As you might remember from our previous articles on this subject, Panasonic has rolled out earlier this week their first consumer-grade 3D camcorder, featuring a special 3D lens, combined with a top-range Full HD camera. However, that solution is quite expensive, selling for an estimate 1,600 US dollars or Euro.

Nevertheless, there's a much easier way available at hand for recording Full HD 3D content, namely the use of two different HD camcorders “connected” with the help of a special rig (such as the one pictured to the left), whose resulting video streams will later on be combined via software.

We came across this very interesting contraption at a local NVIDIA 3D – related event, where we've been able to see plenty of interesting implementations of the GPU manufacturer's technologies, including its latest 3D TV Play solution. The link between this rig and NVIDIA's 3D Vision is quite obvious: the dual-camcorder setup using Sony devices represents a fast and easy way for mainstream consumers to create their own content, which they can later on enjoy with the help of NVIDIA's 3D solutions.

The main idea here is that each camera behaves as a separate “lens”, recording HD videos that will be later on combined in a single 3D Full HD file. The only problem is that of perfectly synchronizing the recording start tome, but this can be done fairly easily with the help of the remote control that accompanies the Sony cameras (also, this is the reason why the two cameras have to be absolutely identical).

Processing the 3D content might be a bit difficult, but it's not impossible, if you've got the appropriate software, that is. We won't go into specific details regarding the applications used for combining the HD video streams into a single 3D file (you can actually find out more on this issue here, on the 3D Vision Blog, whose creator, Anton, has actually presented us this very interesting 3D contraption).

This whole experience only goes to show that a little ingenuity and the right tools might save one quite a lot of money in the long run, at least until Full 3D 3D camcorders become more affordable (and who knows when that's going to happen).  


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