Generating Stereoscopic Video Cheaply
Stereoscopic video, more popularly known as a three-dimensional video, takes advantage of the fact that humans have a pair of eyes that are placed adjacent to each other. Very few animal species possess this specialized ability to view the world in three dimensions. The following will discuss how you can create a three dimensional video cheaply.
What You'll Need
- three-dimensional glasses with red in the left eye and blue in the right eye
- a pair of two identical cameras.
Step 1: Prepare the Setup
The pair of cameras will be used to mimic what your eyes are actually seeing. You will place the two cameras adjacent to each other, just like human eyes are positioned next to each other; make sure that the distance between the centers of the primary lenses of the two cameras is about 2.5 inches. This number is only a guideline; you should try out the distances and find what works best for your pair of cameras.
You will also notice that the cameras cannot be placed on tripods and brought close at the same time. You can either create customized plates to place the two cameras side by side, and then mount that plate onto a tripod, or get a readymade plate from the local market.
Step 2: Shoot and Edit Video
You will now set up the rig and shoot some test video footage, and then import it into a video editing software suite. Drop the left and right eye camera footage onto the bottom and top timeline respectively. De-saturate both clips and then add the RGB effects to them, such that the red is turned all the way down for the right video and blue is turned down for the left video.
Rendering this video footage will provide you with 3D video that you can watch using the 3D glasses.