topic of pan and zoom rates for 24 fps filming and video. When I pan a scene I try to follow the SMPTE guide lines or I do a swish pan that is so fast the motion for a fraction of a second is a complete blur and becomes an effect of the story, not a defect of the technology.

I have been wanting to try 1080p60 with my twin SBS rig but haven't taken the time yet. Not sure how I will edit it yet. Vegas doesn't support it.

The blur from using a traditional 180 degree shutter angle with a 24fps capture is considerable of itself. I find that running a camcorder at 60p gives noticeably less blur than 24p, when shooting a fast moving subject, such as a person running or waving their arms.

Vegas does not support 1080 60p? Are you sure? It supports 1080 50p, and I think it should also support 1080 60p. I only shoot in 1080 50p with my sbs rig and edit that in Vegas.

MLXXX, at the moment there is no way to bring 1080 60p to a 3D Blu-ray profile 5 disc. Not at the moment. You could produce AVCHD-BDs, what will allow you to stay with 1080 60i - doing that with the PMB. But it will run at specific Blu-ray player only.

I'm hoping that as 2012 progresses, more options will become available for editing/burning, and for playing back.

Only if the Blu-ray consortia adds additional specifications for 3D Blu-ray. And when they do that, if they do that at all - nobody knows.

I don't see 1080 60p in the list for the properties nor is it available for render as. 1080 60 i yes. In fact I don't see any listing for 1080 50p either. Just 1080 50i. The only 60p setting is the blu Ray standard for 720 x 1280 60p. Where do you see 1080 50p listed? Maybe your Pal install of Vegas Pro supports it. Is there such a thing? I wonder if PD10 supports 1080 60p?

OT-
Been getting ready for a tropical storm Beryl to hit us tonight but now it looks like its been stated to increase strength to hurricane force gusts. 65 mph sustained winds for 12 hours. Hope none of the trees come down. We expect some local flooding too.

Don, I hope Beryl doesnt give you too much trouble.

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The version of Vegas Pro I have access to (last updated some months back I think) includes project properties frame rates of "double PAL" and "double NTSC". With double NTSC, the timeline ruler divides into 60 frames per second and "quantize to frames" will force clip positioning to the nearest 1/59.94 sec. I've been able to render short projects (around 10 minutes) to a 24p Blu-ray, or 60p Blu-ray, without glitches. I presume Vegas does a pulldown process to create 24p from a 60fps timeline.

There is no template like 1080 50p in Vegas - but it can be created in a simple way. User a template 1080x1920, set it to progressive, and use for PAL "50,000 double PAL", what means 50p.

For 1080 60p you have to take "59,940 (double NTSC)", as MLXXX also writtes. Save that as your own template and enjoy to edit your 1080 60p projects.

So you end up with two manuall created templates, one for 1080 50p and one for 1080 60p. Both are fine with Vegas.


For the special case where we shoot with a pair of 2 TD10s in 2D on a side-by-side rig (so that is NOT for the user who runs his TD10 in 3D):

For the PAL situation: yes, I shoot with 50p with my two TD10s on the sbs-rig, where the camcorder are run in 2D that allows 1080 50p. And I have to convert that for 3D to 720 50p or - by stretching the timeline - to 1080 24p.

For the NTSC situation: Don, if you would (!) shoot with your two TD10s with 60p (in my case I shoot with 50p), you could set the project properties to double NTSC for editing. But I do not know how it comes of if you render that then with the MVC encoder to 1080 24p, since that would be the conversion from 2x59,940 fps to 23,976 fps.

Yes, there is a process for that, called inverse telecine - 3:2 pulldown is the other way round, but I think Sony has called it 2:3 pulldown - you find that in some templates in the Mainconcept mpeg2 encoder, but I have not seen that in the AVC-encoder). But maybe that is working in the background:


For 2D: to 1080 24p Blu-ray for sure, since the Blu-ray specification foresees for both 2D and 3D 1080 24p with 23,976 (IVCT Film). But you will not be able to create a 60p 2D or 60p 3D Blu-ray with Vegas. At least both the burn function from the timeline will not allow that, nor will the DVDA support that. What you can do is to modify the Sony AVC Blu-ray template to end up with a 60p Blu-ray template in the encoder. Maybe the rendering works - but you have to burn that with other tools then Vegas offers.

Be aware that we are talking now about 2D only. For 3D, the MVC part of the encoder will not allow changes to double PAL or double NTSC anyway - that is limited to 24p really.

So I ask myself: if you shoot with a pair of TD10s as 1080 60p, is there is really an advantage compared to the situation that you shoot with 1080 24p in the direct way? I do not think so, at least not if you wish to end up with a MVC-based 3D Blu-ray as 1080 24p.

My post #117 was written very quickly, without much detail.

In this post I will use the conservative convention of labelling as 29.97i the interlaced NTSC frame rate often popularly known as 59.94i, or 60i.

Yes to clarify, Vegas Blu-ray authoring is indeed restricted to official Blu-ray formats. So the tool for creating a Blu-ray disc image doesn't allow rendering settings of 1080p50, or 1080p59.94 either for 2D or for 3D. (It will allow 1080i29.97 for 2D or side-by-side 3D, but not for frame-packed 3D.)

For frame-packed 3D, the Blu-ray image rendering options are 720p50, 720p59.94, and 1080p23.976.

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In general, you can create artificial 29.97i (e.g. for televison broadcasting) by applying 2:3 pulldown to a 23.976p source. You can recover the original 23.976p by applying an inverse telecine (IVT) process to the artificial 29.97i.

The 29.97i the NTSC region version of the Sony TD10 creates is not derived from an underlying 23.976p frame rate but is a natural 29.97i containing unique interlaced fields with even timing.

Exactly how the Vegas MVC rendering codec produces 23.976p 3D, from two 29.97i (or even 59.94p) sources of Left and Right is a matter for conjecture, but it seems likely the method would create a slight temporal judder. [Whereas inverse telecine performed on artificial ( 3:2 pulldown created) 59.94i can recover the original 23.976p frames intact, an inverse telecine-like process undertaken on natural 59.94i or 59.94p will necessarily involve approximations.]

For 2D purposes I personally dislike 24p as a frame rate. It blurs presentation of rapid movement (e.g. acrobatics), and requires very slow panning rates. It reportedly (e.g. director James Cameron) causes even more problems with 3D. Certainly my own vision becomes very active with 3D video and I find the slowness of 24p a barrier to enjoyment. Subjectively I am more aware of the limitation than with 2D.

29.97i though not as good as 60p, represents a huge improvement in motion fluidity over 24p.

It's great being able to enjoy this by playing the 3D direct from the camera HDMI output socket to a compatible display [such as my own 2010 Australian model Panasonic plasma TV]. It's a bit frustrating only a handful of Blu-ray players cater for the format.

And although the latest graphics cards are supposed to cater for advanced 3D formats, I have not noticed anyone claiming they are actually getting 1080i29.97 frame-packed 3D from a particular software player teamed up with a particular graphics card.



There may be an advantage if the TD10s are not synchronised with each other. If they are free-running at 60p then they could be manually time aligned (with whole frame quantization) on a double NTSC rate Vegas timeline to within 1/120th second (worst case). If the TD10s are set to capture at 24p, there are only sufficient source frames to time align to within 1/48th sec (worst case discrepancy).

On the other hand if somehow the TD10s could be made to capture in perfect synchronisation, 24p could be expected to yield less judder compared with capturing at 60p and converting to 24p.

You are right - with 50 or 60 fps (so with 50p or 60p) you have a finer possibility to align the footage simply by shifting it by full frames, compared to 24p. But even here I would look for a good synchronisation - see our other discussion about that.

As far as I know, Don uses his two NTSC-TD10s in 2D mode to capture direct in 1080 24p. I would like to do so too, but my PAL-TD10s capture to 25p or to 50p only - in 2D. Here Don has a better situation and I understand him to shoot in 24p.

I am not sure if SCS has incorporated pull down and inverse telecine for the Sony AVC-Encoder. I never have explored that since I do not edit NTSC 60i footage. And for my 50p footage I do not need that - even not for my 50i footage. Both 50p and 50i can be converted to 24p (what I do not dislike really) by stretching the timeline (and in case of 50i by deinterlacing in addition). And for my Z10K I shoot in 1080 24p and render to 3D Blu-ray as 1080 24p.

Yes, for the TD10 the direct playback from the camcorder is still fine, but a lot of people want to edit the footage (so do I). It is a shame that the Blu-ray consortia has not foreseen 50i/60i also for 3D Blu-ray, what whould have allowed to maintain that. But maybe there are good reasons for that - to avoid that the quality of the consumer footage becomes too good?