Anyone have 3D movie success?
Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2025 8:50 pm
I have been trying to preserve my 3D blu-ray movies and I'm not having any success with the 3D aspect. My current setup includes a PLEX server running on a QNAP NAS, the PLEX client on an NVIDIA Shield Pro, HDMI output through a Yamaha TSR-5830 receiver (3D capable), displaying on an Optoma UHZ66 DLP 4K Laser projector (3D capable), and using active shutter 3D glasses. I have previously run a 3D blu-ray player into this receiver and my 3D movies play fine, the projector switches to 3D mode automatically, and my shutter glasses work perfectly.
(I have tried searching, but this forum makes it tough because it ignores "3d" and "3d blu-ray" as being too common of words. Google results mostly seem to be from almost 10 years ago and are mostly dead ends so I'm wondering if there is any "fresh" information out there. I know this post is long, but I wanted to provide as much detail as possible to kick things off on the right track.)
I believe the first step in the right workflow is "solved" in that the right first step is to rip the contents of the disc with MakeMKV by selecting the video track as normal, but also selecting the secondary MVC track. That part seems to be working fine as I get files that are quite a bit larger than the 2D rips when I do that and do not get any errors. I have not been able to validate the resulting MKV file however to definitively "prove" that it is a good rip containing 3D data. Playing the MKV in VLC player just plays the movie in normal 2D and searching for playing 3D in VLC player mostly point to enabling the anaglyph filter, which is not what we're trying to do here. I found references from 2018 to VLC supporting MVC playback in version 4.0, but they're still today on 3.0, so maybe that's vaporware.
This is where the first real mystery comes in. Others online have made mention of a "video stereo mode" setting in the header of the file that is normally set by MakeMKV to a value of 13 and having to remove that header element for 3D to work. In my trials, I have tried leaving that header element intact and removing it with no change to the final playback (using MKVToolNix). I also cannot find any documentation for what the value of 13 means (MKVToolNix says the value could be 0-14).
The next mystery is the file name. Some references I found say the file name matters and some say it does not. The only definitive example I found of what a 3D movie file name should be is "movie.h-sbs.mkv". I have tried my movies with normal file names and with that style of name with no change to the final playback.
The next mystery is if the NVIDIA Shield Pro is capable of 3D playback. Results I'm finding are mixed, with most people pointing to the server and client software being issues and not the hardware itself, but I have no way to validate that as I can't find any available 3D content sources on the Shield to compare with (like a 3D stream from Netflix or Amazon or somebody).
The next mystery is the server/client used. It seems likely that PLEX as a server is fine as most references I'm finding say the server doesn't care about the video content and doesn't do anything except deliver it to the client (putting aside in-line transcoding / upscaling / downscaling if you are doing that). In my case I'm using the MKV and don't believe PLEX is trying to re-encode anything on the fly in my case, but I'm open to knowing if I can prove that out somehow. I did find mixed results about the PLEX client on shield that makes me think maybe the client cannot handle 3D content, but that is an open mystery at this point. I also tried a KODI client on the shield using DLNA/SMB to pull the file from my NAS without a KODI server with no success (that client wouldn't even index the files). I also tried several other video players from the play store and one of them at least let me manually choose a 3D view mode, but it only duplicated the interface elements, not the video it was playing. And no matter what was done up to this point, the projector never switched to 3D mode.
Which brings me to the last step of the projector. Like I said above, I've played 3D movies through it before using a 3D blu-ray player and it automatically switches to 3D mode as soon as the movie starts and I can see the 3D mode in the projector menu. Every test I've done with streaming the MKV files results in the projector displaying 2D content and the 3D section of the projector menu being disabled (so I can't force it into SBS mode).
I have found some references to having to convert an MKV to an SBS MP4, or "frame packing", or a couple other versions of that, but none of those references provided examples of what that actually meant, what tools they used to do it, or how to go about doing it.
Any suggestions would be welcome! The two movies I'm working on are Top Gun (original), and Avatar. Both of which are just amazing to see in 3D so if there is any way I can get that done, it would be amazing.
(And in case anyone wonders why I don't just stick with a 3D blu-ray player for these movies... I have purchased 5 3D blu-ray players in the last 10 years ranging from $80 to $300 and every single one of them bites the dust in less than 2 years. They sat on a shelf with the rest of the media equipment with power running through a UPS and surge protector and got used 2-3 times per year while they were working. They just die and I'm sick of re-buying physical media players.)
(I have tried searching, but this forum makes it tough because it ignores "3d" and "3d blu-ray" as being too common of words. Google results mostly seem to be from almost 10 years ago and are mostly dead ends so I'm wondering if there is any "fresh" information out there. I know this post is long, but I wanted to provide as much detail as possible to kick things off on the right track.)
I believe the first step in the right workflow is "solved" in that the right first step is to rip the contents of the disc with MakeMKV by selecting the video track as normal, but also selecting the secondary MVC track. That part seems to be working fine as I get files that are quite a bit larger than the 2D rips when I do that and do not get any errors. I have not been able to validate the resulting MKV file however to definitively "prove" that it is a good rip containing 3D data. Playing the MKV in VLC player just plays the movie in normal 2D and searching for playing 3D in VLC player mostly point to enabling the anaglyph filter, which is not what we're trying to do here. I found references from 2018 to VLC supporting MVC playback in version 4.0, but they're still today on 3.0, so maybe that's vaporware.
This is where the first real mystery comes in. Others online have made mention of a "video stereo mode" setting in the header of the file that is normally set by MakeMKV to a value of 13 and having to remove that header element for 3D to work. In my trials, I have tried leaving that header element intact and removing it with no change to the final playback (using MKVToolNix). I also cannot find any documentation for what the value of 13 means (MKVToolNix says the value could be 0-14).
The next mystery is the file name. Some references I found say the file name matters and some say it does not. The only definitive example I found of what a 3D movie file name should be is "movie.h-sbs.mkv". I have tried my movies with normal file names and with that style of name with no change to the final playback.
The next mystery is if the NVIDIA Shield Pro is capable of 3D playback. Results I'm finding are mixed, with most people pointing to the server and client software being issues and not the hardware itself, but I have no way to validate that as I can't find any available 3D content sources on the Shield to compare with (like a 3D stream from Netflix or Amazon or somebody).
The next mystery is the server/client used. It seems likely that PLEX as a server is fine as most references I'm finding say the server doesn't care about the video content and doesn't do anything except deliver it to the client (putting aside in-line transcoding / upscaling / downscaling if you are doing that). In my case I'm using the MKV and don't believe PLEX is trying to re-encode anything on the fly in my case, but I'm open to knowing if I can prove that out somehow. I did find mixed results about the PLEX client on shield that makes me think maybe the client cannot handle 3D content, but that is an open mystery at this point. I also tried a KODI client on the shield using DLNA/SMB to pull the file from my NAS without a KODI server with no success (that client wouldn't even index the files). I also tried several other video players from the play store and one of them at least let me manually choose a 3D view mode, but it only duplicated the interface elements, not the video it was playing. And no matter what was done up to this point, the projector never switched to 3D mode.
Which brings me to the last step of the projector. Like I said above, I've played 3D movies through it before using a 3D blu-ray player and it automatically switches to 3D mode as soon as the movie starts and I can see the 3D mode in the projector menu. Every test I've done with streaming the MKV files results in the projector displaying 2D content and the 3D section of the projector menu being disabled (so I can't force it into SBS mode).
I have found some references to having to convert an MKV to an SBS MP4, or "frame packing", or a couple other versions of that, but none of those references provided examples of what that actually meant, what tools they used to do it, or how to go about doing it.
Any suggestions would be welcome! The two movies I'm working on are Top Gun (original), and Avatar. Both of which are just amazing to see in 3D so if there is any way I can get that done, it would be amazing.
(And in case anyone wonders why I don't just stick with a 3D blu-ray player for these movies... I have purchased 5 3D blu-ray players in the last 10 years ranging from $80 to $300 and every single one of them bites the dust in less than 2 years. They sat on a shelf with the rest of the media equipment with power running through a UPS and surge protector and got used 2-3 times per year while they were working. They just die and I'm sick of re-buying physical media players.)
