MSU Graphics & Media Lab Report #2 on stereo films quality assessment

Graphics & Media Lab CMC of Lomonosov Moscow State University has about 10 years’ experience in comprehensive analyzing of compressed video. In March 2013 Graphics & Media Lab (in cooperation with IITP RAS) has released its first report on stereo films quality assessment. This first report presented our evaluation results and overall quality comparison of 5 stereo films.

After a very successful release of Avatar the interest to stereo 3D films endures now a bad slump. Some people even think that the 3D is dying and has no future. This decline of 3D demand has a serious background: many movie goers experience headache and eyestrain while watching a stereo film. The Lab decided to analyze the stereo films, captured with stereoscopic camera systems and to investigate the potential reasons of the irritating annoyance. The main examined problems, discovered during the film analysis:

  1. excessive horizontal disparity
  2. vertical disparity
  3. color mismatch (see Image #1)
  4. sharpness mismatch

Image #1: Example of color mismatch

We’ve got a lot of positive comments from professional stereographers on our first report and were encouraged to continue the work on stereo film evaluation. We are planning to publish in the 2-nd half of 2013 another three reports and invite the stereographers for cooperation.

Now we have a pleasure to share with the industry professionals our second report on stereo film quality analysis, also including five 3D movies filmed in stereo:

  1. Dolphin Tale
  2. Drive Angry
  3. The Three Musketeers
  4. Hugo
  5. Sanctum

In the overall comparison of the examined films we compare 3D movies from the 1-st and 2-nd reports, altogether 10 films.

Depth Budget

Take a look at the depth budget (see the Image #2): 3D films created in 1994 have a big depth budget; the movies from 2011-2012 years have a big negative parallax. ‘Hugo’ has a lot of objects before the screen, on the contrary, in ‘The Three Musketeers’ all objects are behind the screen.

Image #2: Depth Budget vs. Release Date

Vertical Disparity

It’s noticeable that all the recent films (‘Hugo’, ‘The Three Musketeers’, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’) have a good vertical disparity. It means, that the situation is getting more and more better with the lapse of time (see the Images #3 and #4).

Image #3: Vertical Disparity vs. Release Date

It’s obvious, that the stereo quality depends also on the film budget, namely on the 2D to S3D conversion budget. We have estimated the relation between the film budget and existing artifacts (see the images #4, #6 and #8). But unfortunately these evaluations can’t give an accurate information, because we don’t know the conversion budgets (source of the film budgets is http://www.imdb.com/)

Image #4: Vertical Disparity vs. Film Budget

Color Mismatch

According to the Images #5 and #6 the films ‘Hugo’, ‘Three Musketeers’ and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ have the best color measures.

Image #5: Color Mismatch vs. Release Date

Image #6: Color Mismatch vs. Film Budget

Sharpness Mismatch

Image #7 shows a good trend of improvement in the last years: the films ‘Hugo’, ‘Three Musketeers’ and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ have a minimal sharpness mismatch measures in comparison with the other evaluated movies.

Image #7: Sharpness Mismatch vs. Release Date

Image #8: Sharpness Mismatch vs. Film Budget

In the screenshots #1-4 below please find the samples of valuable comments from professional stereographers and some more charts and visualisations of distortions:


Screenshot #1


Screenshot #2


Screenshot #3


Screenshot #4

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank for valuable comments, opinions and feedbacks, which helped us in preparing this report (in alphabetical order):

A key motive of this report is to improve the stereo quality and therefore to reduce eye- and headache. The Graphics & Media Lab hopes, that a high 3D video quality would contribute to a continually increasing number of people, leaving the modern theaters without annoyance and with good impressions from the image quality and storytelling. The report is available to all who may be concerned and interested in improving the quality of stereoscopic content. The next reports on 3D quality will be published in the near future on the website.

Reports overview

Stereo-analysis project description

Report 1 (S3D shooting quality analysis of 5 movies) Download
(Additional info for bloggers and press)
Pages: 246
Figures: 295
Report 2 (S3D shooting quality analysis of 5 movies) Download
(Additional info for bloggers and press)
Pages: 342
Figures: 442
Report 3 (2D-3D conversion quality analysis of 5 movies) Download
(Additional info for bloggers and press)
Pages: 305
Figures: 336
Report 4 (S3D shooting quality analysis of 5 movies) Download Pages: 301
Figures: 402
Report 5 (2D-3D conversion quality analysis of 5 movies) Download
(Additional info for bloggers and press)
Pages: 384
Figures: 404
Report 6 (Stereo Window analysis of 10 movies) Download
(Additional info for bloggers and press)
Pages: 415
Figures: 455
Report 7 (Stereo Window analysis of 10 movies) Download
(Additional info for bloggers and press)
Pages: 333
Figures: 348
Report 8 (Rotate Analysis, Temporal Shift, Channels Swap, Zoom Mismatch in 25 movies) Download
(Additional info for bloggers and press)
Pages: 366
Figures: 361
Report 9 (Temporal Shift, Stuck-to-Background Objects, 2D to S3D conversion in Captured Films) Download
(Additional info for bloggers and press)
Pages: 467
Figures: 529
Report 10 (Overall analysis of 105 movies) Download Pages: 211
Figures: 270
Report 11 (Overall analysis of 10 selected Chinese movies) Download Pages: 322
Figures: 566
Report 12 (VR180 Quality Analysis) Download Pages: 348
Figures: 362

Contacts

For questions and proposition please contact us 3dmovietest@graphics.cs.msu.ru

14 Apr 2014
See Also
Video Colorization Benchmark
Explore the best video colorization algorithms
MSU 3D-video Quality Analysis. Report 12
MSU 3D-video Quality Analysis. Report 11
MSU 3D-video Quality Analysis. Report 10
Detection of stereo window violation
How to find objects that are present only in one view?
Depth continuity estimation in S3D video
How smooth is the depth transition between scenes?
Site structure