Since its release, 4Videosoft 3D Converter has been downloaded over 3, 000 times in the first two weeks. With this software, users can easily convert any popular Side by Side (Full), Side by Side (Half-Width), Top and Bottom (Full) and Top and Bottom (Half-Height) 3D video to other 3D movies as well as converting general 2D video to 3D video and 3D video to 2D video. Among those users, many of which has the requirement to convert anaglyph 3D to Side-by-Side 3D for a better enjoyment. However, does it work? Let's have a look!
Anaglyph 3D utilizes the visual difference and convergence of two eyes to produce the 3D effect. It has the simple image-forming principle and low cost. However, it is the low-end and old school 3D with the worst image frame. Generally, it will give you a massive headache for the rest of the day after you have watched the anaglyph 3D movies.
Side by Side 3D is now regarded as the best polarizing 3D video, providing the great color quality unlike the old anaglyph. It contains of two halves of the left and right, with the entire frame for the left eye scaled down horizontally to fit the left-half of the frame, and the entire frame for the right eye scaled down horizontally to fit the right side of the frame.
Anaglyph 3D is lossy. It throws away the green/blue channels from the left view and the red channel from the right view. And once that data is gone, it is gone forever. If you want to reconstruct the full color, you need to know what was in those channels. However, it doesn't have enough of the original video data.
Some very sophisticated software may be needed so as users can analyze the left-eye and right-eye images to find which pixel in the left view corresponds to which pixel in the right view. Then you can take the red channel from the left view and the green/ blue channels from the corresponding pixel in the right channel to reconstruct them. But even so the reconstructed 3D movies would not keep the exact original effect.
No matter what people have done, there is not the satisfactory result. How to switch anaglyph 3D movies to side-by-side 3D is still a problem need further research. Our developers are also studying this for giving the best solution to convert anaglyph 3D to Side-by-Side 3D or Top-and-Bottom 3D.
