Mountain View, California — While movie makers around the globe might have to endure an exorbitant conversion process to be embellished with 3D effects, but Google’s popular video-sharing website YouTube is now able to add an extra dimension to many videos on the fly, which will now convert all short-form videos uploaded in 1080p to 3D, the company said, expanding a beta feature it launched last year.
The video-sharing site first unveiled the ability to convert 2D video to 3D functionality back in September 2011, but back then the option was only available when uploading videos and was not actually done in real time. Since then, YouTube’s team said it has constantly been at work on enhancing the 2D to 3D conversion process using several techniques.
3-D at the push of a few buttons. Photo: YouTube
But now, YouTube wants you to experience and share your amazing HD action videos in glorious 3-D with the push of a button. In the example video (below), users need to click the gear, then the “3D” icon to its left. The video will then appear in either 720p or 360p options.
“You can select 3D viewing in the Quality settings (click on the gear icon) on the YouTube player, then pop on your 3D glasses and see YouTube in another dimension,” YouTube said in a blog post.
However, there are certain limitations as the functionality is only available for short-form videos being uploaded at 1080p resolution that can have the automatic 3D wonder works on them. Although, before you embark on viewing videos in your YouTube account to convert to 3-D, consider the following, as the process is not completely turn-key.
Initially, the feature only works with HD videos, and for an end user to see a video in 3-D, he or she will be require to set playback to HD as well. From now onwards, the 3D feature appears in the options area below the timeline. Once 3-D is enabled, there are numerous 3D viewing options available. For stereoscopic, color-based glasses, users can opt for red/cyan, green/magenta, and blue/yellow. Interleaved glasses are also supported. Side-by-Side view — the eye-crossing “no glasses” features — and HTML5 Stereo view are also available.
In a blog post, YouTube explains those techniques as:
- Using combination of video characteristics: such as color, spatial layout and motion — to estimate a depth map for each frame of a monoscopic video sequence
- Using machine learning from the growing number of true 3D videos on YouTube to learn video depth characteristics and apply them to in-depth estimation
- Using generated depth map and the original monoscopic frame to create a stereo 3D left-right pair that a stereo display system needs to display a video as 3D
Besides, the new process functions by screening the video as it is played and generating a separate, slightly different image for each eye. The amount of depth to add is based on YouTube’s study of characteristics shared by videos originally shot in 3D that have been uploaded to the service.
And with this latest introduction, you can expect bombardment of videos of various individuals punching at their cameras in the next few weeks as users test the service.
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