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Fuji FinePix REAL 3D W3: MPO and 3D-AVI files on Mac OS X

:: Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 @ 10:24:19 pm

:: Tags: , , ,

I recently acquired a Fuji FinePix REAL 3D W3 point & shoot camera, which is the only (proper) 3D point & shoot camera on the market (Mark Blum showed me the W1, its predecessor, some time ago). The camera stores still images in MPO format, which is essentially two JPGs, thumbnails and metadata crammed into a single file. It stores video files in a stacked AVI format called 3D-AVI.

New file formats are always challenging to deal with, especially if you’re on a Mac. Fuji ships the camera with its FinePix software, and after installing it, I realized that it has no 3D support because the Mac version is two major revisions behind the Windows version!

I went online looking around for MPO and 3D-AVI support for the Mac. Things aren’t looking so good.

Every single program for Mac OS X that supports MPO or 3D-AVI files looks like it was written in 1995 by a Windows programmer: they are celebrations of Mac standards violations and unintuitive interfaces! But, hey — they open the files, and some of them are even free.

Here are the most functional of the group:

  • Mac 3D Viewer 1.0: No anaglyph export, but effective MPO viewer. No folder navigator or drag & drop — must use unwieldy file open dialog. Slow folder analysis step.

  • RedGreen: Simple! You open left and right images (easily, by multi-select in open file dialog — no drag & drop) and merge them into anaglyph. Moving images around to adjust is painfully slow, and there is no fit to window nor zoom keyboard shortcuts, requiring the use of a mouse to select zoom level

  • StereoSplicer (Beta 7): Extracts left and right plus anaglyph and side by side (parallel or cross view) and lets you save them. Files must be named DSCF0000.MPO (where 0000 can be any number), which breaks most workflows. Also will separate 3D-AVI video files.

  • ExifTool combined with Automater: This is my favorite way of extracting left and right images from an MPO. Using an Automator Workflow, I can right click on a file (or series of files) and select “Extract MPO Files.” The script specified in the page I linked above doesn’t support a folder structure or files that contain spaces. Here is a Automator service and application that fixes the problem (I am not responsible for these — use at your own risk!).

  • StereoPhoto Maker / StereoMovie Maker (for Windows): by far the best software out there, in terms of functionality. Full 3D-AVI support, too. Tried running in WineBottler — do not recommend! Extremely slow on MacBook Pro. Took 20 seconds to open a single MPO from Fuji. However, is very responsive in Parallels / Windows XP.

  • Fuji FinePix v5 (Windows) in VMWare Fusion / Parallels

Here are some other options (don’t recommend):

Notes about 3D video:

For video, once you have extracted left and right streams, Dashwood Stereo3D Toolbox works well and is designed so editors who work in Final Cut Studio can add stereoscopic video to their workflow.

I’ve been experimenting with line by line interleaved (interlaced) 3D video lately, and discovered a few things:

  • Quicktime X playback of 1920×1080 line by line interlaced content is wrong (didn’t work on my Hyundai W240S monitor). Use Quicktime 7 or another player
  • Dashwood Stereo3D’s line by line interlaced output doesn’t work with interlaced video sources
  • The Hyundai W240S, which is a 24″ monitor that supports line by line interlaced 3D using Xpol and circular polarized glasses, displays 3D that is less pronounced than what you get using anaglyph glasses. I’m returning it.

UPDATE: The folks over at AlienRat Design have created a QuickLook plugin for the Fuji FinePix REAL 3D W3 so you can preview MPO files in Finder.

UPDATE, OCTOBER 4, 2010: I’ve been using Fuji’s MyFinePix Studio in Parallels / Windows XP, and the thing is pretty terrible. You can’t look at a 3D image using the software (anaglyph or any other view). Today, Fuji released v2.0 of MyFinePix Studio for Windows 7 / Vista / XP, which includes the ability to edit 3D movies, divide 3D movies into two 2D movies, and divide MPO files into two JPG images. All of these are rudimentary features that have been long supported by StereoPhoto Maker and StereoVideo Maker.

| San Francisco, CA | link | trackback | Sep 8, 2010 22:24:19
  • Woodinblack

    Thanks for the info – mine is due today. Looks like if I want some software I will have to write it

  • [email protected]

    Thank you for the information since I’m considering getting one. What puzzles me is why Fuji doesn’t write the needed Apple software? It seems to me that Mac users would be a target user group for 3d cameras.

  • [email protected]

    Please do! And please share!

  • Woodinblack

    I wrote to fuji asking for info as their version of the MPO format doesn’t match the official specs and they told me it was proprietary information so couldn’t give me info on the file format. Anyway, most of it worked out, I have a quicklook plugin almost done which will make it a bit easier to browse the files, I will do an app too, but it is a bit of a problem adding it to image capture, which just doesn’t show non registered files.

    However, I love this camera!

  • Woodinblack
  • Sonstiges

    @Woodinblack

    GERAT! Thank you.

    Taner

  • Maarten

    Thank you for your notes.

  • Kornmesser

    Thank you very much!

  • Nitsanc

    Hi Eric, I’m having a lot of trouble with the W3 workflow in FCP. What Sequence Settings do you use for the 3D AVI clips?

  • Mark W

    Thank you very much for the round-up! Mark

  • Kimnjess

    How about simply downloading 2D pics into iPhoto for a Mac..? Is there a way to do that?

  • troothless

    I agree with the author that SPM is by far the best. I’ve been running it successfully on Mac using Crossover http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

    You can try it before you buy.

    It’s quite fast even on an older macbook.

  • DKarg

    Anybody tried to emulate the Roxio creator? looks like it has all the feature an owner of this camera would want. I don’t want to buy it in order to test it out in crossover tho…

  • saam

    Hi I spent all afternoon trying to figure this out for MAC and now that I have I thought I’d share my knowledge to save someone else the trouble.

    I just bought the fuji w3. my problem was I didn’t know how to view the 3d movies on my mac 10.6.4 I was using a sandisk sdhc card (not an ultra, or an extreme) just the ordinary one. I took some stills, and some video. I inserted the sdhc card into my imac. I could see the jpeg of the still image I took, and an accompanying MPO file with the same name. I discovered that I could open the MPO file in a program called stereo splicer (thanks to the post at top – see the post at the top for the link) – this automatically split apart the jpeg into the left and right channels. My problem was that I did not know how to view the video file. I could see a single .AVI for the video, but no accompanying MPO file. I was very confused. I upgrade to a sandisk extreme card thinking it was too slow to record 3d. this was not the problem. SO – the answer is, control click on the movie avi file and select to open with stereo splicer. it will immediately ask you to choose a folder (this confused me). it is asking you where you want to save the split left and right videos. Select wherever you wish to save them. It will now split the single avi into two avi’s called L and R. NOW if you want to see these as anaglyph 3D and you have final cut pro, convert each of the two AVI’s to uncompressed 422 codec (or something that is FCP friendly) and use the following link http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/3d.....r-fcp.html and follow the instructions. problem solved. hope this helped someone

  • saam

    or this website has an anaglyph plugin for FCP http://straylight.tv/pluginz/

  • headlock

    I’ve just got mine in today, and thanks to your tips and all the tips in the comments, I’m starting to get things operational. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to open the .avi files… StereoSplicer 0.8 gives me and error “Please try by an original name that starts by DSCF”. (OS X 10.6.5). :(

  • Yudoc

    tanks for the information

  • Phil

    Great Info thanks!!!

  • Wetwareoz

    You can open the .avi files in Quicktime player and save as a Movie (.mov) that will work on your 3d TV (it works on an LG anyway). QT Pro will give you more choices I think, but I haven’t checked yet.

  • Dsm

    Feedback.

    I tried to access this site using Firefox but the boxes on the right sit over & on the article text.

    I then tried MSIE9 & got tthe same.

    At that point I gave up.

    DSJM1

  • Joanne M

    Love the camera; hate the software: clunky, ugly stuff that could only be written by windows programmers.  Unlike all my other cameras ( olympus, sony, and sanyo ) an icon for the camera does not show up on the desktop.  iPhoto will only download jpegs.  Using windows xp I managed to get mpo files, but they don’t work well on the crappy finepix software supplied.  I feel like giving up and returning the camera because I want to be able to manipulate photos via computer, not just watch them on TV

  • RJX

    Joanne, I have the same opinions and frustrations. My Mac won’t mount the W3 either. It shows up in iPhoto, but not on the desktop. I have to take the card out of the camera and put it in a card reader. I tried a couple cards with the same results, so it’s the camera and not the card. I couldn’t be happier with the camera. But having to take the card out to get the MPOs is clunky as is having to take the battery out of the camera to charge it. My $50 Casio camera charges the battery in the camera. Small hassles. The great quality of the 3D pics makes up for it though.

  • Joanne M

    I just downloaded an app from the app store ($5) for my MacBook that shows MPO files including anaglyphs and lets you save them. The app is called ShowMe3D.  Easy to use and works fine. I load my MPO files from an SD card reader, as the Finepix W3 does not show up on the desktop from USB cable.

  • Madeinmalta

    Just got my w3 yesterday and me too would like to edit both stills and video….have a mac mini with photoshop and lightroom as used to have a nikon dslr before. Have as well windows 7 in bootcamp so what is best software out there to use ? Doesnt adobe premiere work with avi and mac ?

  • RJX

    I just got that too! And I figured out something useful to me, so may be to others: iPhoto does import the MPO files. First make sure you format your SD card in the camera and not on your computer. Then when you plug in the card, iPhoto shows what looks like duplicates of each photo. The first of each pair is the JPEG, the second is the MPO. Use Info to check out the exif data and you’ll  the first pic is JPEG, the second is blank. Import both copies of each pic. Now go to File in the menubar, choose New Smart Album; I called mine MPO. Pick two conditions, the first is “camera is Fujifilm, etc.” second condition is “Filename contains MPO.” Even though iPhoto doesn’t show that it’s an MPO in the info screen, it does recognize the MPO part of the filename, so now your MPO album shows you MPO pics. If I want to fiddle with one, I drag it out of iPhoto to the desktop and then work on that copy. Photostream won’t take the MPO files.

  • sonicoliver

    Pretty much what I expected, but thanks for the post! Can’t wait till iMovie supports 3D formats… can’t wait till iPhone has 3D camera like the W3 :)

  • Guy

    Bought this camera. Like it a lot. Got the software mentioned above to get separate left and right images. But I could only download the files from a card reader built into a printer. The camera will not mount and the card inserted into a Kodak card reader will not mount. I’m reading the comments below. No one is mentioning the exact method of downloading to an iMac. Do I have a bad card reader? I formatted the card with the camera. Didn’t work. Should I format it from the computer? What format? I’m afraid if I format it from the computer, the camera will not recognize the disc any more. What do other people do to download? Does it just work for them?

  • Marc

    Ha, you’re lucky. Those if us in the future (2013) get software that won’t install on our Macs because they’re Power PC versions and in 2013, that’s an incompatible format.
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