I just returned from a trip to the Bahamas, where I shot and posted a bunch of 3D underwater video encoded for viewing with red/cyan anaglyph 3D glasses. When I arrived at home, I opened one of the 3D videos on my calibrated 30″ Dell 3008WFP LCD (connected to a Mac Pro)… and discovered that I could not see any 3D effect. It was quite strange because I could see the 3D effect perfectly when I streamed the same videos from my Vimeo page (on the same machine/display), and everything looks good when played from my MacBook Pro (even when it is attached to an external monitor). I even tried playing the videos back on my 50″ plasma display, and the 3D was fine.

What I discovered is that if you have a properly calibrated video card / monitor, you may not be able see anaglyph 3D-encoded images and video correctly. When trying to render colors “correctly,” ColorSync can change the colors enough to destroy the effect.

Here’s a screenshot of a 3D underwater shark video played back in Quicktime X:

Quicktime X or Quicktime 7 (default) — must view this image / page in color-space aware browser (Safari, Chrome or modified Firefox)

(note that all images on this page will look the same if you are using IE or Firefox because they are not color space aware)

On all of the displays in my house, the 3D effect is NOT there (obviously, you need to be viewing the image while wearing anaglyph 3D ref/cyan glasses).

Now, here’s screenshot from Vimeo:

Screenshot played back on the web from Vimeo

I opened Quicktime 7′s preferences and checked the “Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility” checkbox, which states:

“When enabled, video is not displayed using ColorSync. Source colors are read with 2.2 gamma and are displayed in a color space with 1.8 gamma.”

Here’s the resulting video (screengrab):

Screenshot from Quicktime 7 with FCS color compatibility checked

Unfortunately, Quicktime X has no preferences whatsoever. I hated Quicktime X even before I started to do 3D experimentation, and this isn’t helping its case.

Maybe there is a way to delete color space information from my Quicktime videos. I need to do some research.

Note: As part of my standard workflow, I use GammaSlamma to remove color profiles from .png files before I upload them to the web (the web is generally not color profile friendly). When I took the Quicktime X screenshot and removed color profile information from the .png, the 3D effect came back! I had to leave color profile information intact in that particular screenshot in order to demonstrate the lack of 3D effect.