Google's YouTube now will convert all short-form videos uploaded in 1080p to 3D, the company said, expanding a beta feature it launched last year.
"You can select 3D viewing in the Quality settings (click on the gear icon) on the YouTube player, then pop on your 3D glasses and see YouTube in another dimension," YouTube said in a blog post.
In the example video (below), users need to click the gear, then the "3D" icon to its left. The video will then appear in either 720p or 360p options.
In September of last year, YouTube added the 3D beta feature, which automatically converted videos uploaded to the site to stereoscopic 3D. That update also eliminated the 15-minute video limit for trusted users. The time limit was apparently reinstated after a rash of pirated movies appeared on the site, but users are once again no longer constrained to 15 minutes.
The piracy issue surfaced again Thursday after a federal court revived Viacom's copyright-infringement suit concerning about 67,000 clips of illegally copied material that appeared on the site before 2007.
Google and YouTube also described a little more about how the 3D conversion process works. Basically, stereoscopic 3D requires the left and right eye to "see" a slightly different, offset image, which the brain then combines to create the illusion of a 3D object. Google processes the original 2D video and creates a "depth map," looking for a combination of video characteristics such as color, spatial layout, and motion that it has "learned" from other, dedicated 3D videos uploaded to the site. The creation of the depth map adds the second image that's needed for the 3D video.
Google has been able to apply its cloud computing infrastructure to apply the 3D conversion process to the breadth of videos on the site., it said.
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