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Showing posts with the label postprocessing

Effortless invisibility: a cheap selfie stick that is also invisible to 360 cameras

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Here is another low cost selfie stick that is slim enough to be invisible to 360 cameras, straight out of the box with no modification required. I've been recommending the Benro MK10 as a selfie stick because if you remove the ballhead, then it becomes invisible to 360 cameras.  The problem is that removing the ballhead takes a lot of effort because the ballhead is glued with loctite or something. Like the Benro MK10, I found  this cheap selfie stick called Monopod  that is slim enough to be invisible to a 360 camera, but you don't need to modify it. I tested it with the Xiaomi Mijia Mi Sphere ( reviewed here ), which is itself a very slim 360 camera, so anything but the slimmest selfie stick will show up in the shot.  Here is how the nadir looks with the Monopod selfie stick: Note that there are selfie sticks that look similar but which are slightly thicker and will not be invisible to slim cameras such as the Xiaomi Mijia Mi Sphere.  In the shot below, the ...

Adobe acquires Mettle Skybox, to be included in Creative Cloud

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This is huge!  Adobe acquired Mettle makers of the popular SkyBox Suite of 360 / VR editing tools, which will now be included with Adobe Creative Cloud! Mettle Skybox is a popular suite of plugins for 360/VR editing for Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.  Today, Adobe and Mettle announced that Adobe would be acquiring Mettle Skybox Suite, and Mettle's founder Chris Bobotis would become a director at Adobe. Skybox will no longer be available for separate purchase, and instead will only be available through Creative Cloud. Existing Skybox users will get ten activations, other than those who purchased Skybox in the last 15 days will get a refund. By the end of the year, Skybox will be rolled out to Creative Cloud.  But for now, Adobe CC paid subscribers will be able to get Skybox by sending an email to dvaplugin@adobe.com. You need to include your Adobe ID and first and last name as it appears on your account, then Adobe will respond within 24 hours. Here is the official ...

YouTube adds heatmaps to 360 videos, showing you where viewers are looking

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YouTube has added heatmaps to popular 360 videos, showing where viewers are looking. Update : Scott of  Foundry 45  shared a video of a heatmap.  See below. YouTube added 360 heatmaps to analytics tools, letting you see where viewers are spending the most time looking.  Last year, heatmaps were added by Facebook, but the threshold was quite high at 50,000 unique viewers (not views).  YouTube's heatmap has a threshold of only 1,000 views . To see the heatmaps for your videos,  click here .  You can also go to your Video Manager and then see the new 360 Heatmaps tool under Analytics.  You can see the heatmap and how it changes as the video plays. Update : Scott of Foundry 45 shared this video of a heatmap: There is a separate heatmap for desktop viewers and for mobile viewers.   In my videos, it seems that desktop viewers are much more likely to look around, while mobile viewers stay mostly in the original view. Sample 1 (top: desktop; bottom:...

Tutorial: Stitching Xiaomi Mi Sphere 360 videos with Muvee Stitcher for Mac

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The Xiaomi Mi Sphere has emerged as a dark horse 360 camera that has surprising photo AND video quality (it appears to have the best of both compared to consumer 360 cameras ).  However, one issue is that it has limited compatibility with smartphones, requiring a Snapdragon 625 or better processor in order to export the full video resolution.  Xiaomi's app has limited iPhone exports to 2304 x 1152 -- less than half of the full resolution. One solution to get the full resolution out of the Xiaomi is to use a third party software to stitch the videos, and Muvee Stitcher is probably the most affordable such software.    Ulf Brusquini shared this tutorial for stitching Xiaomi Mi Sphere videos in full resolution using Muvee Stitcher for Mac. Here is Ulf's tutorial: Be sure to check out Ulf's YouTube channel ! Besides using a third party stitcher, another solution is to buy a fully compatible smartphone just for rendering purposes.  Previously it seemed that you wou...

Virb Edit is the best free 360 video editor, with features not even included in paid apps

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Virb Edit is a remarkable 360 video editor, with features not even included in  some paid software,  and it's free! Virb Edit is Garmin's video editing software for its action cameras.  They updated it for the Virb 360 to add features specifically for 360 video editing, and they did an incredible job! - Add titles anywhere in your 360 video.  Adding titles to 360 video is a little tricky because if you simply overlay titles on the video, they will look warped as you move higher or lower from the 'equator' of your 360 video.  With Virb Edit, you can add titles that will automatically be mapped to your 360 video, keeping the normal proportions of the text no matter where you place them.  Even Adobe Premiere Pro doesn't do this (you need a plug in)! - Change the heading .  You can change the heading of the video (the view that a viewer first sees, assuming they are looking "forward").  This setting is under Stabilization ... Set Initial Orientation. ...

LumaFusion is an advanced multi-track video editor for iOS with 360 video support

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Do you want to be able to edit your 360 videos on your iPhone or iPad with a full-featured video editor?  Check out LumaFusion, which can not only trim 360 videos, but also add photos, transitions, titles and narration. LumaFusion is a full featured video editor for iOS that supports up to 3 tracks for photos, videos, titles and graphics.  It also has 3 additional audio tracks for music, narration, and sound effects. It has editing tools such as color correction, slip-trim, keyframing for audio and video effects, and many, many more .... In short, the works. LumaFusion has added 360 video support to enable you to edit your 360 videos on the road, in 2D 360, or 3D 360 (top-bottom or left-right).  To use it for 360 videos, you simply specify a 2:1 aspect ratio for 2D or 1:1 for top-bottom 3D 360.   You won't be able to view your 360 video in 360 within the app, but you can edit it like any other video.  You can specify the bitrate, audio quality, and other option...

How to straighten or level the horizon in your 360 video using Adobe Premiere Pro CC

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Here is a tutorial for leveling or straightening the horizon in your 360 video using Adobe Premiere Pro CC.  This very short (3 minute video) tutorial doesn't require a plug-in but does require Premiere Pro 2017.1. A 360 video needs to have a level horizon or else it will make it move unexpectedly when rotated, which can be confusing and disorienting for viewers.  Because of this, many 360 cameras have vertical orientation sensors to automatically render the video rightside up.  However, the orientation sensors usually don't work perfectly, or sometimes works only for photos but not for videos.  The result is often a tilted horizon in 360 videos. In this tutorial, I show how to correct / level / straighten the horizon using Adobe Premiere Pro CC.  This tutorial requires that you upgrade your Premiere to 2017.1 or later. Here is the tutorial: I hope you found this video helpful!  Please take a moment to hit the like button (so that YouTube can show it to mor...

Stitch Samsung Gear 360 photos online for free with NadirPatch

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You can now stitch Samsung Gear 360 photos online for free with NadirPatch.com , a web-based service that offers several tools for editing 360 photos. NadirPatch is a free web-based service for editing 360 photos , with tools for adding a watermark, patching out the tripod, or converting a spherical photo into cubes.  They've added a new tool for patching Gear 360 photos.  You simply upload the photo in double circular fisheye format and it will stitch it as a standard equirectangular projection. The 2016 Gear 360 was a very good camera that took great photos and videos but was hampered by poor compatibility (it would only work with high-end Samsung phones, S6 or above, and the desktop software was only for Windows).  NadirPatch's online tool would be useful for those who don't have a compatible phone or desktop, and comes at a time when the 2016 Gear 360 with 30mp photos can be purchased for less than $150 at the time of this writing.

How to turn your Insta360 Air or Nano INVISIBLE in your 360 video (also works for 360 photos)

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Here's a way to make your Insta360 Air appear invisible in 360 videos.  It works to a lesser extent on the Insta360 Nano as well. INTRODUCTION You may already know that turning a 360 camera invisible for photos is easy.  You just have to use a monopod or selfie stick that doesn't have a ballhead, so the selfie stick will be right in between the 360 camera's lenses.  If a 360 camera's vertical horizon correction is not perfect, the horizon may end up topsy turvy, which is relatively easy to correct for 360 photos using apps such as edit360 for iOS or Theta Converter for Android .  My friend Ben Claremont (Life in 360) has a video about this technique . For 360 videos, this same trick is harder to do.  Most 360 cameras can't correct for the horizon rapidly enough to keep the video level (two exceptions are the Garmin Virb 360 and the Xiaomi Mi Sphere ).  It's not so easy to correct a constantly undulating horizon in a 360 video -- there are software for it s...

V360 is the first 360 video editing app for iOS; here's a preview

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The first 360 video editing app for iOS will soon be available! V360, the first 360 video editing app for Android, is coming soon to iOS.  V360 enables you to assemble a 360 video montage from individual 360 video clips.  You can trim each clip and add music (which will be mixed with the audio on your ). I got the chance to try an alpha version (0.0.1) and the interface is just as familiar as it is for the Android version: - you select individual 360 video clips that will be added to the montage - you can edit each clip to trim it, rearrange, delete or add more clips - you can add background music.  There are some royalty-free music that you can choose from (and they sound pretty good to my ears), or you can choose from your phone's music library. - you press save and voila, the 360 video is rendered, complete with 360 metadata, ready for upload to YouTube, Facebook, or other sites. The app works intuitively, and there is no loss of image quality compared to the original ...

Insta360 Nano update adds tiny planet live stream, stickers, Snapchat support

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Insta360 updated the Nano app to add several features, including a tiny planet live stream, stickers, and Snapchat support. As reported by my friend Sarah Redohl at ImmersiveShooter , Insta360 updated the app to version 1.10 and added several new features.  I've tried them out and they're pretty cool! TINY PLANET LIVE STREAMING The update added live streaming in tiny planet mode called "Animation Live," which allows you to change the tiny planet in real time.  To my awareness, Insta360 Nano is the first 360 camera to have that feature.  Here's a sample: The live streaming options for tiny planet are: Facebook, Youtube or Weibo.  I didn't see an option for Twitter / Periscope. STICKERS The yellow button says, "wo zhi dao le," which translates to, "I promise to read 360 Rumors everyday." :) The update also added a myriad of stickers.  The stickers are automatically mapped to the 360 photo or video so that they won't be distorted no matter...

EXCLUSIVE: How to stitch Panono images offline yourself and how to fix Panono stitching errors

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Panono is the highest resolution all-in-one 360 camera with 36 lenses and 108 megapixel resolution. Its only drawback is that the stitching is often not perfect and is tedious to correct.  In this post, I will discuss how you can stitch Panono photos yourself, or fix Panono stitching errors. Panono is my favorite 360 camera for photography.  Its images are very detailed, and the dynamic range is unequaled among 360 cameras.  Its colors look natural and images look fantastic with only minor editing.  Here is a sample: THE CATCH However, until now I could not recommend the Panono without qualifications because the stitching is usually not perfect, especially when there are subjects close to its minimum distance of around 1.5 meters.  When there are stitching errors, they are often glaring, and ruin an otherwise excellent shot.  Worse still, they are not easy to correct in post. When you have often unpredictable errors like this, it's hard to rely on it for pr...