Wiggle Vision 3D new and improved for 2010?

Every few decades that stereo 3D resurfaces, so does the ghost of bad 3D past. There is now new hardware out that aims at letting us know that we can have new and improved stereoscopic 3D. If that was not bad enough, the real danger is that there are industry professionals who swear that it’s the next best thing in 3D and all s3D video should be shot this way.

We do remember Circle Scan 4D don’t we? In itself not a bad system as it did not proclaim to do anything more than offer “depth”. How about Magenta Cyan anaglyphs? or Amber Blue anaglyph.

There is now a system that was initially used to add “depth” to regular 2D videos called the V3 system. Not bad in itself – for 2D video, though to me while watching it, it did induce an ever so slight feeling of motion sickness. I’m entitled to my opinion, and I encourage others to form one after seeing the videos below.

The critique I have about this system, is that now main stream professionals and technicians, wanting to “own” a bit of the 3D pie are proclaiming that **a new stereoscopic 3d version** gives better 3D as it exhibits great depth even at lesser and more conservative inter axial settings (distance between lenses).

The video above (this is the 2D version of the lens) intends to show the differences between shooting normal 2D and the then, enhanced 2D with “depth”

My observations:

• It looks like the camera operator has unsteady hands. This is being polite, in reality it looks like someone recovering from an addiction problem handling the camera
• There is in some cases a visible “depth” effect as suggested by the text during the video. In other cases there is not (to me)
• The continuous not-really-there… NYPD Blues type camera shake would leave me with a feeling of nausea should I be watching such video for over 15 minutes.

However as mentioned that is a 2D video. If used in 3D as below:

(**unfortunately this video has now been removed by the user, with no reasons given)

Observation are:

• At 0:40 seconds the Dolly move looks like the dolly or slider bar did not have proper wheels or ball bearings and is really wobbly
• At 1:20 in the video above, there is a focus pull. This would cause some eyestrain in audiences due to one of the talents being semi out of focus*
• The effects on people for a prolonged period of time of such type of judder in 3D has not been studied yet, so I cannot pass judgement or opinion
• later in the video in with the man sitting down in the library it looks like the unit has been turned off, or the oscillation reduced down so the so-called enhanced depth is barely visible and looks more like a 3D video shot with a small interaxial.
• What happens with stereo match moving (mixing of stereoscopic CGI imagery for VFX work with this type of wiggle)
• Note: All observations are made from an HD Quicktime high quality version of the video, and not from the youtube example.

* Due to the nature of this device, it can only operate at stopped down values on the lens, so as to allow for room for the iris to “scan”. So in typical movie making this is of pretty much less use to Directors. It will create semi blur and out of focus imagery. Imagine the actor in the video to be Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise.. How many of the female audiences would leave with headaches after the film from trying to un-successfully fuse the images? or vice-versa in male audiences if the actress was AJ?

While amusing, this is not a trivial issue, If this technology is aimed at narrative Film making in Stereo 3D, issues like unsteady movement (even at minute ‘creeping levels’) and bad Depth of Field will work against mainstream adoption. If complete DOF is needed then yes there may be a market for documentary or walk-through type films. Film makers now exploring 3D in narrative films, much prefer to master and use Creative Depth Of Field.

Power of Suggestion:

Overall, and after having experience in watching and creating 3D since the 1990s… I can say, in my opinion, there is completely no “visible or perceptual” advantage to this. I refer to only a Stereoscopic 3D scenario and with a scene already shot with stereo 3D cameras at any interaxial setting (except zero, which would make it 2D).In case this was used in a typical feature production, it would be akin to shooting with an unbalanced steadi-cam. For slower walkthru like shots it looks like doing a dolly shot with uneven track.

It does seem like a case of what “power of suggestion” can do to an audience.

What needs to be asked is, if there are two such oscillators on the lenses of left and right cameras, are they rotating in step-lock and perfect sync with each other even for shots with high motion? This is not easily understood as the effects of mis-sync can only be found (if any) on scenes that would have fast moving objects or subjects.

“Shaky-Cam” effect

The Trailer above is from the movie “Greenzone”. When seen in a Cinema from the front row seats, it can’t be denied that the camera-work is suitable only to the most die-hard gamers who are used to Call of Duty etc, and can stomach some of the hand-held ”shaky-cam” effect.

This effect is what wobble-vision being discussed here, reminds me of. Again… if the argument is that the “scanning effect” can be contolled, a.k.a reduced when wanted, then the argument can also be made of : is it necessary in the first place if the effect is so toned down as to be of no use? Why not shoot with a run-n-gun Beamsplitter such as 3Ality’s TS-5 or Element Technica’s Neutron, a la “shaky cam”?

Saccades, Micro-saccades and Percieved Sharpness:

What are saccades? Wikipedia explains it well. What is interesting is Micro-saccades. To quote Wikipedia:

“In addition, the human eye is in a constant state of vibration, oscillating back and forth at a rate of about 30–70 Hz. These microsaccades are tiny movements, roughly 20 arcseconds (one arcsecond = 1/3600 of a degree) in excursion and are completely imperceptible under normal circumstances. They serve to refresh the image being cast onto the rod cells and cone cells at the back of the eye. Without microsaccades, staring fixedly at something would cause the vision to cease after a few seconds, since rods and cones respond only to changes in luminance”. (which explains the colors disappearing if you followed the power-of-suggestion link above).

Thus we could hypothesize that because of this constant “refresh” (by our eyes) of an image (in the real world), more clarity and depth is achieved by our natural visual system. Can this be a reason that some people are seeing “more depth” from a mechanical side-to-side iris scan (Emphasis on Scan here) of the original field of view of the camera lens? This would mean that just as spectacles aid poor vision, Systems such as the V3 would help people see more depth in a stereo image by mimicking..in a way… natural phenomena such as saccades.

Keeping an open mind, this is worth investigating. What needs to be investigated more is the effect that this has on stereoscopic 3D movies of feature length time-frames and the strain on eyes and brain from saccades that are artificially generated.

Why this does not work in Stereo 3D movies – The simple answer:

If you get access to HD footage shot with such as system, On a stereoscopic Camera rig, take off the glasses and evaluate it. With the glasses on, you won’t see the vertical “judder” and the footage will look like great 3D. Just as in the case of 3D footage shot with vertical disparity – The eyes will adjust, you just don’t know why after 30 minutes you have a headache. Remember: what wobble you see on a 10foot preview screen will be magnified 4 times on a typical Cinema screen.

1) Have you looked at a Lizard or frog or insect.. always bobbing their heads or moving it side to side? It can be argued that besides other reasons, they may also be trying to get some parallax info to judge depth in their world (their eyes are on either side of their heads).

2) Even if that were not the case, the peculiar head bobbing in say birds, is so that they can stabilize their world . If this is true….

3) Then everything we do to stabilize our Video footage for the “cinematic look” just went down the drain.. Steadicams, dolly track, Precise engineering on 3D rigs etc, by using something counter intuitive such as this lens system.

4) In a stereo 3D movie, captured by two front facing cameras (eyes) set a distance apart there is *Enough* parallax and Disparity to create the needed depth perception, even if the interaxials are 12mm apart!

The simple truth is that in order not to cause motion sickness this parallax scanning lens has to really do it’s thing very..very slow. At that speed it may as well be turned off. No amount of “suggestion” can convince (me) that there is more depth coming out of a Stereoscopically recorded scene with 2 cameras *and* this oscillating lens system.

There are also single camera “3D” videos shown that exhibit severe temporal artifacts, along with problems that would give 2D to 3D conversion studios a nightmare – Wobbly Lens flares (youtube video), for instance.

As many true Stereographers already agree, there is no one easy way to create a good stereoscopic movie… if there was, 3D would have taken off a long time ago. Good Stereoscopic 3D is part art and part science. The investment of time, effort and “thinking in 3D” should be the goal when producing an s3D presentation. The rewards? Immersive story telling, the suspension of disbelief and the assorted catch phrases that go with it.

Stereographers, treat each scene and shot with the same dedication and craftsmanship as the old masters. Ironically they may suffer the same fate, as commercialization takes over this art-form.

Wobble Ready 2D to 3D Conversions?

It might be tempting to think that one could just shoot with a single camera and such a scanning lens, and record enough parallax per shot to extract a “second eye” view. Though tempting, it would certainly lead to temporal artifacts, that will distort any “depth map” even if processed in software such as Nuke, or in other approaches would create conflicting pixel information.  The scanning would also have to be quite a bit stronger to get any decent parallax info, and in doing so would create that motion sickness effect on the whole scene.

The article is the authors independent opinion only and filed under ’3D Critique’. Edited on Sept 12th 2010.