MPO Tools

This gem provides some simple utility methods for working with MPO format 3D image files. This file format is used in 3D cameras such as the Nintendo 3DS and the Fujifilm FinePix W3.

ImageMagick does not support this file type and, as a consequence, I found the format difficult to work with when I needed to process images in bulk (for example when creating 3D timelapses). This gem is intended to make that process easier.

The gem can be used to extract the EXIF data or the left and right images themselves from an MPO file. It can also be used to convert MPO files into a number of different (2D display friendly) viewing formats.

Supported output formats include:

Also included is a binary for converting MPO files on the command line.

The mechanism for extracting the left and right images from the MPO is based on the exiftool usage example described in this article by Mark VandeWettering.

Install it with RubyGems

gem install mpo_tools

or add this to your Gemfile if you use Bundler

gem 'mpo_tools'

MPO Tools is dependent on exiftool, to install this on Ubuntu run

sudo apt-get install libimage-exiftool-perl

Here's an example of how you might convert a whole directory of MPO image files to analglyphs and resize them to 320x240 pixels.

require 'mpo_tools'
path = '/home/bob/3d_pictures/*.MPO'
dest = '/home/bob/analglyphs/'
Dir.glob(path).each do |mpo|
  # path_to_mpo, output_path, format, scale/resolution
  MpoTools.convert mpo, dest, :analglyph, [320,240]
end

For information on how to use the command line tool run

$ mpo_convert -h

For more information please take a look at the rdoc documentation.

Copyright (c) 2014 Will Brown

MIT License

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