📺Convert Any Video into a Hologram

Introduction

With the power of AI depth estimation, you can now transform any 2D video into an incredible holographic experience. Whether it's family videos, animation, or cinematic footage, bring your content to life in true 3D!

This guide will walk you through converting 2D videos into 3D holograms for your Looking Glass display. We'll use AI-powered depth estimation tools to create the necessary depth information, then combine everything in Looking Glass Studio for viewing.

Requirements

What videos work best?

There are a few things that make videos convert especially well. In particular, focusing on a single subject and keeping the depth range limited and stable is key. In general, the Looking Glass is best at showing people, characters, and objects — not landscapes or large scenes. For videos, try the following:

• Select videos with a particular subject rather than landscapes or dynamic scenes with many actors

• Keeping the subject at a fixed distance to the camera — so an interview video is perfect

• Shoot with a large aperture, like you're shooting portrait photography (for example, f/1.4), so that the background is blurred — this makes the background look nicer in the Looking Glass

• Videos with dramatic lighting and shadows on a backdrop make the 3D effect pop

Convert videos with Owl3D

Owl3D is a turnkey desktop app that handles AI depth estimation and packs the frames into the RGBD format that can be loaded into Looking Glass Studio and viewed as a hologram on your Looking Glass display. It is ideal if you want a fast, self-contained workflow. If you want a workflow with more customizability and developer functionality, you can try Video Depth Anything.

Download Owl3D here.

Download and install Owl3D

1. Download the installer for Windows (x64) or macOS (Apple Silicon) from the Owl3D website

2. Run the installer and choose a location with ≈ 15 GB free space so the depth-AI models can download on first launch

Generate depth with Owl3D

To create a hologram-ready RGBD clip:

• Launch Owl3D and click Convert (top-right) or drag a video onto the window

• Under "3D Format", select RGB-Depth (Looking Glass) — this produces a side-by-side frame with color on the left and a grayscale depth map on the right

• (Optional) Set "3D settings" to "Custom" if you want to experiment. Some settings available:

  • 3D strength → increase if your content looks too flat in Looking Glass Studio

  • Render style → more cinematic can make the details of your subject more pronounced

  • Temporal smoothing → set to high if you see wobbling in the depth on your shots

• Choose an output folder and click Start. On completion you’ll get yourfile_rgbd.mp4 (or .mov, depending on codec) — you can navigate to the output folder by selecting the "View" button

Convert videos with Video Depth Anything

The easiest way to convert your videos is using Video Depth Anything, a cutting-edge AI model designed specifically for video depth estimation. It can be used via Hugging Face on your web browser or can be downloaded and run locally.

Alternately, you can use Owl3D, which has a user-friendly interface.

Generate depth on Hugging Face

You can access Video Depth Anything on Hugging Face on your web browser, but we've included an embedded version below for your convenience. If the embed doesn't work, access Video Depth Anything here.

To generate a depth map for your video:

• Upload your video

• Under "Advanced Settings" toggle on "grayscale"

• Select "Generate"

• Download both the "Preprocessed video" and the "Generated Depth Video"

Generate depth locally

Alternately, you can install Video Depth Anything locally with the following commands (requires Git and Python).

git clone https://github.com/DepthAnything/Video-Depth-Anything
cd Video-Depth-Anything
pip install -r requirements.txt

Then, download the required model checkpoints from the repository here and place them in the checkpoints directory.

Once this is set up, run the Python script to process your video, ensuring you're setting the depth map to be grayscale.

python3 run.py \
  --input_video path/to/your/video.mp4 \
  --output_dir ./outputs \
  --encoder vitl \
  --grayscale

There are several optional parameters. You can see a full list here. Some particularly helpful ones are:

• --encoder: Choose vits (small) or vitl (large) model

• --grayscale: Outputs grayscale depth maps (required for RGBD)

• --max_len: Set maximum video length (-1 for no limit)

• --target_fps: Adjust output frame rate

Combine color and depth

You'll need to combine the original video with the depth video side-by-side with the color video on the left and the depth video on the right. You can do so in video editing software like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve. You can also do so with FFmpeg using the following command:

ffmpeg -i original_video.mp4 -i depth_video.mp4 -filter_complex hstack output_rgbd.mp4

The resulting video should have frames that look as follows:

If your video is arranged in this way, you're ready to view it as a hologram using Looking Glass Studio!

Load your video into Looking Glass Studio

With your video content ready, you can load it into Looking Glass Studio to view it on your Looking Glass device. For instructions on how to load content into Looking Glass Studio for iOS, please see our guide here.

Initial setup

1. Download and install Looking Glass Studio

2. Connect your Looking Glass display via USB-C and HDMI following our hardware guides

3. Ensure the display is in Desktop Mode before launching Studio (Portrait and Go only)

Import content

1. Simply drag your RGBD video file into Looking Glass Studio

   1. Alternately, you can select the "Import holograms from your computer" button and select the videos you want to upload via the file browser

2. When prompted, select "RGBD Photo and Video" as the hologram type:

3. Click "OK"

Adjusting RGBD settings

Once imported, you can fine-tune your hologram using the properties panel:

• Depthiness: Controls the overall depth range

• Focus: Adjusts the z-depth position

• Depth Position: Specifies where the depth map is relative to RGB

  • Options: top, bottom, left, right

• Depth Inversion: Toggle if depth appears reversed

• ChromaDepth: Enable for special depth colorization effects

• You can also pan and zoom on your hologram by moving your mouse cursor over your Looking Glass window and clicking and dragging, or using the scroll wheel

See more instructions on how to use Looking Glass Studio here.

Troubleshooting

Video appears flat

• Increase Depthiness in Looking Glass Studio

• Try processing with higher quality depth settings

Depth seems inverted (far is near, near is far)

• Enable "Depth Inversion" in Looking Glass Studio

• Some depth estimation models use different conventions — for example, black to white instead of white to black

Playback is choppy or slow

• Ensure Looking Glass Studio is running on your GPU — see instructions here

• Reduce bitrate or frame rate

• Close other applications during playback

Color and depth videos won't align

• Verify both videos have identical dimensions and frame rates

• Use FFmpeg with the -r flag to match frame rates if needed

Objects appear at wrong depth

• Adjust the "Focus" slider in Looking Glass Studio to place your subject on the focal plane

Support

If you need support, you can access the following resources:

• View our support page

• Contact our support team at [email protected]

• Join our Discord community