Converting anaglyph 3D movies to full color 3D!

[Jsmith82]

Stumbling around the interwebs the other day I came across a converted version of House of Wax (1953 version), done by a single guy for his own enjoyment. This got the ol' brain wheels turning and prompted me to start searching just how the heck he did it, or what options someone like myself would have if I ever wanted to attempt something similar, to take and old green / magenta, red / cyan, anaglyph 3d movies and somehow convert them into a full color presentation.

Low and behold, somebody wrote a process and a script to do just that.

My first thought was legalities - I'm not keen on media theft. This was addressed as follows, which also made me think this would be neat to share here on the forum:

Courts have strongly affirmed that we can watch them any way we choose, in private, whether we watch standing on our head, projected on a fishbowl, reflected off the water in our toilet, or even in full color 3D! In other words, if we have a gadget at home that translates anaglyph movies into full color and we use it solely to privately watch the legitimate 3D movies we own, we’re well within our legal rights.

That got me on board

Here is the link to the site and explanation / directions: click here

This works 2 different ways, the lesser not recommended way is to simply have a copy of the anaglyph dvd, or blu-ray. The better way is to have the anaglyph copy as well as the 2d copy - with this method you already have one eyes perspective in full color, the coversion on the other eye will be less apparent and end up looking better.

I'm still reading up but from what I can gather, the script first takes into consideration what you're providing for each eye, whether either is the 2d original. You then have ghost adjustments for the anaglyph colors. The color version of the film is now blended with the anaglyph by shrinking the color version down then restoring it followed by tweaking saturation, contrast, brightness. From there the conversion process begins.

The resulting product is either a top / bottom, or side / side single video format (your choice), IN COLOR AND NOT ANAGLYPH, that a 3DTV can process. Obviously you wont have the extreme quality of BR3D however a couple of posted examples really looked nice when taken from Blu-Ray copies of the films - here is an example snap of Jackass 3D converted via this process:


I'll have to beef up the memory on my home computer but everything needed is freeware so this costs nothing but your time - I'll be trying it very soon - sounds like a fun way to restore some old classics for personal enjoyment and to add a couple exclusive titles to ones own collection.

Just thought I'd share.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by Jsmith82

Stumbling around the interwebs the other day I came across a converted version of House of Wax (1953 version), done by a single guy for his own enjoyment. This got the ol' brain wheels turning and prompted me to start searching just how the heck he did it, or what options someone like myself would have if I ever wanted to attempt something similar, to take and old green / magenta, red / cyan, anaglyph 3d movies and somehow convert them into a full color presentation.

If you mean Underground3DMovies (who was this brave soul, and where did he go? ), I'm guessing he got a hold of the original polarized print--
Wax was never anaglyph in theaters, unless it was a revival or TV print.

The same would be true for Parasite, Starchaser or Friday 13th 3.

[Jsmith82]

Neat, I didn't know that (how the movie was presented - assumed it was anaglyph)..

gillman3d made the wax video that got me thinking, which led to me stumbling on to this anaglyph conversion method. I went ahead and looked up your name below and behold! You too have created awesome looking stereoscopic clips restoring older movies...

I'm just obsessed with learning how to do this, did you convert the whole movie then put it on disk for yourself to watch? Was it as simple as matching up the 2 perspectives then dubbing in sound or did you have to do frame work?

If you're willing to share, I'm very willing to listen - we can move this to PM if that would be better.

[Gae]

I'm not sure what the format was but the House of Wax and Dial M For Murder 3D versions on the net are sourced from an old Japanese 3D video format from years ago (sorry can't remember the name but I think it was linked with JVC). That's why on these versions there are embedded Japanese subtitles.

With regards converting anaglyph to side by side, I did some myself a few years back using my anaglyph DVD versions (both 2D and 3D) and using freeware like Virtualdub and StereoMovie Maker. I must add that I did these for my own viewing only and from the official 3D DVDs that I had. Don't ask me to explain the method as it's quite long winded and the actual process is very time consuming as you have to match the movies up scene by scene and sometimes the 3D sides are swapped or cropped differently or even run at different speeds. The results are quite good (better than anaglyph of course) but you do end up with embedded ghosting (after saving the compressed video) and overlapping colour smudges, in the colourized 3D side.

Although doing these conversions was quite fun when we only had the anaglyph versions, now that we have the 3D Bluray format, it's not as necessary. I recently sold a couple of my old anaglyph 3D DVDs and replaced them with their Bluray 3D equivalents. We just need to get more 3DBR releases of those 3D films that have only appeared in anaglyph format before.

Gae