<title>Orthostereoscopic conditions for 3D HDTV</title>

Abstract

Research on shooting methods for 3D program production for natural 3D images has been continued. Toed-in and parallel camera configurations are available for shooting 3D images. The former is usually used because shooting and viewing conditions are simply set to get a desired 3D design. It has been shown, however, that the toed-in camera arrangement brings about an inconsistency between depth information from perspective of the lenses and that from binocular parallax, which leads to the size distortion known as the Puppet Theater Effect. On the contrary, the geometrical calculations shows that the parallel camera arrangement does not cause such inconsistency under the specific shooting and viewing conditions called `orthostereoscopic conditions' and also shows that 3D images shot under the orthostereoscopic conditions copy the real space into reproduced 3D space correctly. Possibilities of representation in 3D images shot by toed-in and parallel camera configurations are studied through 3D program production. Subjective evaluation tests show that 3D images shot under orthostereoscopic conditions duplicate the real space at a certain display size and also show that 3D programs shot under orthostereoscopic conditions look more natural than those shot using the toed- in camera configuration at any display size.