3D Movie Support

This is way ahead of the curve :)
Especially since Samsungs new 55" 3D TV costs $3700 CAD, + $300+ CAD for each pair of glasses you want to own. Plus 12% Tax.

Does anyone know if MediaCenter will even be able to play 3D movies? Or will it just require a new codec?

While I like your forethought. I myself would more than likely just create a new menu on the EHS for 3D movies, rather than have one movie represent both formats.

Yes I agree with Redshirt. I assume that themoviedb would get seperate entries for the 3D versions with custom folder and backdrop artwork. That way you would have 2 seperate movie folders with their own artwork.

This totally depends on how the general public is going to work with this (by that I mean the contributors of TMDB).

Also, for proper MediaInfo detection and things like starkcovers, it would be necessary to have the 3D version in it’s own folder so the correct artwork can be shown (folder, codecs, etc.)

I have a 3D version and a standard version of Final Destination 4 (The Final Destination) and I have these as 2 separate files. In my opinion it’s the same thing as having 2 copies of a film with 2 different audio tracks. i.e.

The Fifth Element I have with True HD sound but a lower video bitrate, whereas I have an awesome IMAX quality video rip but only 763kb/s DTS sound. I have these two as two separate entries too and have just distinguised between them using the [ ]’s for DTS and TrueHD.

I think if you got lots of movies in 3D, you'd end up having a seperate VF for 3D films anyway, as I now split by Standard and HD anyway, so would easily accept a third VF for 3D.

*and for those wondering, the 3D requires the basic Green and Magenta glasses, no fancy 3D here yet!

I don’t see how this is any different than having a blu ray and a dvd of the same movie. Why not deal with it the same way you do currently? For me that would be putting them in separate folders. By no means is this a new problem, having multiple versions of the same movie. Not only that, but if they are different formats, they should have different xml files, they have different mediainfo properties, etc.

Wouldn’t you want to keep either one of the versions and not both?

I have a small 3D film collection, the simplest way is to create a 3D folder in the genre folder, then index by genre. Xzener has kindly created a 3D movie genre icon too.

there is another way to watch 3D movies too. you can use avisynth with a AVS file to play a movie in red/green anaglyph. the only question for me is how to setup MB or MC7 to use the AVS file instead of the AVI/MKV/…

for realtime 2D->3D conversion read this and download the zip file on this post: 2D->3Dedit the avs for your glases!!!

and here is a tutorial for making 3D pictures in photoshop: how-to

Now that 3D is coming of age our 2D titles can convert to 3D in realtime. Using VirtualDub to convert the actual title and change the 2D to 3D (and need twice the storage) is not always going to be feasible if one wants to keep the 2D as well. So, on the fly requires to start the title with the .avs script beside the original 2D title. MB only sees the original 2D title and not the .avs. Could MB implement the logic to offer the .avs in the detail view to be selected as well as the original 2D title? Sort of like trailers although I know the trailer has to be in it’s own folder.

maybe one of the extremely talented theme devs cans whip up a 3-d theme? now that would be sweet.

Just a thought, why not point your 3D movies (half SBS etc) to an external player such as Stereoscopic Player

It’s a 3D craze in the market place these days. On the fly 2D to 3D conversion built into the panels sort of nulls any need for this now imo.

Anyone playing 3D movies via TMT?? I'm wondering if its possible yet.

Okay, so I think it is probably time for MB to at least understand 3D content. For now, let’s not worry about how we will tell MB that something is 3D – instead, I want to know just how much we need to know about it.

IOW – is this a simple flag or format value on an item or do we actually need new media types (so that different external players can be setup for 3D items)? If so, what are those media types? I mean, certainly we don’t need 3D versions of every media type do we? What format can 3D content be ripped to?

Hey ebr,

from my own experiences 3D movies are in file formats that are also used for 2D movies (.mkv, .mp4). Also the only players that support 3D are PowerDVD and one other, can’t remember the name. Both would be configured through external players. People who use mediaplayer for .mkv run into problems cause MB doesn’t know to launch the external player. Another way to watch 3D movies for some people is to just press a few buttons on there tv remote to enable 3D side-by-side… A method I don’t like cause it’s manual :) Not sure if this also uses external players or works with mediacenter/player.

I have 2 3D Side-by-Side testing movies which are in MKV format. These should be launched through ArcSoft TMT after which I still need to press a button on my remote to get my TV in 3D mode.

Normally I play everything internally in Media Center, but for the particular 3D movies I need MB to recognize these and launch TMT instead. But since they are in MKV format it results in all MKV files to be pushed to TMT.

There is a feature request that asks for a redesign of the external players so that we can define a source folder to act upon.

• ability to define external player by location instead of type...

Okay, I’m probably going to do this in phases. First just get an attribute in there that tells us something is 3D and then I’ll have to re-design the external player definition and logic to take the format into account.

There is Digital 3D, SBS and what else…?

I have all my SBS 3D movies stored on my server as .mkv files. I created a new vf under the EHS and load movies that way. I have the SBS’s play right in media center and my TV alerts my that a 3d movie is playing. I click the 3d button on my remote and everything works great. To me, there is already 3d support. What exactly is trying to be achieved here?

For those with 2011 Panasonic plasmas that have 3D, try changing your 3D detect mode. It will automatically switch to 3D when sensing SBS. It’s great, you won’t have to hit anything on a remote like others have mentioned. I have been launching all my movies with MPC though, so I don’t know if that makes a difference, but I don’t think it would.

But I do like the original posters suggestion. I have some movies that are both 2d and 3d. It would be nice for Mediabrowser to detect that there are two files in one folder and ask which would you like to play, 2d or 3d (similarly, I believe, to the new gametime plugin screenshots I have seen where if you have a game with multiple discs, you click on the game then it prompts you with a selection of which disc to launch). This would be great because I have one 3d tv in the house, and of course I don’t always want to watch a movie in 3d.

SO I was thinking, what if the only determiner for mediabrowser was ending the movie title with 3D? Or are we trying to accomplish more here so it can be used in other ways around mediabrowser…

Hey ebr, does the “3D” need to be in brackets? Such as…. “Avatar [3D]” or would “Avatar 3D” and “Avatar_3D” work?

This sounds exciting. I have been trying to get my 3d content to play in 3d automatically since I built my HTPC. My approach right now is I change the ext. of my 3d files to f4v and tell Media Browser to play f4v files using a bat file. The bat file copies my ini file for playing 3d video, runs TMT5 in 3d mode and then puts TMT5 in 2d mode once it is done playing. It works but not the best. Since I change the ext of the files to something they are not a lot of them have audio sync problems. Since I have my 3d and 2d movies in separate folders this would be easy to implement. All I would need is something to trigger the file copy process.

Let me know if you need a guinea pig for testing or if you need suggestions.

there is another way to watch 3D movies too. you can use avisynth with a AVS file to play a movie in red/green anaglyph. the only question for me is how to setup MB or MC7 to use the AVS file instead of the AVI/MKV/…

I’m doing this right in ffdshow, no need for AVS file. I’ve defined a “3D SBS” profile which will be autoloaded if the file is named “*.sbs.mkv”. It does some rescaling (as my HTPC cannot do all this for a full HD movie) and has included an AVISynth script to change the SBS picture into HQ red/cyan picture (yes, you can include AVISynth scripts inside of ffdshow).

If there is some interest I could create a How-To, just as I created one for scaling fullscreen to widescreen.

I’ve also seen some external boxes for just 70EUR that should be able to convert side-by-side to red/blue via HDMI (and 2D to 3D, but that’s not interesting for me). I’m thinking about buying one of these, but maybe someone already tried it?

Ciao, Alfred