Curious if support to natively play 3D AVI files (from sources like Fujifilm’s 3DW3) is on the wish list…
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Hey @Johngo we’ve heard user feedback, but because it’s so easy to convert from 3D AVI to SBS and because 3D AVI is a much less popular format than SBS (and certain devices that shoot in 3D AVI are very low quality like Nintendo 3DS), it’s unlikely support will be added to our apps in the future.
We recommend for now you just convert from 3D AVI to SBS and it’ll work great on Lume Pad.
“so easy” has not been my experience.
My LG TV plays the AVI directly, without having to convert, resize, or rename anything, because it’s a known video format in the industry, in particular, the 3D industry. It’s also not “very low quality” - quite the contrary, it’s very impressive.
For the first step of conversion, I only have StereoMovie Maker (stvmkre.exe). It takes in the original Fujifilm 3D AVI file, but will only output SBS in AVI format. This also required installation of Morgan codecs (I tried K-Lite, but they were not detected by stvmkre).
Then, I have to decide what CODEC to use, for conversion to SBS. I can select from many, but most don’t work - the result is a file that the Lume Pad does not play (black screen). I found one that sometimes works - in one case the display was full screen, but was such low bandwidth, it was horribly blocky - a very low quality display. I attempted to go to a higher bit rate, but then the result was like before, a small video in the center of the Lume Pad screen.
Could you please share the “so easy” path you use, to convert 3D AVI for playing on Lume Pad?
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Sure! I use StereoMovie Maker to get the SBS AVI, then I use Handbrake to convert to MP4. Works perfectly.
I wasn’t saying AVI is a low quality format, just that unfortunately, every camera I have that shoots in AVI has really poor quality. There were some expensive camcorders by Sony and JVC that seemed to shoot pretty good 3D AVI content, but as of yet we’ve had zero requests to support those devices specifically.
The media playback libraries used in LeiaPlayer don’t support AVI either. We reached out to them based on your earlier post and they said they had considered it years ago but due to its lack of popularly have decided not to implement it. Because of that, it’s unlikely we’ll support AVI in the future, as it would require us to fully rewrite our apps to support it.
For those who have 3D AVI files, we simply recommend converting them.
Made a world of difference.
For reasons not clear, the only SBS AVI that works coming out of stvmkre, is if I force to 720x480. The Intel codec from the Morgan codec 32-bit collection, only allows this resolution, but it produced the one AVI that when converted to mp4, was displayable on the Lume Pad, albeit with severe artifacts because of the compression.
None of the other Morgan codecs produced an AVI that survived the conversion to mp4 (that could be viewed on Lume), unless I make the same selection to require output resolution of 720 x 480. Not sure why. They simply showed a black screen, if I leave the resolution from the original video, unchanged, when exporting the SBS AVI.
The resulting SBS AVI’s looked good when played directly, but it turns out, the second issue I had, was that the transcoder I was using (Boilsoft video converter) only seems to create highly compressed mp4 files, which don’t work well for SBS, because the blockiness (from highly compressed video) severely interferes with the stereoscopic effect. I tried selecting higher data rates and higher image quality, but all the various options I tried, still resulted in a file size that was about the same (suggesting not much was really changing).
Handbrake affords a much higher bandwidth with its default settings - the resulting filesize is three times the size of the Boilsoft file. With higher bandwidth, is a much, much better image, and as a result, much, much better 3D video.
Thank you!
JohnG
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I can add that in the past to extract SBS from AVI (since my Sony TV didn’t play directly the 3D AVI) I used directly MyFinepix Studio (that was with the Fuji W3 camera). It exported in SBS WMV, so would still need a converter like Handbrake for Lumepad. What I disliked of this procedure however is that apparently in SBS exported this way I had lost half of resolution, while using the Fuji as a " 3D player" attached via HDMI to the TV the resolution was fine.
The Problem of the W3 is that it only records 720p at 24 FPS and that it uses Motion Jpeg as Codec since the Chipset was not powerful enough for a better Compression.
Even the Promo Video Camera IC220 from LG Had better Video Processing, and it was basically a giveaway that everyone who bought a descent TV had this as a bonus. If You are really into Video I would suggest getting one of These, although they also record only half width (also the Fuji) but at least it’s 1080p.
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Right. Not to mention how bad is Fuji W3 in everything but strong daylight. Anyway I find Hydrogen quite satisfactory also for video (I have also a gimbal, and whenever I use it -it requires to remove cover of the Hydrogen and balancing…- it is a game changer), even if, having put a glass protector on the camera, I have sacrificed a bit the audio quality.
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Definitely agree on “everything but strong daylight” for the W3… I picked up a slave flash and a flash bracket, which has helped with indoor/darker situations, but it’s certainly no longer a pocket-sized solution at that point.
JG
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I also love my Hydrogen, but I also understand that one would want a wider Stereo Base for shots farther away, therefore the W3 is pretty mouch without an alternative besides a Stereo Rig or going analog atm. The IC220 also has a smaller lens Separation than the W3.
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I wrote up a doc while I was trying to fine-tune my conversions. These are the steps I followed including for the Fuji W3. Maybe others will find this useful as well.
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Hi Marc,
I was able to address the Frame Image Handle (install necessary Codec) error in StereoMovie Maker, by purchasing/installing the Morgan 32-bit codec set (the 64-bit codec set wasn’t recognized by StereoMovie Maker). morgan-multimedia.com/products.php?sProductId=4 Possibly, the x264vfw codec will also work - also nice that it’s free, whereas Morgan is not, but as an engineer, I don’t mind spending a few dollars to support fellow developers 
I found a posting from someone who said they got the K-Lite codec set to work with StereoMovie Maker, but SMM didn’t see them when I tried K-Lite (still rec’d the Frame Image Handle error). Since Morgan 32-bit MJPEG worked, but not Morgan 64-bit, it might have something to do with how K-Lite is installed in Windows 10, or that SMM can only take advantage of 32-bit codecs - not really sure.
After installing the 32-bit Morgan codec, I could bring the interlaced 3D AVI directly into SMM, then “Save Stereo Movie…” with a format of “Side-by-side” selected and a Compressor setting of Morgan MJPG. (uncheck “Preview during saving” to save time)
Then, as Nima mentioned earlier, HandBrake video converter, was able to directly convert the SBS AVI into SBS MP4. Just needed to wedge “_2x1” into the filename, and it played on Lume. I tried using Boilsoft video converter for the AVI to MP4 conversion, but most of the variants I tried, didn’t play on the Lume, and the few that did, were limited to 720x480 and of poor image quality (blockiness from high compression) which rendered the stereo image, difficult to watch.
I have yet to try the alignment and color correction features you recommended in SMM - my recent videos were underwater, so it will be interesting to experiment.
Thanks for taking the time to experiment and write up your Adventures!
John
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Do you know an equivalent dual stream format to 3D AVI? I know MKV support this, but I don’t know if there’s a similar support for MP4 files, which have broader support than mkv
@Kano3D there is a MVC format. It is an amendment to the H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) video compression standard. It’s the one used often used for Blu-Ray 3D. The advantage I see in MVC is that it compresses not just frames over time, but also compresses by using similarities in your left/right eye views.
There used to be a way to convert from the FujiFilm W3 3D AVI file format to SBS or single left/right eye videos using a FujiFilm product called FinePix Studio. This no longer exists. I also looked into alternatives and found that using Stereo Movie Maker was a bit finicky when it came to codecs. I’ve therefore come up with simple one liner commands using ffmpeg to do the same:
To create SBS video:
For %f in (*.AVI) do ffmpeg -i “%f” -filter_complex “[0:0][0:2] hstack=inputs=2 [out]” -aspect 1.7777 -vcodec libx264 -x264opts frame-packing=3 -map [out] -map 0:1 “%~nf_2x1.mp4”
Specify an aspect ratio that matches the aspect ratio of the AVI file. That will then result in a half width SBS file. If you want to have a full width SBS file leave the aspect part out altogether.
To create individual left and right eye videos:
For %f in (*.AVI) do ffmpeg -i “%f” -c:v libx264 -crf 19 -preset slow -an -map 0:0 “%~nf_l.mp4” -crf 19 -preset slow -map 0:2 -map 0:1 “%~nf_r.mp4”
For more details, I’ve also made a video on this here: How to Edit 3D Video taken with Fujifilm W3 3D Camera (2022) - YouTube
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