How to Watch 3D Movies in VR (HTC Vive / Oculus Rift)

Hello blog fans,

This week we have a practical blog post on how you can watch your 3D Blu Ray movies on your VR headset. This one will work on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

The main reason I'm writing this post is because I scoured the internet trying to work how to do this. I was trying out loads of different movie players including VLC, Media Player Classic, Stereoscopic Player, DeoPlayer, Vive Cinema and loads of different ripping and transcoding software including Brorsoft, DVDFab, Handbrake, MakeMKV, etc...

In the end, the solution I found is relatively simple, although a little time consuming. But more importantly, I did not find this method anywhere on the Internet, it is a lot less complicated and cheaper than most of them and some of them didn't even work for me! Believe me, I must have looked in a hundred different places and not one of them highlighted this particular method.

This solution is better than any of the others I have found on the internet in that

1. It actually works, and the only other methods that worked for me are ones that required expensive re-encoding software.
2. It is cheaper than most, if not all, of the other methods. Stereoscopic Player is cheaper at 49 EUR than the non-free video encoders that other methods use to convert MVC 3D movies into SBS (Side by Side) format.
3. It is quicker. Although you need to spend an hour ripping the movie off the Blu Ray, you have to do that anyway. Unlike other methods, this way of playing your movies does not require you to re-encode your movies, and this will save you having to wait another 4+ hours after you have ripped the movie.

So what better blog post to make then a new and simple way to watch your 3D Blu Rays on your VR headset!

Step 1 - Get the Software

You need 3 free bits of software to watch your Blu Rays on your VR headset.

1. MakeMKV (with beta key here)
2. Stereoscopic Player
3. Bigscreen Beta on Steam.

A few words about these applications.

1. The whole time I've known of MakeMKV is that it is free whilst it is in Beta, which is forever so far. All you need to make sure you do is get and register the latest beta key, because they expire every month.
2. Stereoscopic Player is only free for 30 days, after that you you do need to buy a registration key. This software provides the magic sauce over other so-called howtos on playing 3D Blu Rays in VR, because it can play MVC 3D titles, no need to convert your Blu Rays to SBS. If anyone finds a free way to play MVC 3D movies as SBS output then let me know!
3. Bigscreen Beta takes Stereoscopic Player and presents it in full 3D in your own VR movie theatre, it looks great!

Step 2 - Rip the Blu Ray

Unfortunately, because Blu Rays are encrypted, Stereoscopic Player can't play straight off the disc, so you need to use MakeMKV to do a straight rip of the movie to your hard drive.

1. Run MakeMKV and put the Blu Ray in the drive. Once the drive recognises the disc, press the large Blu-Ray Disc icon on MakeMKV to open the Blu Ray.
2. Now MakeMKV will present you with a lots of options of what to rip. The Blu Ray disc may have multiple titles, in which case make sure you are working with the biggest one in size, as this will be the main movie. I recommend you expand all the arrows so you can be very clear about what you are choosing to rip.
3. You need to make sure you tick the MVC-3D box for Video under the standard Mpeg4 Video line, otherwise you will only rip the video for the left-eye, the MVC track contains the right-eye video. Also, select an audio track, it's up to you but I tend to go for the 7.1 Surround option for best possible audio.
4. Then you can pretty much untick everything else, although you can of course choose other language soundtracks or subtitles if you want.
5. With everything correctly ticked or unticked, proceed to rip the movie by clicking on the MakeMKV button on the right-side of the application.

Once you click the button, then you come across the only downside to this method because it takes around an hour to rip the movie to the hard drive so you can play it. If anyone can find a method where you can play an MVC movie straight off a Blu Ray disc then let me know!

Step 3 - Play the Movie in SBS Mode

The reason we don't have to convert the movie to SBS (or Side-By-Side) mode, is because Stereoscopic player will take an MVC 3D encoded movie as input and play it as SBS on output. Playing the movie in SBS mode is what allows Bigscreen to show it in 3D.

1. Ignore the option "Open Left and Right File" because this is for when you have a seperate movie file for the left eye and one for the right eye. Actually, on the Blu Ray itself they are seperate files, but we merged them together when we ripped with MakeMKV. So just chose the regular "Open File" option to open your movie.
2. With the default options, the movie will play as an analgyph picture. This is when you have different coloured images for left eye and right eye and you need those old fashioned blue and red 3d glasses to watch them. We don't want to watch the movie like this, so go into File → Settings.
3. Select "Playback Options" and change "Viewing Method" to "Side by Side for 3D-TVs". When you click OK, you will see 2 images appear side by side. They will look stretched but this is okay, because BigScreen needs the image this way so it looks properly on your headset.

Step 4 - Run BigScreen and Select SBS Mode

Here's the final piece of the puzzle, Bigscreen can take SBS video on your desktop and play it as 3D in your bigscreen virtual movie theatre.

With the movie playing in SBS mode, run BigScreen and put on your headset. Use the controller to select the screen icon on the Bigscreen control panel, that says "Customise your screen" when you point at it. Then select SBS. Et voila, you should see the movie playing in 3D on the big screen in front of you.

If you are still in the default room in Bigscreen, which is the lounge, I recommend changing it to the next room in the list, which is the home theatre room. This is the ideal way to watch the movie in your headset.

Result!

So there we are, how to watch your 3D Blu Rays in VR. Unfortunately you do need to rip the disc, which takes an hour, but you don't need to convert it, which would probably take another 4!

Don't forget to delete the movie when you are finished, because you are probably using 40GB of space for a typical 3D movie. :)

Enjoy!