ColorCode 3-D

ColorCode 3-D is a color separation based stereoscopic viewing system deployed in the 2000s that uses amber and blue filters. It is intended to provide the perception of nearly full colour viewing with existing television, digital and print mediums. Danish company, ColorCode 3-D ApS, distribute the system which is covered by a number of patents around the world including US patent 6687003 .

Technology

A ColorCode 3-D encoded image is a single, full-color image with the stereoscopic information encoded as minute variations in the colors. All 3-D Stereo material on digital form can be ColorCode 3-D encoded, such as 3-D images, movies, and animations based on a separate Left and Right movie or images sequence, as well as real-time generated content such as games, simulations and live broadcasts.

To the naked eye a ColorCode 3-D image appears essentially as an ordinary color image with a slightly increased contrast and with distant, or sharp-edged, objects surrounded by faint halos of golden and bluish tints. When the ColorCode 3-D image is viewed through a ColorCodeViewer (3-D glasses) with specially designed filters the halos disappear, the color balance is re-established, and the image is seen as fully 3-dimensional.

 The ColorCode 3-D Glasses has amber and blue filters with complex spectral curves to separate the left and right image contained in a ColorCode 3-D image. In essence, the color information is conveyed through the amber filter and the parallax information (to perceive depth) is conveyed through the blue filter.

Notable Uses

Barack and Michelle Obama, along with their party, watch the commercials during Super Bowl XLIII in the White House theatre using ColorCode 3-D.

In the United Kingdom, television station Channel 4 commenced broadcasting a series of programmes encoded using the system during the week of 16 November 2009. Previously the system had been used in the United States for an "all 3-D advertisement" during the 2009 Super Bowl for SoBe, Monsters vs. Aliens animated movie and an advertisement for the Chuck television series in which the full episode the following night used the format.

In print, TimeInc used ColorCode 3-D in five of their magazines (Time, People, Sprts Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly and Fortune) to display 3-D images when they published a series of articles about the new "3-D revolution" in April 2009.

Viewing Comfort

ColorCode 3-D, like all stereoscopic 3D technologies, does reduce the overall brightness of the viewed image. Also, improperly calibrated displays can cause image ghosting.