Mopping, 3D, and Woes of Anaglyph

I arrived at The Governor's Office of Film and Television Annual Meeting early. I'd been told to arrive an hour early to check on the set up of my student presentation (see http://bit.ly/thLBga for more information about the program). The memory is a bit foggy, but I believe that upon walking in, I may have offered my services in whatever capacity necessary. A sweet OMPA friend eagerly sent me to the "kitchen" (a bare white room with a cement floor and two industrial sinks) to find a washcloth to wipe tables, then gave me the swiveling dust mop to prepare the marble floors.

(photo credit: Jeffrey Babcock)

After I helped the caterers set out food, more guests began to arrive. I met a handful of fascinating people: the caterers (they epitomized the term "Friendly Skater Dudes") a writer who knew a lot about graphic design, an advisor from the Art Institute, a coffee vendor, numerous intellectual people affiliated with the OMPA and Intel, a woman who works at a 3D museum, and the Executive Director of the Oregon Film Office. I got to talk to really cool people I met earlier in the program like Tawny Schlieski and Tom McFadden. Overall, I had a great experience.

Four out of eight scholarship winners had been selected to bring their video presentations to the Governor's Office Meeting. This summer, the scholarship winners were nominated by their teachers, and given a series of assignments for Intel and the OMPA. We were shown technology that is still in development, and were given digital tools to experiment with. I got the Fujifilm W3 3D camera. It is equipped with two 10-megapixel sensors, and creates AVI video files. Sweet deal, eh? We were told to explore possible future applications for personal media data, and come up with something interesting to show for it. Through most of the program I suffered from varying levels of confusion.

Recording 3D video on the W3 wasn't too challenging, but post-production processing just about killed me. At first I couldn't get my computer to recognize the camera (there isn't much 3D media compatibility for Mac yet), and the PC software I received didn't help. I spent hours researching and trying out programs, figuring out what I needed to do. My goal seemed simple: edit the 3D video into a multi-clip movie in Final Cut Pro, and output a 3D video. After months of frustration, I finally discovered a process to complete my goal.

First, I saved the AVI files directly from the SD card to my computer hard drive. I downloaded the free program Stereo Splicer, renamed the files to DSCF followed by four numbers (i.e. DSCF0132.avi), and split the videos in to left and right files. I still didn't have what I needed to output a 3D video composition. I found Stereo3D Toolbox LE, a plugin that works in different NLE programs, including FCP. This plugin saved my bacon. I used it to tweak the parallaxes with ease, and output both an anaglyph Quicktime movie (check it out at http://youtu.be/BcZh-C0DiWM, especially if you have red/cyan glasses!) and a side-by-side version for Youtube's conversion set up (I uploaded my video with my own conversion to anaglyph because I had more control). The options and features in this plugin are incredible. I created a 3D video with only one lingering frustration: I didn't want to create anaglyph video. I wanted to output a 3D video in realD 3D. I'm still working on that one...

For my final presentation, I ditched the 3D presentation plan and created the assigned presentation with a 5D Mk II: My Ideas. Along with three other student videos, my video played looped on one of two plasma screens during the Governor's Office Meeting.  Each video lasted 2-3 minutes, and communicated visually without the necessity of audio, due to the nature of the venue and event. The whole OMPA/Intel Digital Media Commission scholarship program this summer/fall/winter has been an incredible adventure, but I am thankful that it's over.  I'm enjoying three weeks of winter break before I begin 18 credits of wonderful classes.