After three years of 3D my conclusion is - Page 8

I remember now that said your other sets work that way. It's going to make editing that much easier, rather than having to manually switch into 3D mode every time to check a simple effect.

Since buying the Vizio 32" I have used it in second monitor and have the main edit Gui on primary monitor. I use Best Full Left only with scale to preview window size on the Gui and best Full, now using Line Alternate setting for the Vizio. This requires the Vizio be in 2D mode but the Vegas output in Line Alternate gives me full HD ( passive half). The graphics card Fire Pro V8800 allows the full HD monitor settings and real time playback. of 24 fps. Having it this way there is nothing I need to do while editing except turn my head to examine the 3D look.
This also allows me to use analytical tools in the primary monitor like "Difference" mode and see the 3D effect simultaneously.

Frank, I bought my passive flip up glasses from Amazon. They're kind of cheap but very light weight as there are no frames. I recall buying 5 pair for $10. Already broke two pair while cleaning them. I also bought a couple pair of red cyan flip ups but I remember paying $3.50 for those. I think you can find all sorts of designs by searching in Amazon for "clip-on 3D glasses."

I was the one asking about the flip up glasses, Don. Thanks for the tip.

I just downloaded the trial of Edius 6.5. I'll be buying the upgrade this week. The LG works great with Edius just as you've described it, Frank. I don't have to shift into 3D mode, but I usually have to turn the glasses upside down. The 3D is reversed. But I had that with the Samsung active set, too, so it's probably a bug in the program. It even works with the small Edius preview screen (set to "line interleave" mode in Edius). I can do convergence correction that way, too.

I know you don't edit much Frank, but Edius 6.5 is great. On my Core i7 2600k system, it plays back the timeline in real time, even during a dissolve between two MVC clips (JVC or Panasonic), each of which has color and convergence correction. That's my secondary editing computer, not the really fast one. It has only an nVidia 450 video card, which is the low end of the middle of the road these days. I've never seen 3D editing performance this smooth before, and all with MVC clips.

Passive is better? Guess the OP never saw a DLP set with active glasses. Whenever I see these opinions of passive being better, it is never with a dlp set in the picture. And, I don't buy the claim that "DLP is dead, that's why it isn't considered" as mitsu still makes them.
Frankly, shouldn't a new lcd set be able to trounce my four year old samsung 72" dlp set? Afterall, it does have over 4 years head start on it. I'll stick with my old dlp until someone comes out with a 72" 3d lcd set that offers better pq for under $2k (I paid $1800 for mine DLP).

Glasses-Free 3D will be different.

24" Glasses-Free 3D TV/PC - Sony's L series ships July 6, 2012

Quotes from the L Series Products pages: Source


Paul

I'll check out the Sony when it becomes available locally. But for now, this LG set is GREAT!!! Together with Edius 6.5, it makes editing 3D a pleasure.

Frank or Joe,
Could you please review the following thread the end of which has many posts about about 1/2 or full 1080p per eye on Passive and Lee and I are supporting 1080p per eye and several keep coming with arguments that don't make sense to us.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1364877/top-bottom-3d-vs-side-by-side-on-passive-display/0_70

Not from mine.

Just got a new PN60E7000 Samsung.

While I have tried passive and I would get it a bit of an edge in 3D, no way will I go from Plasma to LCD-LED.

Is there any plasma that utilizes passie. I don't know of one.

Does anyone know if it is even technically possible to have passive with a plasma display?

I don't know that I could add much to that discussion. I don't understand well enough what's supposed to be going on, other than what's already being kicked around there.

In the end, for me, it's all about the total 3D experience. In that regard, I'm very happy with my passive 3D display - a 47" LG LM7600. I would not replace my Samsung D7000 3D plasma with such a set, because I still believe plasma offers a much better 2D experience. But passive is very easy on the eyes, it's much brighter (making a HUGE difference IMO), and in the "sweet spot" there's virtually no ghosting (also an enormous advantage over my other 3D sets). Overall, passive makes for a great 3D experience. As for whether it's technically possible to create a passive plasma display, I have to claim ignorance once more. I'm guessing it would be possible, but they'd probably have a lot of trouble making it bright enough. I will consider a passive projection system down the line. For now, my Epson 6010 still looks awfully good, and its contrast beats the LG.

I have an LG 55LW5000 which I bought shortly before Christmas, it too is a passive 3D display. It is my first 3D TV. Previously I was running a 42" Panasonic plasma model TH-42PZ77U which is now in my storage closet. Prior to that I owned a regular 24" Prima 480i tube TV which one of my cousins now uses. But I am getting off-topic...

I decided to go with passive 3D because the glasses are a lot cheaper and there's no having to worry about flicker, battery life, breakdowns, or losing audio/video sync. Sure I realize that I am losing some resolution, but let's face it, a grand total of about 2% to 3% of my TV viewing is done in 3D and am still satisfied with the picture quality. I have a few 3D movies and IMAX Blu-ray discs but on the odd occasion I will also employ the 2D to 3D conversion feature. It's not as good as actual 3D content, but I still like it. It can be nice for outdoor scenes.

I think the biggest problem with 3D not catching on has to do with lack of content and the price of 3D Blu-ray movies. They can be quite outrageous. And I don't know if this is a problem specific to passive 3D, but I found that "The Polar Express" was pretty much unwatchable in 3D mode with my TV. The motion was screwed up and even updating the firmware to the TV did not help. But most other 3D movies have been great in my experience.

3D is what I expected it to be, a bonus feature of my television, not a central part of my viewing experience. That said, I'm glad I have it available and have no qualms about buying 3D movies if I can get the right price. When the time comes again to buy another TV, I would like for it to also have 3D.

All this mathematics and theory about full and not full 3D HD video are interesting of cause, but this is my story:
I wanted to buy a 3D TV, so I put 3D movie to a Flash drive (it was "Men in black 3") and came to Best Buy and first saw it on a Samsung 55" LED 3D(active glasses) then - on LG 47LM6200 (passive glasses). And on my personal taste I did not notice any big difference in impression. On both TVs it looked very cool, interesting, much more interesting and fun than the same movie in 2D ( to say honestly, I would never see this movie for kids on a 2D TV...). And I chose the LG (47LM6400) - cheaper, bunch of almost free light glasses, no batteries, no head pain, no bluetooth waves in my head.
I liked it so that after several weeks I bought the 3D camcorder (the best on my opinion consumer comcorder JVC GS-TD1. Why it is the best - another story).
The clips that I shot with that camcorder looks absolutely beautiful on this passive TV.
I made many personal movies with 2D HD Canon vixia hf200 and always the best quality of output video file (already edited) was a must for me. But I can tell that a 3D video is much more interesting and beautiful. If you shoot it correctly, and camcorder allows you to manually control it - the result is fantastic. Even when I render the output file in Side by side (or top-bottom) format.
For so inexpensive prise for TV and camcorder - what else I can want to???!!!

I am a big fan of 3D, love 3D blu ray, 3D console gaming. At this very moment i prefer active over passive. For the sime reason that i have tried both and i can clearly see the stairs effect / drop in resolution with passive designs. Also the cheap price of passive glasses dont make much difference as right now i am about the only person in our family whos cares about 3D.

HOWEVER 3D is making progress and theres 3 reasons that passive is the future:

1. 4K is coming, at at that resolution and at even 50in screen sizes seeing the visual drop in resolution on a passive system would be negliable.

2. Now that more of family members have been impressed with my demos of 3D to them, more cheap glasses are need.

3. TV companies in the past thought the way to sell more 3D TV's is to prove theirs i has the best quality higher / res image. But i think they have now conceeded that the general public is not borthered so much by resolution as we 3D enthusiasts are. And therefore to make 3D progress and become mainstream they have to accept passive's cheap 3D glasses are the way to go, especially now that 4K will make up for the resolution drop.

If you saw Titanic 3D bluray with a Darbee video processor on my 159" High Power screen driven by an Optoma HD3300 and DLP glasses you might reconsider passive 3D. And that's for converted 3D. The combined 1080p resolution of both eyes in the brain create a combined resolution that is greater than 1080p and this phenom has been noted by lots of others as well. Avatar is simply jaw-dropping and IMAX quality. Passive 4K might equal 1080p dlp 3D, but not 1080p passive that splits resolution to both eyes. But this for large screen venues. For smaller screens less than 55" passive is probably a good contender.

For display on a passive set make sure to do over/under not side by side.

With over under you still get full horizontal resolution while you lose half your vertical. With SBS you lose half your horizontal and half your vertical res.

With top bottom you do lose half your vertical twice, once with the FPR and again with the sharing or squeezing into the screen height of two images. The effective horizontal resolution on FPR remains x1 so the top bottom is not recommended unless you like 230 x 1920 3D.

The only reason why T/B is even present is because there were some early productions that used it for a distribution format before frame packing technology became standard. There also may be some broadcasts that still use the uncommon format. T/B full, however is a good choice to use for file size compression in intermediate rendering for video editing 3D. Here the format doesn't matter much because it is not viewed or distributed.

For best passive viewing, use SBS half which will give you 540 x 960 or with frame packing from a BD, it will be 540x1920. Never use SBS half for blu ray. When we get the 4K TVs we will have 3D Blu Ray at the full 1080 x 1920. And with 4k 3D content, the resolution will be 1080 x 3840.

Just had another thought on the best mode for viewing non-Blu Ray content on a passive monitor.

To get 540 x 1920 some passive systems and sources will allow you to display "Line Interleave" mode. This will look like frame packed left and right views but is timed differently. Now you can view the full horizontal resolution of 1920 without the halving of a SBS half format. Unfortunately, this special mode will only work for Passive screens that are fed from a 3D source that supports it. I have two examples here, 3D Stereoscopic Player and 3D editors like Power Director and Sony Vegas. The way this works is you select the output mode for Line Interleave in the source and then on the passive TV, you leave the TV in 2D mode and the FPR screen with passive glasses will isolate the lines into full HD for the horizontal but still half for the vertical. Line Interleave was a popular 3D format in the late 1990's and there are several DVD's you can still buy done in this. I have a couple in my collection, One stars Elvira and is titled the Encounter in 3D If you buy this, it is best played by using a computer connected to your Passive monitor and have the monitor in 2D mode, wear your galsses and then play in the DVD player with Stereoscopic Player and select Line interleave and then vary the window size until the 3D pops.

Line interleave also has another advantage in that it can display 3D windows on a 2D desktop but the setup of this is very tricky to achieve. The windowed 3D content must be in a lower resolution than HD and that lower resolution must be in a window sized for the fractional multiple. Otherwise the picture will not converge. The technique I use here is to size the window until the 3D just pops and the double images disappear. Line interleave can be a cool thing to play around with. Checkerboard 3D also supports windowed 3D in a 2D desktop.

Wow this forum is acting up... just typed out a long repy and it duplicated, then deleted dupe and both copies are gone... >

So basically I disagree and think you are not representing how FPR and passive 3D works accurately.

With O/U you are getting each eye 1920x540 lines of data (half a 1080p frame split along the horizontal axis) and with SBS you are getting 960x1080 to each eye (half a 1080 split along the vertical axis).

When you feed each to an FPR display o/u is now either line doubled or just just has blank lines inserted between each horizontal line of data (it doesn't matter becuase you will never see those newly made lines whatever they are) and then displayed effectively makig each eye see 1920x1080 where 540 horizontal lines are original data and the other are garbage that will be blocked. The end result: You see you original 1920x540 lines of data to each eye. Which is half the pixels of 1080p.

With SBS each eye has 960x1080 lines of original data, however this has to be stretched horizontally to fill a 1920x1080p pixel space so each vertical line must be doubled/interpolated to create the missing lines. However of the 1080 lines of horizontal data, half will be lost to the FPR. So the result is that you are down to 960x540 with half SBS of original data or 1/4 the pixes of a 1080p frame.

My empiracle testing shows that when I encode to O/U with all other settings the sam ethe image is noteably sharper and cripser and with SBS the image is much softer backing up the math.


So the basic idea is that lets say the screen resolution is actually 6x4 pixels for easy math. A full frame packed 3D would show 24 pixels per eye (a full 6x4 frame) with half ou you would have a 6x4 rame of video where the top 2 horzitonal lines of data are all left eye and the bottom 2 horizontal are all right eye (or vice versa whatever) giving your left eye 6x2 (12 pixels) of image data and the right eye 6x2 (12 pixles of image data).

When displayed on an FPR TV the left eye will be stretched back out to 6x4 (lets go with line doublling as the effect is the same as inserting blank lines) so if you number each horizontal line of data 1 2 you would essentially end up with

1122 all of which are 6 pixels accorss.

When the FPR blocks every other row to that eye (represented by an x) you get 1x2x in other words you get all 2 rows of original resolution displayed. So the only info you lost was garbage info created to stretch the image out anyway and each eye gets 6x2 real image data for 12 pixels per eye... that's the original 12 pixels that were encoded in the o/u video stream.

Now with half sbs the image is split the other way so of the 6 vertical lines 3 are for the left eye and 3 for the right and each eye maintains all 4 horizontal lines as it's not split that way. So your left eye is encoded at 3x4 (12 pixels) and the right eye is encoded at 3x4 (12 pixels).

What happens when you feed that 3x4 left eye to an FPR dispaly? It has to stretch it out to a 6x4 image which means doubling the 3 vertical lines of resoultion to get 112233 each 4 pxiels tall.

The problem is when you feed that to the FPR display 2 of those 4 horizontal lines will be blocked... and those were original image data... so now you what each eye sees is 112233 vertical lines (really 3 original lines of data) and 2 horizontal lines of data for 6 pixels per eye of original data.

Now granted you do see 12 pixels per eye of something on screen, but half of those pixels are either line doubled or interpolated lines because remember the original sournce only had 3 lines of vertical data per eye so something got created somewhere and created datra is never as good as original data.

So what we get is that o/u on a n FPR shows you all original pixels of image data which is one 1920x540 frame per eye, but SBS on an FPR shows you half the original pixels (becuase half of them are blocked for each eye) with an end result of 960x540 per eye.

This was all discussed over here as well... http://www.avsforum.com/t/1364877/top-bottom-3d-vs-side-by-side-on-passive-display/90

So I think the mistake is when you say "once with the FPR and again with the sharing or squeezing into the screen height of two images."

You have the order backwards (you lose half to the squeezing first then you lose have to the display) but more importantly you are forgetting there is a doubling going on somewhere in the middle in order to stretch the image to fit a 16:9 disiplay (as each eye is encoded to 16x4.5). So half, double, then half with a very important detail being that the second half that is thrown away is the result of the doublling so no original data is thrown away, just the data taht was created during doubling for a result of 1/2 original full frame image data.

With SBS you get half a different direction, doubled, then halved BUT the second halving does not throw away only the data taht was created during doubling.... half of what it throws away is original image data for a total result of 1/4 original full fram data.

Unless I am missing something here...
Edited by Devedander - 2/9/13 at 10:13am

There is no way to properly view the full 1080 lines of resolution to each eye on a 1080p passive dispaly. It's a hardware limit.

Line interleaved is not giving you full 1080 lines to each eye at the same time. At best it's alternating lines of resolution in a form of wobulation (that LG clames it's higher end 3D displays do natively currently) and is far from actual 1080 lines of data to each eye.

If the material is 1920x1080p60 line interleaved (assuming an originaly 60fps source) every other horizontal line is left eye and every other is right eye data. On a 1920x1080 display this still means 1920x540 per eye. There is no magic here that is getting you all 1080 lines to each eye.

Now if the materials frame rate is twice that of the source (is the source was 30 fps but the material is 1920x1080p60) what COULD be happenign is that every other frame displays the missing lines from the previuos frame. So if frame one showed all odd number lines to left eye and all even number ot right eye, then frame number 2 might show all even number to left eye and all odd number to right eye.

This in theory shows all the pixels to both eyes in the same spatial window that the original content did (in this case 1/30th of a second).

The problem is it displays the lines out of place on screen and directly on top of the previous line.... all at a speed that means your eye will simply blend both lines together rather than see them as seperate data. This would cause blurriness and aliasing.

LG gets around this by looking for situations where the adjacent lines would be significantly different and filtering them out... ie throwing away the offending data.

So basically this method is garbage and in reality has the effect of downscalin the resolution as when you show line 1 on the same phsyical line of pixels as line 2 in rapid succession to the human eye that is no different than showing both lines at the same time blended together and stacked on top of each other.

Line interleaving is basically doing in the original material what your 3D display (or conveter) is doing to a half o/u video when it prepares it for 3D dispaly.

The reason it works on a 3D tv without having to turn on 3D mode is that all the 3D seperation has been done already and it's stored that way. Essentially if you took the FPR off your passive display and recorded the display while it was playing back half o/u material you would get a line interleaved result.

There is no real value to line interleaved and in fact it will probably suffer in compressiability as you will have far less large blocks of similar image data and also far less blocks of static complex image data.

In every way I can think of (other than possibly hardware/player requirements which is moot these days as almost every 3D consumer display can handle ou and sbs natively) line ou on a passive display is at least as good if not superior to line interleaved.

I was an active 3D supporter. I had a Samsung 58c7000. I listened to the people who said passive was nowhere near as good as active. Well ever since I upgraded to a passive set (LG 60LM7200), I see that they were wrong. The only time I can tell the difference is with the Directv 3D channels, as the quality was already low with them to begin with. But as far as videogames and Blu Ray movies, the quality is just as good and in some cases better than active. Can videophiles tell the difference? Of course, but videophiles arent the ones who will help 3D succeed, the average family will. The ones that are okay with the video quality of a $400 50" WalMart HDTV are the ones that need to be sold of 3D. Not the guy with a $3500 Panasonic Plasma. Active glasses are still too expensive for a family, and they break easily. As 3D fans, we should want 3D to succeed, and if companies want 3D in more homes, passive is the way to do it.

This is my opinion so please dont flame me. Technically theres a resolution drop using passive. I see the drop, i used work in the video games industry. The resolution drop is real. Because of this i prefer active glasses over passive.

Just think about it for one moment. Why on earth would TV manufactures reduce their TV sales if they could make them use passive technology which give you exactly the same picture quality as expensive active glasses? Why would they even borther making active as clearly these glasses are disliked by the general punlic so much (flicker, expensive, heavier than passive). They make active purely because theres no resolution drop.

Often i dont want to involve myself in passive vs active simply becuase i feel passive fans dont get it and no mater how much one tells them about the techincial reasons they just dont see the difference.

And thats fine with me, i like active because i want the best possible image.

Saying that passive is the future now that we have 4K. But before 4K, active gives the highest resolution 3D.

I like my LG LM7600 better for 3D movies than my Samsung 64" D7000. If I get far enough back, I don't notice the LG's jaggies very much, and the brightness absolutely obliterates the Samsung. In 2D, the contrast and black level of the Samsung make it hands down better IMO, but in 3D the LG pulls way ahead. The brightness difference is huge in terms of the quality of the 3D experience. That translates into an image with more "pop" and depth than what I see with the Samsung. This really surprised me.

Don,

I use my LG mostly for 3D editing, and in Edius the small 3D preview window (as well as the double-click full screen version) are in 3D if I have line interleave mode set. I have to invert the glasses, but they're so light and comfortable that it doesn't make a lot of difference if they're on upside down or not. I don't even have to switch the TV to 3D mode. It's instantaneously available. Very sweet. My JVC software (MediaBrowser 3D) also works the same way (but no need to flip the glasses upside down). I go to full screen and the clips play in 3D without a hint of hesitation (again, no need to switch to 3D mode on the LG). It sounds like it wouldn't be a big deal, but it's so easy and convenient. In contrast, switching my older Samsung active display was a royal pain in the butt. Having the passive set makes a world of difference when I'm editing. I'm still indebted to Frank for encouraging me to go ahead and buy it. The JVC software even works with Panasonic Z10k clips. However, I have to watch them as raw MTS files, and not convert them to m2ts with the Panasonic software. As m2ts files, they won't play anymore. 99.99% of the time my clips are small, so I have no need to convert them. I use the JVC software to watch all my 3D clips, both JVC and Panasonic. And whether they're 60i, or 24p, they seem to play back very cleanly on the LG. That makes it easy to check camera motion and identify bad shots. I love this display!

I dunno... I find both video games and movies to have taken a notable resolution hit with my 55 LG... that said you are spot on that passive is "good enough" and has a price point advantage as well as convenience advantage over active and in the world of consumer products those are as important if not more important than image quality.

That's exactly the thing... we see TV makers going to Passive and reviews saying 4 out of 5 people prefer passive... the assumption is that passive is the superior format... but that's not necesarrily true.

We have to remember that consumers buy for a myriad of reasons and quality is not the only or even primary one. Heck I obviously recognize the value of quality however even I tend to stay in the budget range (ie I am eyeballing that w1070 not because it's the best anything but because it's affordable and good enough).

I fully support the idea that active has a higher resolution picture and that passive drops the resolution notably and introduces all kinds of image artifacts...

But I also appreciate that it's a decent picture all the same with some pros to go with it's cons and the overall cost (barring a 55UND6800 for $500 sale that I couldn't get my hands on) was significantly lower than active. And tossing in that LG's 2D-3D conversion is highly rated in the field didn't hurt.

That said I am constantly reminded of the choice I made... I sit further back from my set than I would like becuase at anything under 10 feet (55 inch LG) the scanline issue becomes very distracting and when playing games the resolution drop (or more the scanlines and aliasing really) are very prominent.

I used to sit 3-4 feet from my 42 inch LCD while playing GT5 with my steering wheel setup - and now I have to sit back 8-10 feet (and that's only because my wheel rig wont fit further back in the room) to make the picture passable and even then a lot of hte beauty of that game is lost and the field of view my set makes up is less than the 42 used to be.

So I think you are right... a large part of the world simply can't really resolve the cons of passive so for them passive really isn't worse in any real way than active and for many of us who can, it's still a choice we make and that's exactly why manufacturers ra moving towards passive sets... not because it's better, but because it sells better.

And as for 4K sure it offers a 1080p 3D passive solution but two things to remember:

An active 4K will still offer higher PQ than passive

while it will be full 1080p to both eyes there will still be scanlines between of 1 full pixel height. No display today would be considered acceptable with a pixel structure that involves a full pixel height between image lines so not sure why this won't be an issue with 4K.

That's is one major beauty of passive... becuase the technology is built in as hardware as long as you send the right signal to it, there is no need to do any processing on the displays part... I would consider that a very niche pro but one none the less.
Edited by Devedander - 2/9/13 at 6:13pm

My favorite display for 3D is still far and away my Epson 6010 projector on a 110" DaLite High Power screen. It's plenty bright (Epson is probably the brightest 3D projector in the "affordable" range right now) and the HP more or less triples that light where I sit. It's active, but there is no drop in resolution, and the contrast is better than the LG. What I'm really looking forward to is the Red laser 3D projector - passive, full HD to each eye simultaneously, 4K, 60 progressive frames per second in 3D and 4K, and still targeting a $10,000 price. Of course, it's anyone's guess when it will arrive. But I'm ready to fly to California for a demo when it is.

$10k is a pretty good chunk of change... are laser lifetimes expected to be very long?

20 thousand hours, perhaps a lot more, without changing colors, without significant dimming, self calibrating, the light source can be stowed away from the projector itself (so the projector itself is very small and very quiet), bright enough for 11 foot wide screens, 4K passive 3D for each eye at up to 60 progressive fps/eye. On paper, it's awesome, but I need to see it, so I'll make the trek from the Midwest if I have to. But there's no telling how long it will take to get here. It could be a year, or more. We just don't know.