1. A method comprising: receiving a signal comprising a three dimensional image signal representing a left eye image portion and a right eye image portion; encoding a frame in the left eye image portion as a reference image using a two dimensional encoding process; apportioning motion blocks in the left eye image portion and right eye image portion, the motion blocks being a fixed number of pixels; predictively coding, in the two dimensional encoding process, a frame in the right eye image portion using the frame in the coded left eye image portion as the reference image, the predictive coding using unidirectional prediction between the frame in the right eye image portion and the frame in the left eye image portion as if the frame in the right eye image portion and the frame in the left eye portion occurred consecutively even though the frame in the right eye image portion and the frame in the left eye image are intended to be viewed simultaneously; capturing motion indicators generated from the two dimensional encoding process during the predictive coding of the frame in the right eye image portion; and generating a granular disparity map between the frame in the left eye image portion and the frame in the right eye image portion by filtering the motion indicators, the granular disparity map including and indication of disparity with picture level granularity equal to a size of the apportioned motion blocks; interpolating the granular disparity map to a pixel level disparity map by determining horizontally adjacent disparity values in at least three consecutively located motion blocks; and generating a dense disparity map by combining the pixel level disparity map and an occlusion map, the occlusion map generated from the pixel disparity map.