Back in September of last year, YouTube released their 3D conversion feature in beta. Users could upload their videos in boring old 2D and convert them to exciting, glorious 3D with the click of a button.
Today, they are expanding the beta by adding automatic 3D conversion to all short-form videos that are uploaded in 1080p. All you have to do to view the newly-uploaded videos in three dimensions is click on the gear box on the bottom video panel, select 3D, and put on some 3D glasses.
If you’re unfamiliar with how YouTube’s 3D conversion works, here’s a little crash course, courtesy of the YouTube blog:
- 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
Youtube says that hundreds of thousands of videos have been converted into 3D already. With automatic conversion of these higher-quality vids, we’re going to start seeing a lot more opportunities to browse YouTube in more dimensions.
Have you been watching YouTube in 3D since they debuted it last year? Let us know in the comments