YouTube Now Lets You Turn Your 2D Videos Into 3D Videos

YouTube is announcing a cool new feature that literally lets you convert your 2D YouTube videos into 3D videos automatically. The 2D to 3D conversion feature was released in beta last September but today it’s being rolled out to everyone.

Deb Mukherjee and Chen Wu write on the YouTube blog, “Today we’re… adding automatic 3D conversion for short-form videos uploaded in 1080p. Meaning, you can select 3D viewing in the Quality settings (click on the gear icon) on the YouTube player, then pop on your 3D glasses and see YouTube in another dimension.”

So how does it work? Mukherjee and Wu explain that the conversion technology uses a number of techniques. They look at different video characteristics such as color, motion and special layout and use this information to create a stereo 3D left-right pair from the monoscopic frame. While the results aren’t quite as good as those you’d get using a 3D camera, it’s still a pretty cool way to watch your YouTube videos.