Transforming 3D cinema content for an enhanced 3DTV experience

Abstract

3D cinema and 3DTV are at two different levels in the screen size spectrum. When the same stereoscopic-3D content is viewed on a cinema screen and 3DTV screen, it will produce a different 3D impression. As a result, it is difficult to fulfill the requirements of 3DTV with content captured for 3D cinema. Thus, it is important to properly address the issue of 3DTV content creation to avoid possible delays in the deployment of 3DTV. In this paper, we first explore the effects of using the same content for 3D cinema and 3DTV and then analyze the performance of several disparity based transformations for 3D cinema to 3DTV content conversion, by subjective testing. Effectiveness of the transformations is analyzed in terms of both depth quality and visual comfort of 3D experience. We show that by using a simple shift-based disparity transformation technique, it is possible to enhance the 3DTV experience from a common input signal which is originally captured for cinema viewing.