Converting 2D movies to 3D

I really don't get questions like this.

If you had pc software that converted black and white movies to color, how do you think this would do? How would the software have any idea if someone's shirt was green vs. red?

The same idea with 3d - automatic conversion has no clue as to what objects should be in front, and what objects should be in back, and how far front or back these objects are from each other - or even what constitutes an object. The software can look at items on the screen and guess, but all it's doing is GUESSING - it's going to fail miserably compared to a real conversion.

The results are hit and miss. Some times certain shots or scenes in a program or movie works to a degree although its a bit cardboard cut-out style of 3D. Other scenes are completely flat. It's ultimately fairly dissapointing and not worth bothering with.

A number of 3D TVs, Blu-ray players and outboard devices will convert 2D to 3D. I don't believe the o/p is asking for your philosophical objections to doing so. These features exist, and some people are going to want to use them.

Yes, these conversion functions are only guessing what the 3D picture should look like. By the same token, a Blu-ray player is only guessing what the extra pixels should look like when it upconverts a DVD to high definition. Some programs do a decent job of guessing what the 3D picture should look like. Others are crappy. Even the best ones are only about 30% the quality of a native 3D source, much like upconverted DVDs are only a fraction the quality of real HD. That doesn't mean they're unwatchable, though.

PowerDVD 12 will do it. I can't vouch for how good a job it does, though. I have a Samsung Blu Ray player which apparently does a good job of 2D-3D conversion, yet there are only a few titles that look good to me with the conversion. Fortunately, they are pretty great - the Lord of the Rings trilogy looks good in the conversion. For some reason, though, it's harder on the eyes than watching a native/professionally converted 3D movie. That said, I can't imagine you'd get much better results on the PC software. Hope that helps. Read reviews on PDVD12 and see what they say.

Probably a more accurate analogue would be converting 2 channel audio to multi channel audio. Also just like in the early days of DSP audio the algorithms for 3D conversion are primitive and hit and/or miss at best. It took over a decade before we got acceptable (on the fly) results (like Dolby Pro Logic II) and results are still debatable. Purists will always consider conversion as blasphemy.

Not software but search monoprice 3d creator here. It is one of the only cheap black box approaches (100 dollars or less on sale) to what you want that has enthusiastic reviews from people who were intially skeptical.

I returned mine. It only does 720p framepacked and my Samsung Blu Ray player did a significantly better job at converting 2D-3D. I could only get SBS to work and the results were less than I was hoping for. My 0.02.

I haven't been impressed with any of the conversions I've seen. From what I've seen, it gives some limited depth at times but no pop-out effects.

I like how my LG TV does conversion for everything. Of course no pop out.

The original poster was asking what the results are, and I said that there is no way that a 2D->3D conversion can be even adequate.

For example,


Does Snoopy's nose come out, go in, or is it flat?

How does any 2D->3D conversion know? It doesn't. There are no rules to figure this out.

I've used LG's 2D->3D conversion, and while it does give depth, it's completely wrong half the time. Yes, if all you care about is seeing depth, you can see depth, fine. But if you care whether the objects are really in front of, or in back of other objects, it doesn't give the correct results. It gives misleading and wrong information. And why would you want that?

Would you like to see an old black and white western movie colorized where the horses are purple instead of brown? Yes, it colorized the movie, so you can see colors, but why would you want that?

Not on my dm2350 LG. However I am the only one in my family that likes conversion

HI

I've tried 90% of 2D to 3D conversions and here is my results.

First the worst 2D to 3D converters :
3Dcombine : awfully slow and the result is horrible, the worst 3D ever.
MakeMe3D : the encoding speed is ok but the result is really bad (it uses motion to make 3D and it's a really bad way to do it) : it's good for still image for as soon as there is motion, it's horrible
Leawo Video Converter : i didn't understood that 3D it just shifts the images and add no 3D effect.
ImTOO Video Converter Ultimate : just bad
AVCWare Video Converter Ultimate : idem
DVDFab : at first look it seems pretty good but when there are scrolling the image "moves" i don't know how to explain it but it's bad. also the effect is not very strong
Roxio Creator : can't change the settings and the transformation isn't good.

now with the average 3D
Movavi Video Converter 3D:
Aiseesoft Movie converter:
the effect is pretty good but it streches the image. hopefully aiseesoft converter allows to crop and to keep the same aspect ratio. The 3D is pretty good the only drawback is that there are some artifacts on the video that are visible and it is truly disturbing sometimes specially on bright images (you can see a kind of "ghosting" around the objects on bright background)
Arcsoft sim3D isn't ad but not the best.

the best one is a live one. It's Tridef 2D to 3D realtime converter: it operate only in real time.
if the image stutters because you don't have enough CPU, reduce the size of the video and it will run smoother as the 3D is applied to the video before resizing it to 1920x1080. Also i have an improvement using MPeg4 Visual codec instead of H264/AVC. Try things with your settings. The best sttings i found is to switch to "Nature" and to have 3D set to 31 and shifting to 88 you will get the best images using these settings.

i didn't tried iZ3D because i had a problem with the driver it can be good i don't know, same with PowerDVD or WinDVD

What LG 3D TV do you have? Do you have that button that converts 2Ds into 3D?