Solution for Framepacked 3D for some folks and it works great!

Platforms Apple TV
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So, someone else suggested a solution to the 3D dillema that most of us have. What dillema? There just isn’t a box right now that does the holy trinity. HDR, Bitstream, and framepacked 3D. ATV is close thanks to Infuse, but still no cigar.

Some boxes can play framepacked, but they are wonky solutions from China. Some Windows installs play 3D, others don’t no matter how hard you try. And a very small percentage of people are able to get MVC MKVs to work, while the rest of us can’t.

Well, someone on here (sorry can’t remember who) suggested converting the 3D iso/disc to a 4K film. Why? Because when you have a SBS or OU film, you are getting half the resolution. If the movie is 1080p, you are getting 540p in each eye. Why is this a problem? Because the film on disc or in framepacked ISO/MKV is 1080p per eye. You’re losing half the film.

Well, I am happy to report that I’ve done my first test, and damed if it doesn’t work with very little (if any) loss in resolution. Sadly, this will only work if you have a 4K TV that plays 3D (which were few and far between). But if you are lucky enough to have one, this works just great.

It’s painful, and takes about 2.5 hours to convert a film to 4K, since you can’t use hardware acceleration, but it’s a solution that allows us to stay with the wonderful products of Infuse and ATV, and you get 1080p per eye! This is not about upscaling, etc. I’ve seen threads, qora posts, etc. where some folks just don’t understand 3D on bluray. It’s about getting 1080p per eye, and this does it.

The only software I am aware of that works is DVDFAB. It allows you to convert a disc or ISO to 4K 3D. If you are in a boat such as mine, and you have over 130 3D movies, this is at least a solution that works, because let’s be honest… ever getting Apple to implement MVC is nearly impossible. They can’t even implement Atmos.

Please keep in mind that this WILL ONLY work if you have the untouched ISO, the actual disc, or a MVC MKV. Just taking some SBS or OU MKV file and converting it will do nothing for you. In, fact, odds are it will be worse. You will be unconverting 540p. The point of this is to get 1080p per eye, not worse.

Cheers!

1 Like
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Thanks chaosngn,
can you provide some detailed informations about the right settings in DVDfab in order to create a perfect copy?
Thx

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I just set it up for 3D MP3.4K setting. This is in the ripper, but if converting an MVC MKV should be fine using converter, as well. The only two things you will want to change are that you want to copy audio, and then change Video Quality to Customized, and under bits/pixel, slide it all the way to the right so that it says 0.5

I do fast encoding 1 pass, but you could probably get even better quality by doing a 2 pass. This was just my first test, so in the future I may let it run all night when I go to bed per movie and do a 2 pass. 1 pass is slow, though. I don’t know about NVIDIA/CUDA, but with AMD you can’t use hardware. Most people wouldn’t want to anyway.

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Thanks chaosngn,
test in progress :slight_smile:

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Hi chaosngn,
I made some test and the result is very good. My only issue are the subtitles.
If I choose the PGS sub nothing is displayed,
So can you give me some suggestion about subtitles settings in DVD fab?
Thank you in advance.

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Sadly I haven’t run into needing subtitles, so I can’t really help there. It’s such a slow process I’ve only gotten four movies out of 130 or so converted.

I do know ubtitles has always been the bane of boxes that play 3D and iso files.

If you really need them I suppose you could choose the option of burning them in at the bottom, but then they will always be on the movie no matter what.

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Those boxes, they do exist.

That i could test, Zidoo X8 and X9 do that and it is my understanding Hi Media and Zappitti have such capable products as well.

What they lack is Netflix and Prime Video.

I have read about this 4K 3D solution, however i´m not entirely sure you don´t end up losing some quality, not on resolution, but on the 3D nature of the film, at the end of the day, you are losing mvc.

I will try with one film and compare the results with the original mvc file.

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I agree that this is probably the best solution at the moment. I have been using the DVDFab 10 bit 4K HEVC preset with CRF 23 which puts out files between 10GB and 30GB including original audio. Quality seems good. I picked up a cheap GTX1050 which enables hardware acceleration and 40-50fps.

Unfortunately my TV doesn’t automatically detect SBS 3D so I need to trigger it with the remote, but that’s life.

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Thanks for sharing the infos and settings. Anyone else using this method?

AFAIK 3D is only possible with 1080p resolution. My JVC projector, which is 4K compatible, needs to be put to 1080p resolution to even activate the 3D-option.

So if I playback a 4K (3D) video/rip I have to set the projector to 1080p, so i don‘t think i would benefit from the higher 4K resolution, right?

Are you sure your 4K-TVs still output 4K when 3D-Mode is enabled?

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My 4K TV outputs 4K when 3D nose is activated (LG Passive 3D). Everything is upscale. There is virtually no interleaved jagged edges that were present in older 1080p passive 3D screens.

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Which version of DVDFab do I need for this, ripper or converter?

I have .mkv‘s with MVC (but also still have the discs, should this be better - but don‘t think that my Pioneer drive is supported by DVDFab…).

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double post

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How many videos do you have? It might be worth buying a player that does framepack 3D (Zidoo) instead of converting everything.

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I would rather avoid having another box and another remote… plus: I love the Infuse Interface and would prefer to have 3D movies integrated there as well.

So which DVDFab do I have to use to convert those .mkv’s I made with makemkv?

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See here

Since your projector can only output 1080p you’ll need to make 1080p SBS or HTAB files. There will be a quality loss. You can try doing 4K however it will probably be downscaled so again there will be quality loss. If the projector is active it’s recommended to do SBS. If you have a passive display then HTAB is preferred.

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I don‘t have a projector - at the moment I need to know which version of DVDFab I need, there are so many…

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Just use the tool provided in the link I posted.

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Looks like a windows or Linux software - or is there a binary for Mac I didn’t see?

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Nope no Mac binary. If you have parallels or virtual box you could spin up a virtual machine and do it through there. It might also work through wine using play on Mac.

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I see - those Mac-ignorant devs are a pain… so I will try my luck with the converter of DVDFab.