Trends in S3D-Movie Quality Evaluated on 105 Films Using 10 Metrics

Abstract

In this paper we present a large-scale analysis of S3D-movie technical quality spanning a large portion of stereoscopic-cinema history. We evaluated 105 Blu-ray 3D releases, including titles like the 1954 classic Dial M for Murder, as well as contemporary stereoscopic productions like Life of Pi and The Great Gatsby. The analysis is based on objective quality metrics designed to detect specific types of artifacts, including swapped channels, inconsistencies between the stereoscopic views (color, sharpness and geometric as well as temporal asynchrony) and many others. The main challenges we had to overcome were the enormous amount of computational resources and disk space that such analyses require as well as algorithmic difficulties in developing some of the more advanced objective quality metrics. Our study clarifies the quality trends and problems of S3D movie production in general and provides a better understanding of how effectively quality control has been applied to particular movies compared with the overall trend.