A research on controlling three-dimensional effect of the video frames obtained from stereo camera

In recent years, 3D TVs and the 3D video contents such as movie, commercial film, or drama are widely exploited for many people. Due to these developments, many people will want to make the 3D contents with 3D cameras, and share these contents by uploading them to the UCC website. However, some people can experience the visual discomfort and fatigue when they are watching 3D video contents on the 3D TV. The reasons why this phenomenon is happened may be cross-talk, vertically-misaligned video contents obtained from the uncalibrated cameras, the collision of the accommodation and convergence, or the excessive three-dimensional effect. In our works, we mainly focused on controlling three-dimensional effect by modifying the convergence distance between the left and right camera. To achieve this, we analyzed the feature of the parallel and toe-in camera, and the relationship between the three-dimensional effect and convergence distances. From these experiments, we determined the type of the camera alignment and the proper convergence distance that satisfies the tradeoff between three-dimensional effect and visual fatigue. Also, to reduce visual fatigue and utilize the determined convergence distance, the proposed camera calibration method was used. This calibrated stereo camera was applied to our manufactured multimedia tablet, so that it could provide the comfortable three-dimensional effect.