3D Visual Communications

4.2 3D Content Capturing

With different types of cameras, the 3D content capturing process is completely different. The stereo camera or depth camera simultaneously captures video and associated per-pixel depth or disparity information; multi-view cameras capture multiple images simultaneously from various angles, then a multi-view matching (or correspondence) process is required to generate the disparity map for each pair of cameras, and then the 3D structure can be estimated from these disparity maps. The most challenging scenario is to capture 3D content from a normal 2D (or monoscopic) camera, which lacks disparity or depth information. In this chapter, we showcase a real-time 3D capturing system with a monoscopic mobile phone in Section 4.2.4.

4.2.1 Stereo Camera

Basically, a typical stereo camera uses two cameras mounted side by side for the recording, although some variants may build them into one with two lenses. We list below a few examples:

• Fusion camera system: the concept was first developed by James Cameron and Vince Pace many years ago. The Sony Fusion 3D Camera System was presented at NAB 2007 using two Sony HDCF950 HD cameras, which are presumably variants of the Sony CineAlta range.
• TDVision provides TDVCam, a true stereoscopic high definition digital video camera that records 3D video in MPEG4 format.
• Silicon Imaging unveiled the very first integrated 3D cinema camera and stereo visualization system, based on two SI-2K camera heads, and a single control, processing, ...