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Viewing 3D pix in 2D?

paully

Well-Known Member
Feb 26, 2010
160
24
Norman, OK
So far most reviews have mentioned that the 2D/3D toggle on the side of the phone switches pic/vid capture between 2D and 3D modes.

I'm concerned about sometimes just not wanting to deal with 3D mode on the display, and have been hoping the 2D/3D toggle also switches the display between 2D and 3D modes.

It would be nice to switch to "2D only" from time to time. And not have worry about "dodging" 3D content to avoid 3D mode.

Anyone heard anything?
 
One of the articles/demos specifically mentioned it did NOT change the display. I suspect the internal APIs don't expose it, so general apps can't easily make use of it like the device-specific camera can.

(Having said that, I agree: from a user perspective, I don't see any reason it shouldn't also toggle the stereo on the display as well. Apart from the obvious convenience, Nintendo got a lot of praise with their slider on the 3DS, and it could help with battery life, too.)
 
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The display and user interface aren't 3d so don't worry about it.

Not yet it isn't. But all it takes is for the content to be coded in such a way, meaning devs can quickly take advantage of it. The question is, will they all allow us to turn it off without going into 15 layers of settings each time. It seems HTC's stock video player allows for this with just one tap of the finger, but this isn't necessarily the case with future releases.
 
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That's correct. A 3D UI would be borderline useless IMO. As soon as your finger is in the way parts of the screen would stop looking 3D and just look silly.

True, though I hear it doesn't look as bad if they set the apparent depth of the UI elements behind the screen instead of floating in front of it.

I don't think a 3D UI is totally useless in theory, but since the effect only works in landscape mode, it probably isn't going to be in 3D anyway.
 
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SO! Let's say I always take pix and shoot video in the 3D mode. I know there is a toggle, but of course I want the awesome 3D versions!

When I go to view said pix and video on non 3D devices like a computer, will the pix/video look all weird and fuzzy or will they look like high res 2D images.
 
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SO! Let's say I always take pix and shoot video in the 3D mode. I know there is a toggle, but of course I want the awesome 3D versions!

When I go to view said pix and video on non 3D devices like a computer, will the pix/video look all weird and fuzzy or will they look like high res 2D images.

When you take 3D pic it is composed of two 2D pics, one for each eye. So when you look at one of them it is perfect 2D pic.
 
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I wondered about this and I'm assuming that one of the lenses is the primary one; the one that gets used if you're taking 2D material.

I wonder if an option will be available to create a 2D version of any 3D material you capture? What I mean is, if I get this phone it will be the only 3D device I have, so when I export photos and videos I need them to be 2D, I'm hoping the phone will take care of this and make it easy.
 
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I wondered about this and I'm assuming that one of the lenses is the primary one; the one that gets used if you're taking 2D material.

I wonder if an option will be available to create a 2D version of any 3D material you capture? What I mean is, if I get this phone it will be the only 3D device I have, so when I export photos and videos I need them to be 2D, I'm hoping the phone will take care of this and make it easy.

I'm just speculating here but:

I think you'll be able to choose which image to view in 2D: left or right. There's no reason one would be dominant over the other, given the cameras are identical. However from an ease-of-use standpoint, HTC could very well hardcode one camera to be the default image for 2D display.

As for 3D imagery compatibility, it depends on HTC's implementation. They can just store 2 images (img0001L, img0001R) and through software combine those two images into their respective stereo frames. Means you could accidentally rename or replace one channel and get some pretty interesting effects in 3D mode.

Or they can package the two images into a package file format that makes it harder for an end user to manipulate. AFAIK, there's no standard format for stereo images yet, and there may never be one (just like there's no standard for images or video, though some are more popular than others). I would expect some sort of app that would allow a user to export the images so they can take them off the phone and be in a common format for other devices.
 
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I'm just speculating here but:

I think you'll be able to choose which image to view in 2D: left or right. There's no reason one would be dominant over the other, given the cameras are identical. However from an ease-of-use standpoint, HTC could very well hardcode one camera to be the default image for 2D display.

As for 3D imagery compatibility, it depends on HTC's implementation. They can just store 2 images (img0001L, img0001R) and through software combine those two images into their respective stereo frames. Means you could accidentally rename or replace one channel and get some pretty interesting effects in 3D mode.

Or they can package the two images into a package file format that makes it harder for an end user to manipulate. AFAIK, there's no standard format for stereo images yet, and there may never be one (just like there's no standard for images or video, though some are more popular than others). I would expect some sort of app that would allow a user to export the images so they can take them off the phone and be in a common format for other devices.

See, that's what I was thinking, but I am wondering if it will save in some sort of strange file....or maybe pictures in dcim, and a "3D" folder for the l/r side, as if they are stored l/r in dcim, it will look like their are duplicates.


I REALLY want this phone, I'm just curious to see how it handles the 3D picture file storing system. If it does just store pic1l and pic1r, its not rocket science to just transfer all the "l" pictures to a desktop.

I'm guessing video will work the same way, the question is will I have the option to choose "video01r" when I need to upload said video to Facebook, Twitter, Ustream, etc.


Thanks for the help thus far. I expect we won't get definite answers until we have Sprint employees field testing the device and jumping on here. I'm really intrigued to see how the file system handles 3D storage now....
 
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Interesting topic and intriguing functionality. With the way autostereoscopic 3D works, they would need to store the left and right images separately (the very old anaglyph system required a composite image). I hope there is a way to view 2D versions of the pictures, and more importantly, be able to save these versions as standard jpg files. If that were the case, I would just take every picture in 3D unless I had a specific composition in mind. But 99% of my pictures are of my kids, so I would rarely do that.
 
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Interesting topic and intriguing functionality. With the way autostereoscopic 3D works, they would need to store the left and right images separately (the very old anaglyph system required a composite image). I hope there is a way to view 2D versions of the pictures, and more importantly, be able to save these versions as standard jpg files. If that were the case, I would just take every picture in 3D unless I had a specific composition in mind. But 99% of my pictures are of my kids, so I would rarely do that.

My situation exactly. I'm a professional musician who will be doing a LOT of pix and video while on tour. I think having those in 3D would be awesome, but I need to be able to upload several of the videos and edit them into our DVD.

I also will use it a lot for my kids and I don't want to have a really awesome 3D pic that looks like junk in 2D. The obvious thing here would be to say "just avoid 3D then...", but its a really cool feature of the phone I want to be able to utilize it.
 
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I just remembered that 3D pics can only be taken as 2mp images, not 5mp like the 2D images. So that's 2mp for each image; the resulting image will have a fixed resolution and will be much smaller (in filesize, dimensions and quality) than photos taken in 2D using the full 5mp available.

This suggests the resulting image is a single file that can only be viewed on 3D compatible devices; perhaps these images will only be worth viewing on the phone itself?

This is all speculation though!
 
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Even if it would require some sort of PC encoding program (which is very likely), being able to convert a 3D video file into separate left and right 2D videos would also be fantastic. I would definitely take advantage of the 3D feature all the time if that were the case. Not being forced to choose between 3D and 2D when shooting would be a wonderful convenience.

A bummer about the 2MP 3D capture limit. I assume it's because, although there are two cameras, there is only one sensor. Since I don't see a significant difference in quality between 720p and 1080p, I would gladly settle for a 720p video in 3D, but a 2MP photo is a tad limiting.
 
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This phone will be out long before I can upgrade so I look forward to trying it out and reading reviews, etc. I hope it delivers the goods on all counts, not just 3D. If not then the Sensation/Pyramid looks like a worthy contender for my next phone.

I really like the concept of 3D pics and videos, even if I can only view them on my phone. I'm guessing (hoping) that despite the low resolution, the 3D pics will still look good on the phone screen, but you probably won't be able to zoom in very much!
 
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I really like the concept of 3D pics and videos, even if I can only view them on my phone. I'm guessing (hoping) that despite the low resolution, the 3D pics will still look good on the phone screen, but you probably won't be able to zoom in very much!

Wow, great point. I never thought about it until now, but I suspect the 3D effect can be preserved via software if HTC has thought about this issue. If the relative depths are preserved when you zoom in, the 3D effect gets magnified. That is very cool for some people, but a lot more eyestrain and headaches for others.
 
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Ok, so my worry now is do you need to take 2 seperate pictures depending on what you will use it for? For instance, If Im on vacation and have an awesome background shot I want to take in 3D but also would consider blowing it up a bit for printing/framing when I get home am I going to have to take the pic in 2D and 3D so that I have the cool 3D pics to show people on the phone but then higher resolution mp 2D pics for printing?

And if thats the case then that means more memory usage for double pics. I guess these questions cant be answered until a full review is done huh?
 
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Ok, so my worry now is do you need to take 2 seperate pictures depending on what you will use it for? For instance, If Im on vacation and have an awesome background shot I want to take in 3D but also would consider blowing it up a bit for printing/framing when I get home am I going to have to take the pic in 2D and 3D so that I have the cool 3D pics to show people on the phone but then higher resolution mp 2D pics for printing?

And if thats the case then that means more memory usage for double pics. I guess these questions cant be answered until a full review is done huh?

I've never seen optics on a cell phone camera justify more than 2 mpx image resolution. Assuming your shot is in focus, the print quality will be the same whether the image is 2mpx or 5mpx. The limiting factor of cell cameras is the optics, not the number of pixels on the sensor.

For example, I typically shoot 3mpx on my dSLR. I can print 20"x30" no problem because the optics are so good. If I shoot at 10mpx, the 20x30 could be sharper, but that's because the optics can provide that degree of clarity. On a cell camera, at some point, cramming more pixels isn't going to do squat, and in my experience (as a semi-pro photographer), 2mpx is sufficient to match the optics.

The rest is all marketing gimmick. 8mpx on the current Evo is a joke. The images are bigger than the ones from my dSLR and they look much worse.
 
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