3D is here to stay says Captain 3D! - Page 4

You, and Josh, are the only people I've heard voice complaints about the 3D in Harold and Kumar. Everyone else has been glowing in their reviews. I just bought it today, so I will be able to judge for myself. The only 3D I've seen that looks like cardboard-cutouts has not been native.

One more time, H&K is NOT a post-conversion.

He is saying that H&K looks like a mix of 2D-3D converted and S3D material, like Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Underworld: Awakening is another example of an S3D movie that had to shoot a scene in 2D and convert because they were lacking some accessory equipment for their 3D cameras. This is probably a pretty common occurrence that we don't always hear about from the filmmakers.

At the same time, IMDB only lists one camera under the film's technical specifications, and I find it hard to believe that a film like this would have any scenes requiring 2D cameras over 3D ones. However, I believe it's not uncommon for inexperienced 3D directors to botch a shot with a 3D camera and have to have it fixed with conversion. I haven't seen the movie though, so I can't comment on the presence of conversion artifacts or what the 3D actually looks like.

you can shoot native 3D and use some post corrections (usually narrowing the difference between the two pictures for some reason) and get that cardboard or miniature effect.
Miniature effect is usually caused by too heavy use of DOF. It is very easy to reproduce with LensBaby, even in 2D.
http://www.lensbaby.com/gallery-photo.php
That is why most CGI movie looks greater, because you can shoot with a virtual lense that has capabilities (like exposure, versus speed, versus DOF) you can hardly reproduce in real world.
most of CGI movie have sharp edge from foreground to background while other tricks are used to show distance (like fog, motion blur, transparency, faded color or light intensity).
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c...Nq2Q4gSFlMj5BA
So the eye is free to wander inside the picture, not only on the surface but also in the depth, with correct sharpness.
If you do that with usual movie, since the director use DOF to bring the eye to the important part of the picture (the rest being more or less fuzzy), in 3D this is counter productive. If the eye start to look in these fuzzy parts, it (and the brain) are just lost, brain and eye trying to get focus where it is impossible. again, this is a demonstration that our vision is mainly 2D (kind of stacked cardboard vision) because we cannot get a deep vision (all in focus at the same time. But it so fast (for most of us) to get the eye acquire the proper focus on different planes that it is easy to believe we really get everything in focus. It is also possible that the time required to get focus is used by the brain as a distance measurement.
I know some people whot get old and had to stop driving because their eyes were unable to focus fast enough. The lag is so great (few secondes) that they really see "carboard", one at a time.

If you take back the list of things (posted few page before in that thread)that allows to build volume in vision , you can use one element or another to get the effect. That's what make a great specialist for 3D. Unfortunately we are not all sensible to the same degree to each parameter.
So one "trick" could work more or less.
The same psycho-reduction is done with sound (stripping some frequencies) or picture (reducing resolution in chroma) mainly to get a better compression of signal. In stereoscopy, we can say this is most of the time not intentional, but rather caused by limitation in the technology (mainly display).
Gamers use a term to define the level of success reached: Immersion.
Stereoscopic signal can give several level of immersion depending the audience (the wow effect being usually at best with people seeing 3D picture for the first time) or content (3D roller coaster are usually more disturbing than 3D cats sleeping on the sofa).
The problem is in movies, immersion is not the ultimate goal, while it usually is in games, because in game, we have a centric attitude (the player=hero interacting with the game) while in movie we got a spectator (usually passive) and the player is the character(hero) on screen and the result of getting the spectator "immersed" is not totally obvious versus efficiency of the story, since there is no place for him in the scenario.

Understood, except he said most of the film looked converted. Since I have actually seen it now, I can comment. The 3D looks just fine on my passive LCD. There is a scene where smoke comes out of the screen, and it appeared to touch the 3D glasses I was wearing.

I made sure to pay close attention, and depth was very good. That's what I like best about S3D. Even far into the background you can tell where objects are in relation to others.

Art

Well, having watched H&K last night I thought the 3D was very good. It never looked like a pop-up book to me except during the flashback scene of Harold's father-in-law's mother in the alley with the Korean thugs, but I think that was a design choice as that whole sequence was very stylized. *shrug*

If you're interested you should post your opinions in the Harold and Kumar thread

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1392687

It was brought up in here because Josh Z seems to think 3D can't shake the cardboard cutout effect, when in reality it's up to the cinematographer, not the technology.

Do you guys not get headaches from 3D content? I'm asking because I've only met one person who is able to enjoy 3D content. I, as well as all my friends and family, have serious eye strain and headaches from anything 3D.

The effect is cool, but I can't bear to look at the images for longer than a few minutes. Everyone who I've ever talked to about 3D viewing have all had varying issues. From a slight feeling of vertigo to full blown migrane headaches, nausea and all. But, the one guy who I know that thoroughly enjoys 3D, has no issues whatsoever.

I want to be able to enjoy 3D. As of now, to me and the countless others I've talked to about the difficulties in viewing 3D content, it will remain gimmicky and implausible.

It's pretty common for people to feel this way when they are new to 3D but get past it after exercising their eye muscles by watching more 3D.

I've never had nausea or eye strain with 3D content that's crisp and clear, but I have experienced it with a few terrible 3D Youtube videos and video games with strong depth and ghosting.

Oh ok. I guess it makes sense that a person could become accustomed to viewing 3D content, but is it worth it? I honestly don't know, as I've never been able to enjoy it myself, so I don't know if the struggle is worth it.

I mean, does it really make movies that much more enjoyable? I think this question is what most people ask when they are hesitant or opposed to the constant talk of 3D anything. Especially when so many people seem to have trouble when viewing it.

I feel as though it would make the movie more immersive. Similar to the way rear channels do with a 5.1 or 7.1 setup. It would be nice to be able to experience this added immersion, if there really is any. My eyes dissapoint me.

I've got an LG Cinema 3D 47" LED passive set.

All the 3d I watch is broadcast at 1080i.

Have sat through two hour football matches and long films like Avatar. Never had any bad effects, even my 87 Father-in-Law has watched a whole football match without any problems.

Have you tried a friend with passive, or have you always tried active shutter?

The overall 3d viewing experience is well worth it.

I'm pretty sure it's always been active. Is passive better?

Everyone has different opinions on 3D, but it's worth it for me. I love 3D. Avatar in theaters was my first 3D experience, and it sold me on the format forever. I woke up the next day and felt like I had just got back on vacation from Pandora. I've never had an experience like that from a 2D movie.

If you decide to upgrade to a 3DTV in the future, you don't have to strain yourself by watching 2.5 hour movies immediately. You can always just pace yourself with 30 min a day or 30 min every couple of days. Just find a time limit your comfortable with, and you'll most likely be able to increase it after a week or two. Just make sure you choose your content wisely, and don't buy a 2D-3D conversion movie for your first 3D blu-ray. Those won't impress anyone.

This is another issue of preference. Passive 3D is what they have in theaters. Active 3D is what the 1st generation 3DTVs used. Now there is a selection of both passive and active 3DTVs for home viewing.

Passive 3D is generally reported as being more comfortable and less straining, while active 3D is generally associated expensive glasses and a sharper-looking picture.

The key to enjoyable 3D is a really good 3D projector and a screen that fills your field of vision. 3D does not lend itself well to flat-panel TVs. It is critical that the projector have lots of native brightness in 2D in order to get watchable brightness after the 3D processing and dark glasses take their toll. And lastly, you need an active 3D projector that has a refresh rate of at least 120Hz (60 frames per second per eye). Triple flash is even better (144Hz...72fps per eye). A conventional UHP lamp-driven projector that starts out with 1000ANSI brightness and has only 96Hz frame rate is not going to give the best 3D performance. My contention is that anyone and everyone that poo-poos 3D simply hasn't been exposed to really good 3D. These naysayers reinforce one anothers'opinions and influence negatively those who have yet to experience 3D -- good or bad.And to top it all off, there's no assurance that even a commercial theater will get it right if they don't keep their equipment up-to-date, properly calibrated, and their lamps frequently refreshed. Most IMAX theaters seem to do a good job. The local cineplexes are hit and miss.

I've always wanted a dedicated theater room, perhaps I'll start with a 3D projector. This would be years from now though.

I don't think 3D should have to be "really good" to satisfy people. It shouldn't need to be done "perfectly" to have an enjoyable movie. People should be able to take something away from each level of 3D quality. I think this is where the problem arises.

When I go to the movies with a group of friends to watch Avatar in 3D, we all go in expecting the movie to live up to the hype. Or at the very least, prove itself to be a movie with surprisingly good 3D content(relative to what was done before it's time). When all but one person, in a group of 7, have trouble focusing on the movie and picture due to eye strain and headaches, I become frustrated. We bought ourselves a $15 headache that lasts longer than the movie.

The 2D-3D conversion films truly are gimmicky. They are simply trying to jump on the 3D bandwagon in hopes to draw in an initial crowd. There seems to be alot of these movies coming out, and people once again don't like to feel cheated when they pay $11 to $17 to watch, what they are expecting to be, a decent movie with 3D effects.

There is no assurance that a commercial theater will get the audio quality correct either, but this won't cause people to get up and leave with headaches midway through a film. I've never gone to a theater to see high quality anything really, most theaters have mediocre PQ and SQ. I simply go to watch something on a big screen.

Your grouping of 3D dislikers is a bit silly. If two people start talking about their 3D viewing experiences, and both have bad things to say, then surely they will begin to agree that 3D isn't what they thought it would be. If a third person joins in, but has never seen any 3D, the two other people would simply say what they've experienced. They wouldn't say "no comment, I'll let you experience it yourself, and make your own decisions." But would most likely say "I wasn't too impressed with it. It was cool at first but started to get a bit tough to watch." Or something along those lines. It isn't the naysayers' fault that they had bad experiences viewing 3D content.

You don't need the screen filling your field of view and certainly not everyone who hates 3D does so out of ignorance.

My assertion was not that you "need" to fill your field of vision...only that to do so renders a better (more immersive) 3D experience. And if you mean "ignorance" as in the opposite of "intelligence", I certainly would agree. If it's from not yet having had the good fortune to experience 3D at its best -- both in terms of source material and optimum playback -- then this is just a simple blameless case of "not knowing" how good it can be. There are some terrific Imax 3D documentaries that are breathtaking experiences in 3D. "Hugo" has wonderfully executed 3D. When played back on active 3D projectors with high native brightness and triple flash, they are a joy to behold. The industry just has to find a way to make this level of performance more widely available and more affordable.

I have a 60" samsung 3d plasma and an acer 9500 3d projector with a 110" screen. The samsung is fun to watch 3d on but the acer on the big screen is a very different experience. I actually paid more for the plasma than the acer with the screen.

Same experience here with 73" Mits vs. Epson 3010 and 120" screen.

Ed

The Mits and the Samsung are probably much brighter to begin with. Both projectors mentioned above are fine for what they are, but they would not be considered high-performance 3D engines. They are most likely rendering only 48fps per eye.

I have owned more than a dozen projectors. The acer 9500 is my first 3d projector. The 3d image is fantastic. I recently had my sony 85 ( i run dual projectors) projector caibrated by gregg Loewan. When i showed him the acer in 3d he was almost speachless. He said he was blown away by the image quality in 3d of this little acer. He has seen many 3d projectors, he had just calibrated a sony 95 for 2d and 3d the day before he did mine. He said there was no comparison the acer blew the sony away for 3d. Point is for less than 2k you can have a great projector and screen for about the same price as a good tv.
My acer is actually brighter than my samung plasma in 3d.

Make it a high gain screen and you'll have 3D that's nice and bright. I think a DLP projector with a high gain screen is probably the best 3D you can get at home right now (excluding dual projector setups perhaps). A plasma might win in a few categories such as black level and contrast ratio but the projector will win where it counts the most: a large, bright 3D image with no crosstalk. And the funny thing is, as you say, it's relatively inexpensive. I got my 720p projector, high gain screen, and two pairs of glasses for about 1k total.

So true, so true. When deciding whether to drop $20 on the 3d blu ray of Three Musketeers, I silently thought to myself while I will probably only watch this once, the price of admission is less than a matinee at the multiplex and I get to watch it repeatedly, if 3d is to take off, they neee to drop the surcharge and/or admitting it is for the cost of glasses and allow people to buy a low cost pair of glasses that people can reuse until they need another pair.