How can I watch a side-by-side 3D video in 2D?

I found this forum post on the VideoLAN forums: http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=104074

This was the title of the post:

How to watch 3D SBS in VLC 2.0 and higher

by Tesseract83233 » Mon Sep 10, 2012 12:08 am

The question was:

I got a 3D side-by-side MKV-Movie but I only have a 2D TV - my question was how to get only the picture of the "left eye" in fullscreen with the right aspect ratio?

This is the solution:

And after about an hour of playing around... that's how I solved it:

1. Start VLC (you don't have to play a video at this time)
2. Go to "Tools" -> "Preferences" (CTRL+P on Windows)
3. On the lower left corner choose "Show settings" -> "All"
4. On the left part of the settings window, scroll down and select "Video"
5. On the right part of the settings window, scroll down to "Source aspect ratio"
6. Type in the aspect ratio with the width doubled - for example 32:9 for a 16:9 video, or 8:3 for a 4:3 video...
7. Click "Save" and exit VLC ---Keep in mind that the changed aspect ratio will be saved for all your videos - remove it after watching 3D or your normal videos might seem to be a bit stretched ---
8. Start VLC and play your 3D video, pause somewhere at the start
9. If you don't already know, check your video resolution under "Tools" -> "Media Information" (CTRL+I on Windows) -> "Codec"
10. Go to "Tools" -> "Effects and Filters" (CTRL+E on Windows)
11. Go to "Video Effects" -> "Crop"
12. On "Right" type in the half of your horizontal pixels for example: 1920x1080 ---> 1920/2 = 960 px or: 1280x720 ---> 1280/2 = 640 px
13. Click on "Close", hit "Play" and enjoy your movie in 2D ;D

If the video feeds are one on top of the other the same applies except double the height (16:9 > 16:18) and crop the bottom by 1080/2 > 540px or 360px.

Nvidia 3D vision Video Player will play 3D SBS movies back as a 2D movie. Note that it works only on Windows.

Bino 3d, a video player for Windows, OS X and Linux, does exactly what you are looking for. Just select 'left/right, half width' from the input menu and 'left' or 'right' from the output menu.

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Regarding VLC, you can use new filter named "wall". It not perfect but easier than @Amit's suggestion.

See these links for more information:

• https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Modules/wall
• http://grok.lsu.edu/article.aspx?articleid=14623