Re: [Bino-list] Release plans

[Martin Lambers]

Hi Robert!

On 13/04/11 23:28, Robert Pliszko wrote:
>> After that, we can start thinking about a stable 1.0 release. There are
>> of course still a lot of features missing when compared to other video
>> players, but I think that Bino now has reached a state where it is
>> actually doing something useful :)   In your opinion, is there something
>> that absolutely has to be added before 1.0?
> 
> I have seen mail about 2D to 3D conversion (included patch to vlc based
> on Pulfrich effect) on this list, but it has disappointed. I think it
> good idea implement conversion 2D to 3D. I know that the conversion
> never give excellent result, but it is a feature which doesn't exist in
> another applications. Think about it :-).

Purely automatic 2D to 3D conversion is impossible even if you have
access to the full video and no time constraints. That's because a 2D
video simply does not contain the necessary information, you *have* to
fake it. And when trying to fake it in real time while playing the
video, the fake results *will* be horrible. I know some 3D TVs pretend
to have some sort of "convert to 3D" magic, but it's a marketing
gimmick, nothing more. For example, you can take a simple edge filter
and assign depth to object edges. The result will have some kind of
"there seems to be some 3D there" effect, but it's completely fake, and
as a result you cannot watch it for long. See e.g. "Surrogate depth maps
for stereoscopic imaging: Different edge types" by W.J. Tam, C. Vázquez,
F. Speranza.

So I don't think it's worth it to spend time on such methods. If you
want to convert 2D to 3D, you need to do it in an offline process, and
you will need to do some (a lot of) manual work for the foreseeable
future. If you want an automatic "fake" method, you could implement this
as an FFmpeg filter to convert your video before playing it.

> The most important is add possibility play BD3D with menu :-) (ssif
> files). If it included to bino I think the bino will be the best of the
> best application :-).
> I know it is difficult, but it is my suggestion.

Yes, I can understand that BD3D would be nice. Unfortunately, the BD3D
format specifications deliberately try to prevent free software
implementations. So there is currently not even free software support
for the basic Multi-View-Coding video format found on BD3D, let alone
all the DRM problems. Currently, we can do nothing about it.

> In connection to subtitles, I have noticed I couldn't add external files
> *.txt, *.srt etc. I think it good to add that possibility.

That should already work! Just open multiple files at once from
File->Open or on the command line, and Bino will let you choose between
all the streams it can find in any of them.

Martin