Thanks glad you liked those vids, those where just my first tests and I haven't had a chance to do any more 3D videos as I had an issue filming one and had a leak which killed 2 cameras :depressed:. It was no fault of the housing but I was filming a seal and it was very playful and kept bumping me lol and somehow it must have released the latch for a split second which caused a tiny flood but enough to destroy both cameras. I have got a couple of new cameras thanks to gopro who helped me out a little but one is playing up but that's another topic altogether. Its a shame as I think the video of the seal would've been some of my best footage yet but 1 sdcard died also and the other footage was unrecoverable so I got nothing from that day.
I learned a fair bit with those first few tests and will try and help you out a little, first up is the minimum distance of the subject and I made these four little test videos with my EOM housing to try and find this out. This is because the cameras are fixed unlike our eyes which go a little crossed when viewing objects very close to us, which is why you have to stay a minimum distance from the object for the 3d effect to work properly. Some of this I read up on the net but most I just came up with on my own so it may not all be the proper way to do things but it seemed to work ok for me
[video=youtube;PA3G5vlmYJU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA3G5vlmYJU[/video][video=youtube;WGX929WjRmg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGX929WjRmg[/video][video=youtube;5OhU23DjcJg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OhU23DjcJg[/video][video=youtube;_JOJXobKH8o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JOJXobKH8o[/video]
Pretty simple test with an object placed from 1-12 inches away from the camera on land and underwater to try and figure out how close you can get. I also adjusted convergence with key-frames in gopro cineform 3d trying to set it to the front of the trophy, if you read my descriptions on youtube you will get more info on each of those videos. The thing here is that using anaglyph the minimum distance is a little further away then when using crosseyed or a dedicated 3d monitor setup. Anaglyph is a bit of a fake 3d and does tend to ghost where normal 3d methods don't get any ghosting but if the object is too close it produces eye strain for the viewer.
I did those tests after I shot the crabs video so in those videos I still did get a little bit too close to some objects for the anaglyph glasses. The 3d effect is much better in normal 3d as there is no ghosting at least not on my panasonic 3dtv where in red blue there is.
The avi file is what combines the left and right images together and this software is very good and gives you lots of little things to play with. Most important of all is the convergence setting and ive used many keyframes in those videos trying to adjust convergence so the left and right overlap on the main subject on the screen. Most of the times this is the closest thing on screen but its pretty much just trial and error adjusting it to where it gives the least ghosting or eye strain to the image.
Vertical adjustment should also be set so both the left and right image is at the same level, from what I've seen all gopro cameras are slightly out of alignment and my right cam was slightly higher then the left. Will be interesting to see how the new cams line up in comparison, vertical usually should not need to be changed once set unless you need to go very extreme on the horizontal and then it may need another tweak also.
When setting convergence I like to use anaglyph mode looking at it with and without the glasses on, you can try and get the red and blue as close as possible on your main subject by viewing it without glasses and once set put them on to see how it looks. You will notice if your subject is too close there is nothing you can do as you run out of horizontal convergence and even maximum setting there looks bad. Its best to avoid maximum horizontal as much as possible as when setting to the max the background will be too far apart and its always a balancing act between the two.
Once you get all that sorted the next thing you will probably notice is that the colour balance is generally out of whack, this is because the gopro 3d setup doesn't sync exposure settings between cameras and each one find its own setting. This can lead to a pretty big difference between left and right frames colour wise like can be seen in my first 3d test video.
[video=youtube;T35aPmaQDWM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T35aPmaQDWM[/video]
This video is a long unedited rough cut of the shorter vids I made with more footage in the middle. I did no colour correction here and if viewed in side by side mode you can see how the balance is out of whack. Surprisingly it still works ok even with the big difference between the 2 sides but you still notice a it when viewed in normal 3D. Anaglyph mode doesn't get any noticeable effect in this, I did let gopro know about this issue and they said they will look into it for the next versions (not sure if they mean firmware, or software) The free version of the gopro software doesn't allow colour correction and the only software that does is the neo 3D but thats $999 last time I looked. I used the trial to do the correction for the other videos I made but even this has limitations which I also notified gopro about and they are looking into it.
Hope that helps a little but the 3D software is not that simple to use and takes a fair bit of time to make something look good. I also don't use the gopro software for any other editing other then creating the 3d file and setting convergence, I use adobe cs5 premiere which works great with the 3d files and its very powerful when combined with neo 3d as in this example vid I used to learn some basics when I had the trial. But all this software is very expensive, I have cs5 but cant justify spending so much money for neo 3D beyond the trial. Hopefully gopro may offer some more of these features for the gopro version.
[video=youtube;_YtF0c2bmkw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YtF0c2bmkw&feature=related[/video]
