There are going to be 3.5 million 3D televisions sold this year but there’s absolutely nothing to watch on them.  My current FIOS 3D lineup boasts only ESPN 3D which has managed to show repeats of the Little League World Series and X Games 17 every single day for the last month.  HBO and Starz have offered the same on-demand 3D movies since June.  Why do I know this?  Because my living room contains a 46 inch Panasonic VIera 3D plasma screen.  And I will stab myself in the eye if I watch Avatar one more time.

So I’ve been buying 3D cameras to create my own programming.

That’s right; cameras.  As in many of them.  First up was the Panasonic SDT750.  This sad little monkey takes a very delightful camcorder and straps on a large lens that manages to squeeze two video images onto one sensor.  Technically it reminds me of the trick Fisher-Price pulled off many years ago with their Pixelvision camera, recording a video signal to an ordinary audio cassette tape to create the ultimate child’s toy.  Panasonic has done the same here by squeezing two mild-definition images onto one HD pickup.  Unfortunately that’s where the magic ends as the zoom, manual controls and beautiful progressive images of the HD camera become hobbled as soon as you twist on the 3D lens.  It’s the ultimate child’s toy.  But I’m a man.

So I purchased the JVC GS-TD1.  I don’t think I had ever bought a single JVC product before this camera.  Ever.  Canon, Panasonic, Sony.  Never JVC.  Probably not again either.  This camera has two separate lens and pickup devices so now you can sort-of get real HD 3D video recorded.  Unfortunately they shipped the camera without any software to convert those twin HD images into something you can edit with.   The two separate streams of left and right video are currently locked in their format and the only thing you can do with them is play them back via the HDMI output of the camera.  JVC says they’ll be offering new software to take full advantage of the streams by the end of 2011.  10 months after the debut of the camera.  Which is a weird way to reward everyone who paid retail for their brand new toy.  What did I want for $1700?  Working software to extract the full potential of the camera?  Silly me.

It doesn’t matter.  GoPro came to the rescue.

I’ve been shooting with GoPro cameras for several years now and just love their incredible ability to be stuck in all sorts of horrible places (!) and still return a delightful picture.  The jump to HD was nothing short of incredible but when they announced last year that you’d be able to put two of their cameras in the same plastic box for 3D shooting I was thrilled.  I already had the cameras, SD cards and extra batteries.  All I needed was their $90 plastic box and the cable to string between the two cameras.  And then 6 months went by before they put it on the market.  It was worth the wait.  At the links below you can find a video shot from my bike and car.  The audio recorded by these cameras is terrible as you can hear during the motorcycle ride.  But the car is properly mic’d with a Zoom.  The lens is fixed and terribly wide but the whole unit is so damn small you can mount it anywhere.  This goes along fine with my basic philosophy that you need to MOVE the camera to the action and never zoom a lens to get to that action.

But how to edit these two beautiful video streams in 3D?  GoPro bought Cineform and is giving away the software you need to create Full 3DHD video streams that you can edit in Avid, Final Cut, Vegas, iMovie, etc.  A full discussion of that wondrous world in the next blog….