Just when you thought it was safe? I want my 3D Now!

SONY gets Pummeled by HumanEyes and YouTube ignores the message?

3D imaging developer HumanEyes Technologies filed lawsuits asserting that certain Sony cameras, mobile phones, and related software infringe two of its patents on the creation and display of 3D images.

HumanEyes’ U.S. Patent Nos. 6,665,003 and 7,477,284 are based on inventions made at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by company co-founder Professor Shmuel Peleg and his students, which generate 3D panoramic images by combining portions of multiple images recorded by an ordinary camera. “This discovery makes it possible to bring inexpensive 3D photography to digital cameras and mobile devices and was the basis for founding HumanEyes Technologies,” the company says.

HumanEyes asks the United States International Trade Commission and the United States District Court for the District of Delaware to institute an investigation into Sony’s infringement and to permanently bar Sony from importing the infringing products into the United States —including at least 32 of Sony’s Cyber-shot and DSLR digital camera models and at least 10 Xperia mobile phone models.

6Sight surveys social imaging

by Paul Worthington

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

How we’re making even more 3D video available on YouTube

Last year we kicked off a beta feature that let creators convert YouTube videos into 3D with a click, and since then you’ve converted hundreds of thousands of your videos to 3D. Today we’re expanding the beta to all of you by adding automatic 3D conversion for short-form videos uploaded in 1080p. Meaning, you can select 3D viewing in the Quality settings (click on the gear icon) on the YouTube player, then pop on your 3D glasses and see YouTube in another dimension. Here’s one of our favorites:

How it works

To give you more dimension on 3D, here’s some background how the conversion technology works at YouTube. Since last September we’ve been constantly improving the underlying technology, which now uses several techniques:

• We use a combination of video characteristics such as color, spatial layout and motion to estimate a depth map for each frame of a monoscopic video sequence
• We use machine learning from the growing number of true 3D videos on YouTube to learn video depth characteristics and apply them in depth estimation
• The generated depth map and the original monoscopic frame create a stereo 3D left-right pair, that a stereo display system needs to display a video as 3D

With this broader knowledge of 3D conversion, we then apply cloud computing scalability to make conversion possible across even more videos on YouTube. Breaking up a video into tiny chunks of data and processing them in parallel on Google’s cloud infrastructure lets us process these videos, while still producing the quality you expect.

We’d love to hear your feedback and other 3D features you’d like to see. With 4D, 5D and 6D around the corner there’s lots more we can do!

Deb Mukherjee, technical staff, and Chen Wu, software engineer, recently watched "YouTube Rewind 2011" in 3D!