Methods of Converting 2D Images and Videos into Stereoscopic Format
Purpose: The known methods of providing high-quality conversion of 2D images and videos into stereoscopic format have a common drawback: some stages require manual operations which make this conversion costly. The aim of this work is developing more economical semi-automatic conversion methods. Results: The six proposed conversion methods are based on the hypothesis (put forward by us and experimentally confirmed) that space depth perception when observing 3D scenes and stereoscopic images is provided by "converging-diverging" eye movements. This hypothesis has a corollary that when generating stereo images, only the fields of the depth map adjacent to the sharp light borders are important. The first method is approximating the surfaces of the objects represented on the converted image by a small number of planes. The second method is synthesizing the depth map by a small set of primitive surfaces. The main feature of the third conversion method is synthesizing the depth map from the achromatic component of the converted image. The fourth method differs from the previous one by generating the depth map out of the contours of the achromatic component of the converted image. The fifth and sixth methods use the objects movement factor to form the depth map. Practical relevance: The proposed methods, as compared to the conventional ones, have greater performance and require less manual labor. They can be effectively used in practice, to convert either single images or videos.