[photo-3d] Mini-DV Stereo Rig

[jpong@xxxxxxxx]

I've not been able to find a whole lot of info on this subject in the 
archives.  I was thinking of building an image splitting device to 
use with a single DV camcorder.  With 720x480 resolution, I wanted to 
reflect the right and left images into the camera lens in an under-
over format which would effectively give me a 2.7 (pixels in DV have 
a 0.9 aspect ratio) wide screen aspect ratio stereo video with 
resolution comparable to VHS.  The drawbacks to this system would be 
less resolution than the camera is capable of, along with all the 
problems associated with image-splitters in general.

J. Rupkalvis mentioned his stereo Mini-DV rig and this got me to 
thinking.  A stereo rig would be ideal, but of course synchronization 
could be a problem.  I can't begin to think about how difficult it 
would be to synchronize two video cameras so that each 1/30 sec frame 
occurred at the same time.  I'm not even sure what the tolerance is 
for image synch.  I then wondered if there couldn't be a software 
solution to the problem.

My background is computer science, and one of my big interests is 
Digital Video Compression.  So if I transfer the left and right 
videos to my hard-drive and convert them to some format that I'm more 
familiar with, such as MPEG, perhaps I can merge the two video 
streams into one synchronized video stereo pair.  Simply synching the 
first two frames of the video clip might be sufficient.  If not then 
I can periodically check and adjust the synch and have the computer 
extrapolate the synch in between my adjustment points.  I should be 
able to get 1/60 sec synchronization, which sounds like it might be 
sufficient.  Then I can write a decoder/player to watch the videos 
with shutter-glasses at a high refresh rate and have flicker free 3d 
home videos.

So I'd like to hear if anyone on this list has had any experience 
with this.  I'd like to know too how Mr. Rupkalvis's stereo DV-rig is 
synchronized.  Does my software solution sound feasible.  I've 
noticed that John Rupkalvis hasn't been posting since the comment was 
made about quoting entire posts in his replies.  I agree with that 
comment, but I hope that Mr. Rupkalvis didn't take offence and decide 
to quit participating in the list.  I really enjoyed reading his 
posts to this group.

Josh Ong