| Author | Message | ||
     Joseph Bass (Piecutter) New member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 14 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
Well, my original plan of grafting a couple of Aiptek HD camcorders together keeps getting trumped by Aiptek. The .mov format proved a little difficult for me anyway. They've now e-mailed me an offer for their limited first run of 3D 720p camcorders. It's pocket sized, has a paralax barrier view screen and records in AC3 H264 .mp4 files on SDHC cards. You can convert to anaglyph if you like, but it's supposed to be compatible with the nVidia system and the new 3D TV's. So, what the heck, I'll take the plunge and do some experimenting. It also takes 5mp stereo stills as well as 2D. I'm convinced this whole technology "keeps upgrading" thing has been a plot from the very beginning to keep taking my money and forcing me to amass a huge stockpile of obsolete equipment! For what, I still don't know. I'm afraid the old stuff will eventually collapse when it's gravity field becomes critical, creating a singularity designed to trap me in a wierd dimension of vintage electronics. I think it may have started with the designers of my Micronics 80486 ASIC EISA, but wether they were aliens or a secret government black program, we'll never know, as they have mysteriously disappeared! But, I digress. I'll post my findings. No, not on the conspiracy, the camera! | ||
| William3d (William3d) New member Username: William3d Post Number: 2 Registered: 8-2009 Rating: |
I am William. a specialist in the field of 2D transforming into 3D. I can convert your ordinary photos to fantastic 3D images! (Three pairs are for free if it was the first time we cooperate.) 2 products which utilize 3D viewmaster 、3d viewer 、Coin-operated 3-D Stereo Picture Viewer 、RED/BLUE glasses 、stereo reel、 3d stereo projection、3d pairs pictures www.william3d.com Email:info@william3d.com | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) New member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 15 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
Uhhhh, ya know Willy boy, you'd probably get more hits if you had posted that thrilling info about yourself on a forum where less people already new how to do the same stuff themselves. Plus, you would make more friends if you didn't instantly reply to a new post with a cheap spam plug! | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) New member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 16 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
Should be in my hands on Tuesday | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) New member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 17 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
Got it yesterday and charged up overnight as per the instructions. The camera itself is quite compact, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but thinner. I popped in an 8gb sdhc card and turned it on. Of course, the parallax barrier view screen is the first thing you want to see in action, and yes, it works. I was a bit disappointed at first as it's a bit difficult trying to percieve a 3D effect on a screen that's barely 2 x 1.5 inches. A bit like one of those old 3D football trading cards. I noticed that there was a quite a bit of brightness shift as you panned it from left to right and then found that if I pointed the screen just to the right of my head it was quite clear and discernable without any ghosting. The business end of it has 2 tiny lens openings and 2 microphone openings and is otherwise featureless as it is mostly taken up by the battery cover. The lenses are only 40mm apart but preliminary shots seem to look pretty good regardless. Along the left hand side you find the power button, HDMI port and SD card slot. The opposite side has a slider that extends a standard USB2.0 male connector out of the bottom edge which also is home to a standard camera mount hole. I was hoping for a USB mini female socket so I could just use a standard cable, as the body of the unit prohibits me from plugging into the recessed ports on my PC, but I do have an adapter cable that will work. I went ahead and took a few shots around the garage as well as a short bit of footage and went ahead and plugged it in to my PC. The first time you plug it in it installs itself as well as the "Arcsoft TotalMedia HDCam for 3D" application, which, unfortunately you will find no help or documentation for on Arcsofts web site. Honestly, I don't know why they bother to put their name on the oem accessory software that they supply to these companies. You will not even find any mention of it at all on their site. But I digress, the application has a media library window that shows your work categorized by "New", "Video, Photo or All" or simply seperated by 2D vs 3D media, with size adjustable thumbnails, of course. It can playback the images or footage automatically in Red/Cyan or Nvidia 3D if your hardware supports it. Along the bottom are buttons to import from the camera, video merge to connect your clips together, convert to Red/Cyan format and upload buttons for YouTube and Facebook. The Images are saved as 2592 x 1944 Jpegs in side by side format and conversion to anaglyph brings them to a single image with the same dimensions. Hmmm, where's the extra horizontal detail coming from? I don't know, but it still looks good. The video files are MPEG-4 (Sony PSP) 1280 x 720 (16/9) 29.97 fps AVC (Main@L4.0) with 64Kbps 16.0 KHz 2 channel AAC. But unfortunately, the application freezes up when I try to view them, (time to upgrade my PC, again?) so I'll have to find another app that will play them. It's going to take me sometime to dig out my old Wicked 3D dongle and glasses and get them working on one of my PC's with a CRT, as well as figuring out what player I can use, so I may not be able to give you the shutterglasses impression for a while. Any suggestions are appreciated as I haven't used that hardware in some time and don't know what the current state of compatibilty is, though I have enough spare PC's laying around here that I can devote one to the cause. I would attach a couple of sample pic's, but unfortunately this 75kb limit on this forum renders them useless. | ||
| Thomas Kumlehn (Pixelpartner) New member Username: Pixelpartner Post Number: 6 Registered: 3-2008  Rating: N/A |
Thanks for the update. This sounds good when you describe the camera, but for the software let's wait for driver updates !? I will try to get the cam over here in Germany - or I have to wait for IFA fair (Berlin) in september to see it in action. PIXEL PARTNER (R) Thomas Kumlehn scan/record 35mm film, Stereo3D/CG/VFX coding http://www.PixelPartner.de/openKMQen | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) New member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 18 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
Best to wait. Preliminary playback tests don't look that great yet. I played back a 3D clip to my TV through the camera's HDMI port in side by side format and although it says 30 fps it stutters like 15. It could just be a resolution issue, as I was just displaying the raw, un-folded image. The side by side photos also looked terrible, even though they looked fine on the PC. Don't take any of this as a sign to totally write off the device though, it could be a sign of immaturity with the device's development or just hardware insufficiency on my part. | ||
| Thomas Kumlehn (Pixelpartner) New member Username: Pixelpartner Post Number: 7 Registered: 3-2008 Rating: N/A |
Would you mind, publishing a still on flickr or picasa ? PIXEL PARTNER (R) Thomas Kumlehn scan/record 35mm film, Stereo3D/CG/VFX coding http://www.PixelPartner.de/openKMQen | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) New member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 19 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
I'm at work right now, but I'll see about it tonight. | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) Junior Member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 21 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
I stopped by a store with some 3D TVs (Panasonic) on display and got one of the salesmen to let me hook up to the HDMI port with the camera. Sadly, the picture still does not resemble 720p or 30fps. Allthough the 3D effect was quite good, it just doesn't live up to expectations. You may as well kludge together a couple of VGA webcams to get these results. Even though the image frame is 1280 x 720, you really are getting a 640 x 720 view. It may well produce a 720p 30 fps recording in 2D, but certainly not what the description implies. I'm rather disappointed. The photos, on the other hand you expect to see resembling 1296 x 1944 and the anaglyph conversions do look really good on my PC monitor, which is set to 1280 x 1024 currently, but on the 3D TV they looked only a bit better than the video. The frame rate is still unforgiveable. I did a frame by frame analysis and found mostly only every 3rd frame was different from the last. So, in effect only about 11 or 12 fps visually. I'm hoping that all this is just beta problems and that the hardware can acheive better with a firmware upgrade, but we shall see. I'll certainly be talking to them tomorrow. | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) Junior Member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 22 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
I succesfully installed the software on my little netbook and suprisingly, it works well. I used it to convert one of my clips to anaglyph and viewed it useing the Dell Media Experience program and it actually looked a bit smoother. Much less jaggies on the hard edges, but still not quite as frame rate smooth as 24p, but close. Next stop, an Nvidia 3D equipped PC. I figure that to be the final word in quality of viewing testing. By the way, there are YouTube samples already posted. Just go to the site and search Aiptek 3D. Nothing spectacular but it will give you an idea of the quality. Make sure you select the correct viewing format for your system, most default to anaglyph but some are side by side only. (Message edited by piecutter on August 13, 2010) | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) Junior Member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 23 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
So, here it is. This thing is essentially a 720p camera with a second lens. Each lens takes a 720p image and then squeezes it horizontally to fit into 1 half of a 720p frame. How do you do that? You subtract every other vertical line and squeeze the lines that are left together to fill the empty space til you have a 640 x 720 image which takes up exactly half of the 1280 x 720 frame, then do the same with the other image to fill the other half of the frame. So you see an image that looks like 2 of the same scenes from slightly different angles side by side next to each other in the same frame. Only there kind of squashed in there horizontally, so it's kind of odd looking. To see the 3d composite image, both have to be superimposed to take up the same viewing space either by making one red and one cyan and overlaying them transparently or rapidly alternating the 2 images. Either way, you still have to stretch them back out horizontally so each one fills the entire 1280 x 720 frame. But the vertical lines you subtracted are gone! And there not coming back either! So now you have to double each vertical line that is left so that there isn't any empty space when you stretch it back out. Unfortunately you are left with an end product that has a "stair step" effect on any sharply contrasting diagonal edges. But it'll look cool on standard resolution TV at least. If you can find one that has an HDMI socket! So far, all I'm really satisfied with are the photos. Through the magic of interpolation they, at least, look good. It's a shame the same can't be said for the video. I don't know what the problem is with the frame rate. None of my other Aiptek cameras seem to have any issues with frame rate. Even up to 60 fps. It's not like Aiptek has no experience with this. And so far it's this camera's Achilles Heel. They would have done better to take the sensors and video processors from 2 of their 720p cameras and sent 2 full 720p streams to a recording chip that could handle the extra width(2560 x 720!) or just alternated the frames at 60 fps. If they can come up with a patch or firmware upgrade that will let this thing scan faster it will be an acceptable consumer level 3D camera, even with the jaggies. But as it stands right now I think it's just kid's stuff. I talked with someone at Aiptek today and they seem interested in what I have to say, but as yet haven't offered any answers. I'm not sure there quite yet all filled in on the problems and pitfalls associated with effectively filming and displaying 3D content, but we shall see. At the very least they need to accept that the product needs a disclaimer that although it shoots 720p in 2d, the 3d footage will be half horizontal resolution. | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) Junior Member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 24 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
Summary: video HD?.......Yes 3D?.......Yes 720p?.....Yes, but only in 2D. 3D video, when displayed in 3d, is 640 x 720 images stretched to 1280 x 720 with double wide pixels, therefore HD 3D...no. 30 fps?...Yes, but many frames are repeated several times giving it the look of a much lower frame rate. Even the 2D recordings exhibit this problem. Video settings?............Flicker Frequency 50/60hz and 2D/3D only. 3D View Screen?............Yes. Parallax Barrier. Speaker?...................Yes Microphone?................Yes. 2 Mics for stereo recording. Playback thru HDMI?........Yes. In 2D or 3D with included cable. Live Playback thru HDMI?...Yes. In 2D or 3D with included cable. Field sequential output?...Yes Anaglyph output?...........No. Must be converted thru included software or third party software. Internal Memory?...........Yes, but not for storage of images. Software only. SD/SDHC Slot?..................Yes. Up to 32GB. USB 2.0?.......................Yes. Mass Storage type. Full size male connector and included extension cable. Photo 5mp?.....Yes 3D?......Yes 5mp 3D?..Yes, but as with the video, the image is a composite of two half width (1296 x 1944) images stretched horizontally to 2592 x 1944 with double wide pixels. Exposure controls?.......No. Auto White balance control?...No. Auto Lighting type selector?..No Flash?...................No Night shot control?......No. Auto Remote?..................No Shutter delay timer?.....No Digital Zoom?............Yes. 4x Optical Zoom?............No Date stamp?..............Yes Effective Usefullness? *Recording basic 5mp 2D photos. *Recording 3D video (without fast action) and 3D photos for display of either on a standard VGA display device. *Displaying live 2D or live 3D field sequential on a 3d display screen where resolution and frame rate are not critical. *Discouraging potential consumer level 3D camera buyers on the grounds that it is still an immature technology and possibly, once again, a passing fad. (Message edited by piecutter on August 14, 2010) | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) Junior Member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 26 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
I uploaded a sample video to YouTube for your own review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfoGkc1q888 You'll need a fast connection and PC to view it at optimum level. Notice, though, if you go beyond 480p the stairstep artifacts become evident. I'm still waiting to hear back on the framerate issue. | ||
| Rrrob (Rrrrob) Senior Member Username: Rrrrob Post Number: 229 Registered: 5-2006 Rating: N/A |
I have an Aiptek 3D camera and the initial framerate was ridiculously low...when I analyzed the video in Sony Vegas, it registered as 29.97 BUT I found that it actually was duplicating frames to get that speed. I did some Googling and found out that a firmware from the European site was needed to get the framerate up (why, I don't know--why wouldn't they have fixed this before releasing the thing???). In any event, the framerate has increased to a true 29.97 fps. the jaggies described above seem to remain, however. But for me, the quality is good enough and looks decent on my 56" 3D DLP TV (2007 Samsung). The compact size of the thing is a big plus, as you could take this little thing on a rollercoaster if you wanted! I have posted a comparison of video taken before and after the firmware update at youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtT8WQKbFl8 (Message edited by rrrrob on April 14, 2011) | ||
| Larry Elie (Ldeliecomcastnet) Senior Member Username: Ldeliecomcastnet Post Number: 149 Registered: 10-2006 Rating: N/A |
I'm impressed Rrrob. It's much improved. It still is not a Fuji W3, but it is better. About the W3. I buy on Alibaba. It's a bit riskly, but I have had sucess. I'm thinking about ordering a few Fuji W3's, and depending on the quanity I can get them new (less shipping) from about $150 US (for 10) to $180 US (for 5), and perhaps even better if the sellers compete for my business. I was thinking of gettting a few and putting the extras on eBay, but if there is enough interest here, and people are willing to pay shipping, that would lower my cost. At 20 units it drops to $120 US plus shipping. How many people would be interested? The more the cheaper.... | ||
| Joseph Bass (Piecutter) Junior Member Username: Piecutter Post Number: 29 Registered: 12-2006 Rating: N/A |
Now, just to throw another contender in the ring check this out http://gopro.com/hd-hero-accessories/3d-hero-system/?gclid=CM7diNztrKgCFcPd4AodjjiVIA I found that the GoPro Hero is a great helmet cam with excellent video from my helmet camming days, so I'm quite interested in this one. It's a bit bulkier and more expensive, but it looks like the end result is much better and true high def. I can only wonder why the chose to invert one camera and have the lenses so close together, though. |
