It doesn't surprise me that you are having trouble finding the right export properties for your Fuji W3 as one of the reasons for the quick end to the 3D boom was the very frustrating lack of compatibility between different makes of equipment. A file that plays back on one 3D TV or monitor may well not play back on another.

I have a W1, a W3 and a JVC GS TD1 video camera and all three require a slightly different approach. I should say that I haven't done any 3D video editing for about 4 years, so I am a bit rusty, however I seem to recall that the W3 MP4 export worked better with either half width SBS or Over Under 3D. The JVC was always better with OU. I have a passive LG 4K 3D tv and 2 Samsung active 3D tvs and all work well with OU footage. My Acer 3d passive monitor and passive laptop both seem to prefer half width 3D.

The best thing is to try exporting a number of 30sec clips in various formats and see what works best.

I have some 3D holiday footage to put together from last year, but it will be a while before I get the time to play around again.

Roger

CubeAce and Roger, thank you for your replies. Yes, the Fuji W3 (not to mention the Fuji W1, which I do not own) use very inconvenient formats. But the problem does not come from these cameras, but from Movie Edit Pro Plus itself. In fact, Movie Edit Pro Plus recognises perfectly the videos from the Fuji W3 and can display them in 3D (as anaglyphs, etc). That is precisely why I chose to buy Movie Edit Pro. My problem occurs when I export a 3D video from Movie Edit Pro to the full-width SBS format. I believe it would occur with any 3D video loaded in Movie Edit Pro, regardless of the camera it came from.

Roger, I followed your suggestion, and tried exporting to half-width SBS. The exported video seems fine (it displays as it should in VLC, i.e. two squeezed images next to each other) and when imported back in MEP, it can be displayed and further edited as a 3D video using the "create stereo" filter in Stereo3D properties. So the half-width SBS format works as it should.

However, the full-width SBS format does not work as expected: it does not display correctly in video players and produces letterboxing when imported back to MEP. So, I think this is clearly a bug from MEP.

It seems that the exported full-width SBS video contains an incorrect aspect ratio (16:9 instead of 32:9). I suspect this was done intentionally to trick other video players that are not 3D capable to display only the left part of the image. This trick seems to work well with the half-width SBS format in the "Films & TV" app, as only the left image is displayed with the 16:9 ratio. However, it fails in the full-width SBS format - the "Films & TV" app displays only the left image but it is squeezed vertically with black letterboxing above and below. I have the impression that the file could be fixed by modifying by hand its aspect ratio properties with some appropriate software. Do you know any software that can do that?

By the way, the reason I chose full-width SBS over half-width SBS is because 1) I do not want to lose resolution (the Fuji W3 video resolution is already terrible) 2) full-width SBS keeps the natural aspect ratio of the left and right images and is therefore convenient to watch through stereoscopic lenses.

If you try exporting in the over/under format, you should not lose resolution because of the way that the image is formed. I have also found that the full width SBS exports fine from MEP and VPX, however some viewing systems including my own TVs won't recognise it as 3d, although my LG 3d monitor does. I think the problem lies with the viewing systems rather than the exported format although I am happy to be corrected.

Roger

Hi Patrick.

Sorry, yes I did put W1 not W3 but they both record movies at the same resolutions, frame rates etc.

I'm wondering if it was the early addoption of 1280 x 720 being addopted by some as HD for early 'HD ready' TVs. . I'm flying blind I admit but there were so many opposing formats at that time for 3D the standardisation for final output files that it was always going to present problems. I too think it's more of a hardware problem even though a software update of the right sort may help. The other problem is there just wasn't that many sales of any format at that time so the support side of things from then is basically gone. Changing aspect ratios in video the way you want is possibly more tricky than one would think. That's the problem with any digital image. Video seems worse affected than stills. My early video is so small on screen and patchy when enlarged I've virtually written them off. They looked great on SVGA :-). If you do find a solution please post it back here as I'm sure others would be interested.

Hi Patrick,

Just reading through this thread again, and it sounds as though you may be wanting to view the 3D SBS images on a non 3D screen using 'stereoscopic lenses' as mentioned in your previous post. If you could confirm whether you are wishing to view on a 3D tv with passive/active glasses, or stereo lenses on a non 3D screen, that could help to clear up any misunderstanding with our replies. Of course the differing viewing methods could make a big difference to how you would export or view the images.

If I switch my 3D tvs back to mono, they will only show the left image, not 2 side by side images. It would also mean that over/under images would be pointless for lense viewing.

Roger

Perhaps I could also suggest looking at and/or joining this excellent 3d forum http://www.3dphoto.net/forum/index.php probably the best there is for folks looking for fellow 3d enthusiasts and technical help. I joined it many years ago and it has been invaluable.

Roger

Okay, so I investigated a bit further and here is what I found. When one exports (say a 1280x720 stereoscopic video) to half-width SBS, MEP creates a 1280x720 video file with two images squeezed horizontally to 640 pixels each. In this case, one obviously loses half the original horizontal resolution, as expected. When one exports to full-width SBS, one would expect a 2560x720 video file with the left and right images at full original 1280x720 resolution. But actually, MEP creates a 1280x720 video where both the vertical and horizontal resolution are halved, and puts black borders on top and at the bottom to maintain a 1280x720 frame. This is ridiculous, as one loses 4 times the original resolution. Moreover the black borders are unwanted. Even MEP itself expects a video with no borders and twice the aspect ratio when creating a stereoscopic video from a full-width SBS video. This is clearly inconsistent. When selecting full-width SBS, MEP should export a video with twice the original horizontal size and no black border, as anyone would expect.

I finally found some workaround: export the movie as SBS half-width but change manually the export resolution to twice the horizontal resolution (i.e. 2560x720). The resulting file does not display properly (setting the aspect ratio to 32:9 in the export window does not help), but at least it has the correct pixel information encoded. Then, I used the command line tool MP4Box from GPAC (https://gpac.wp.imt.fr/mp4box/) to restore the pixel aspect ratio to 1:
MP4Box -par 1=1:1 file.mp4
The file then displays correctly in VLC and Windows Media Player, and can also be imported back in MEP as a full-width SBS video.

For some reason, Windows still displays the thumbnail of this video as a single image with black borders on the left and right, and when played in the "Films & TV" app, only the left image is displayed. This happens only with that app. It is actually convenient for non 3D-savvy people who just want to watch the video as a regular 2D video with the default video player on Windows. Still, I wish I could understand why it does so. When I examine the properties of the video file with ffmpeg or MP4Box, I do not see any difference with other full-width SBS files that display the full video (both the left and right images). In both cases, they are listed with a size of 2560 x 720 with SAR 1:1 and DAR 32:9. I don't know what triggers the Films&TV app to display only the left half of the video.

PS. By the way, Roger, MEP does export stereoscopic videos to the Over/Under format, but cannot create a stereoscopic video from that format, only SBS. And when one exports to the full-height Over/Under format, it actually halves both horizontal and vertical resolutions and puts black borders on the left and the right, the same problem as in the case of full-width SBS.

So to answer my question in my previous post, If you could confirm whether you are wishing to view on a 3D tv with passive/active glasses, or stereo lenses on a non 3D screen, that could help to clear up any misunderstanding with our replies.

Roger

Hi Roger, sorry I did not notice your new posts when I wrote my reply. As I stated, my goal is to have full-width side-by-side movies. I decided to use that format because it preserves the full resolution of my footage and seems to be the most widely recognised format. It is recognised by apps like TriDef 3D gallery on lenticular screen tablets/phone, and it can be displayed as is with any video player on a phone screen to be viewed through a stereoscope. These are the two viewing methods I use. I also believe it is recognised by most 3D TV sets (I don't own one unfortunately, but I checked it worked on a friend's Sony 3D TV set).

Thank you for suggesting me to join the 3Dphoto.net forum. I actually know that forum and have already gleaned a lot of useful information from it, but I have been unable to join it so far. I tried several times, but each time there was an error. Finally, when I tried again a few days ago, it told me that I successfully registered, and I should wait for confirmation by the forum administrator. That confirmation has not come yet (I checked my spam folder) and I still cannot log in. I hope it is just the administrator being busy, but I am afraid it is just the forum itself not working properly.

Hi Patrick,

The 3D forum has had big hacking and spamming problems, so confirmation is taking quite a while because Jeff who owns the forum checks all new applications carefully via IP address and any reports of false or malicious email addresses etc.You will receive confirmation before long.

The problems you are finding with file formats is one of the reasons for the failure of home 3d. You mention a friends Sony tv shows your files correctly, however, files that show properly on my Samsung and LG 3d tvs do not work properly on Sony 3d tvs!!!😱

I also have an older pc with a 3d Nvidea graphics card that I tried plugging one of my Samsung 3d tvs into last night. I plugged a usb drive with one of my half width sbs videos into the pc, and it showed the video as two full width sbs images, which I could view with a stereo viewer across the top half of the screen. I took the usb back out of the pc and plugged it directly into the tv and it immediately went into 3d mode and showed a full screen 3d interlaced image which I could view with active glasses. Turning the 3d mode off and the picture went to two half screen squashed images which was how it had been formatted. Frustrating to say the least.

Finally, I filmed a 3d wedding for a client about 4 years ago and had to make 3 different format versions of it as his friends 3d tvs wouldn't show it properly.

Roger