Experiments into 3D Video

Now I don't have any fancy 3D TV or projectors, but I do have some old amber/blue 3d glasses lying around, so I thought I'd have  go at 3D  video on no budget.

I have experimented with 3D images before, using Poser and Photoshop, but this time I would be working with real-world video (not CG) so I needed 2 cameras for my DIY 3D rig. I have 2 cameras. I have a very nice Sony-Z5 for high quality video and I have a cheap little JVC Everio for anything else. The way that the amber/blue 3D glasses work (so I am informed) is the the amber image has most of the colour, while the blue provides the depth. So I decided to use the Sony for the amber (left) and the JVC for the right (blue).
The first task was to patch together a 3D rig to hold both cameras. I didn't have much time, or materials, so I came up with an interesting workaround. I set up the Sony on a tripod as usual, then used a Joby Gorillapod to suspend the JVC, upside down, from the microphone mount on the right of the camera. With a bit of trial and error I got both cameras at about the same level and zoom and started recording.

Once I had my footage I imported both into After Effects as separate compositions, created a parent composition containing the two and began the work of lining them both up. Obviously, the first thing to do was to rotate the JVC footage 180 degrees so that it was the right way up. Once I had done that, I created a solid layer in the parent composition and applied the 3d glasses effect. I will not be using this effect for the final result, but it is useful to set it up to interlace the videos while aligning.
While displaying the interlaced view in one window, I scaled, rotated, resized and distorted the JVC footage, until it was a close match to the Sony footage (as the Sony footage was to contain the details I did the work on the JVC footage).

Once the clips were aligned, I hid the solid layer and tinted the JVC composition so that it appeared in greyscale. Making sure the Sony layer was above the JVC layer, I used the Set Channels effect on the Sony layer, setting the blue channel to be sourced from the JVC footage's lightness.

Et Voilà!
(obviously you will need amber/blue 3D glasses to see the effect)

Progress at Last!

I have finally made some progress in the editing of video from my camcorder (a JVC Everio)!

It seems that support for MPEG-2 in After Effects is a "known issue" as the official Adobe support recommended I use a different source.

After serveral attempts at conversion with serveral different tools to several different formats, I have now found one that seems to work.

the wonderful ffmpeg is a command line tool that can convert from pretty much any video format to another.
For my camcorder and after effects, I have found that conversion to WMV2 seems to work best.
Anyone trying to reproduce this should try the following:

ffmpeg -i {input file} -vcodec wmv2 -vb 8900000 /
-acodec wmav2 -ab 384000 {output file}

This should keep the video at the same quality (or close enough) as the original.

Adobe CS3 Production Premium

Okay, so one of my interests is film making (not that I've made any yet) and to that end I have just purchased a copy of Adobe CS3 Production Premium (actually I bought it over a week ago, but have been so busy I had done nothing but install it before today). Now I'm no expert, in fact most of this is completely new to me, so here is a beginner experience of video editing in CS3.

I had some video files lying around from my holiday last year, so I thought I'd have a go at editing one of those. It was a video of the dolphins at sea world (aww, cute).

One feature that caught my attention when I was reading about the package was the AutoComposer which you can use to create scores for your video. So, first thing I did was open up Bridge, as this is what pulls every thing together, and clicked on the olive coloured Sb box.

This did not, as I had hoped, open Soundbooth, but a page with information about SoundBooth; including, as luck would have it, a link to a tutorial on using AutoComposer. I clicked the link and while the tutorial opened, I opened up Soundbooth.

The tutorial started and I started along with it.
Choose a score it said. I did.
Click on the score and you will hear a preview it said. I didn't, hear a preview that is. I paused the tutorial and started poking around. I discovered a preview panel under the window menu, I heard the previews. I resumed the tutorial.
There is some explanation on various items on the composer panel.
Select the video file as the reference link it says. I pause it again. I have not yet got my video clip in the application, so I load it up and select it as the reference clip. I continue the tutorial.
It explains about intros and outros and how the score works with keyframes.
It explains how to lower the volume of the score while a person is talking. I lower the volume of my score only to find that no-one is talking when they should be. In fact, my video has no sound at all!!
I paused the tutorial and went on a hunt for an explanation.
After trawling through help and googling, I found a forum post that said the sound in MPEG files is not supported as it is mixed in with the video, or something like that.
Hmmm.
Most of my video files are MPEG. In fact my new camcorder, a JVC Everio, records everything in MPEG.

I am really annoyed that CS3 does not support audio in MPEG files, I have used free video editing tools that do this, surely one I have paid so much for can do it!
Come on Adobe get your act together!!

I tried the video file in Premier Pro (the video editing package), no luck there either. So I googled again and found a freeware app to rip sound from MPEG, this worked... sort of.
The audio file was shorter the the original MPEG.
In Premier Pro I could change the duration, by I was not sure it would sync correctly. I decided that would do for now, I'd try out some other features.

I decided to use After Effects to try out stabilizing my video footage (hand held camcorders get a bit wobbly) and this was great! Load up the file, drop it into the composition, right click and select stabilize. Easy.
I turned on every option, selected 2 points then let it rip. I waited for it to process a few second, then stopped it, applied the results and hit playback. When it played back it was devoid of shakes, but even more impressive, it had sound! It seems After Effects can do what the other apps couldn't and can read sound from an MPEG file.

A plan began to form.

I saved my After Effects project and then tried exporting as a Premier Pro project.
I started up Premier Pro. I opened my new project. It didn't work.
The video data could not be found and the was still no audio.
Oh well, back to the drawing board.

At least I have about 3 seconds of video footage of dolphins that doesn't shake.