MSU Graphics & Media Lab Report #5 on stereo films quality assessment

April 11.—The stereo 3D (S3D) film industry is now experiencing a drop in interest. Some people even think that the industry is dying and has no future. And a key factor in its decline is the poor quality of the 3D content which causes eyestrain and sometimes even severe headaches and nausea. The Graphics & Media Lab CMC of Lomonosov Moscow State University (further: the Lab) in cooperation with IITP RAS decided to investigate this problem.

The Lab already has over 10 years of experience in comprehensive analysis of quality of compressed video. In the area of 3D video quality it has already released 4 reports since March 2013 presenting the evaluation of 20 S3D films altogether.

Download the report

The 1, 2, 4 reports were focused on films captured with stereoscopic camera systems, and the main problems discovered during the film analysis were:

Image #1: Example of the vertical disparity

Third report was dedicated to quality analysis of 2D-3D conversion which introduces a lot of new problems that are absent in captured S3D video. The analysis included the following common converted S3D video issues:

Image #2: Example of the edge-sharpness mismatch

The Lab received a lot of positive comments from professional stereographers on these reports and was encouraged to continue the work on stereo film evaluation. The next two reports will be dedicated to the analysis of a stereo-window violation effect, which may be especially annoying in the more visible parts of the image. This issue appears in both captured and converted S3D films.

And now we would like to introduce the fifth report, in which the analysis of converted S3D films quality was continued. The report includes the following films:

The main new feature introduced in this report is the analysis for inconsistencies between stereo disparity and motion, which enables the automated detection of shots where inaccurate depth map was used for 2D-3D conversion (Image #3).

Image #3: Example of the inaccurate depth map use

The overall comparison of films in the report includes all 25 films analyzed in this or previous reports.

Depth Budget

The report also provides the depth budget chart for both converted S3D films and captured ones (Image #4). It’s clear from this chart that converted S3D films tend to have lesser depth budgets than those of captured films.

Image #4: Depth Budget vs. Release Date

Vertical Disparity

It’s also noticeable that converted S3D films generally have better vertical alignment than captured S3D films (Image #5). In fact, Wrath of the Titans has the best vertical alignment among the processed films.

Image #5: Vertical Disparity vs. Release Date

Color mismatch

The same refers to color mismatch: the converted S3D films generally have much better color alignment between the left and right stereoscopic images (Image #6). However, color mismatch still appears in converted S3D films and it turned out that color mismatch in Gulliver’s Travels is stronger than in Clash of the Titans.

Image #6: Color Mismatch vs. Film Budget

Comparison of 2D & S3D versions

The report also contains a comparison of 2D & S3D versions of all five films. This research has several goals:

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for providing valuable comments, opinions and feedback, which helped to improve this report:

A key motive of this report is to improve the stereo quality and therefore to reduce eyestrain and headache. The 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. If you are concerned about this problem too, please feel free to share the VQMT3D project homepage link. 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

15 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