# Alternative means of 3D



## hgoed (Mar 22, 2010)

I have not seen any 3D material on my current setup, and there is nowhere local I can rent a 3D Blu-Ray. 

I was wondering if anyone has compared the image quality between a 3D BluRay disc vs. 3D upscale from a set top box vs. 3D upscale by a program like PowerCinema vs. just re-encoding a ripped Blu-ray to 3D (or any combination of comparisons above). 

I tried to convert a movie on DVDfab last night, but it looked like it would take about 6 hours at the highest quality settings so I aborted until a more convenient time. I can experiment with other methods, but if someone else has advice, it might save me a bit of time and money.

Also, anyone want to state their opinion/knowledge on the morality/legality of ripping a rented Blu-ray for a one time watch then deleting it? I have been doing this, just to experiment with the files, and 'though I don't keep them once I return the disc, I'm feeling a bit guilty about it.


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## mechman (Feb 8, 2007)

hgoed said:


> I have not seen any 3D material on my current setup, and there is nowhere local I can rent a 3D Blu-Ray.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone has compared the image quality between a 3D BluRay disc vs. 3D upscale from a set top box vs. 3D upscale by a program like PowerCinema vs. just re-encoding a ripped Blu-ray to 3D (or any combination of comparisons above).
> 
> ...


Can't help you with much of this but the last paragraph. And this is my opinion, I'm not sure how the lawyers view it. But I think what you are doing, ripping rented media, is illegal as you do not own it. Even if you are deleting it right away.


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

My personal opinion is if the movie in not already 3D to begin with trying to "upscale" it to 3D is not going to give very good results and is a real wast of time. The same goes for DVDs upscaling to so called HD you cant make something out of nothing. Its never going to look even close to BlueRay.


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## hgoed (Mar 22, 2010)

I basically can back up what each of you are saying from my little experiment last night with a rented THOR disc.

First, the upscale to 3D either didn't work or worked with lots of glitches using a stand alone BluRay and from the software real-time upscale. I didn't try re-encoding the file for the reasons below and the questionable correctness of doing so.

Second, I actually paid attention to the copyright notice which prohibits duplication of any sort. From a practical standpoint, it was a waste of time anyway. Now that I have a receiver on the way, I don't need to pre-DSP my files and there is no way I would want to spend hours prepping a file just to watch it once anyway.


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## jarrod1937 (Oct 26, 2008)

I've experimented with 3d on the pc. The 3d effect is generated by recording two different views, one for each eye, then finding some scheme to alternate the views between each eye. Now, a true 3d movie has specific portions of the video image offset to make those elements "pop" more than others. My experience with the regular-to-3d conversion is that the software generally just offsets the entire image, because it has no real idea of depth from the 2d image it's working with. The result is that the entire video image/screen takes on a 3d parallax effect, but the actual in-movie content stays flat. However, I would argue that it is still possible to generate a 3d movie from a 2d one. When watching a movie we take depth queues to make sense of the 2d image we're seeing. There is no reason why an algorithm simply can't take depth queues in the same manner. The issue would of course be proper edge detection to apply the 3d offset even with the appropriate depth queues. Currently algorithms still need much more work in that area.


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## hgoed (Mar 22, 2010)

I've been re-encoding a few clips of Tangeled and of Rio in DVDfab. I've been using side-by-side. The 3D effect varies from a noticeable but subtle improvement, to just plain wrong, to frankly glitchy. I'm going to try to do two separate streams and see how that works. Anyone know of any better, more accurate algorithms or programs? I don't think I'll end up preferring a re-encoded movie to the 2D original, but I like to play with the effects and see the technology progress.

I have yet to buy an actual 3D BluRay (basically the only videos I buy are for kids and I've basically bought all of the standard ones already), but as soon as I pick a good one I'm going to try that out for comparison.


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## Arcticbear (Dec 1, 2011)

Speaking from my own experience. Up-scaling resolution usually works okay. To 3D, there are too many glitches


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