360 VR for Most of Us

[Mark Rosenzweig]

Philip Bloom has just started playing with the dual Kodaks. Here is his first attempt:

YouTube (Short URL)

He stitched in the Kodak program and then upscaled to 8K before uploading to YouTube to minimize compression by YouTube. He says to watch in 4K (not 8K).

Maybe he will come up with a novel use (this is not it).

[Mark Rosenzweig]

Stanford Dish Hike in 360 on a Cloudy Day.

Flat file (view in 4K):

Kodak 360 4K 360 4K Video: The Stanford Dish Hike in 360 on a Cloudy Day on Vimeo

360 VR version (view in 4K):

YouTube (Short URL)

[Mark Rosenzweig]

Beach in 360:

Vimeo flat file:

Kodak 360 4K Video: West Haven Beach in 360 (Flat File) on Vimeo

Select 4K.

YouTube for panorama viewing or VR 360:

YouTube (Short URL)

Select 4K.

[Mark Rosenzweig]

From a high urban butte.

Vimeo flat file:

Kodak 360 4K Video: East Rock in 360 (Flat File) on Vimeo

Select 4K.

YouTube for 360 panorama viewing:

YouTube (Short URL)

Select 4K.

[Marty Hudzik]

Great thread. Learning a lot about something I really personally don't care for but I am being forced to learn due to company wanting to add this to our list of services. This whole concept flies in the face of everything that I have spent years learning about composition and lighting and creating a feel based on camera angle and composition. Not to mention that I am used to having tons of lighting and grip equipment just off camera that is now just about impossible! Feels like the art portion is going away. I hope not. Anyway....on to my questions.

Started dabbling with a Ricoh Theta which is seriously consumer level but got our feet wet. Was easy to use at was a single camera solution with 2 lenses on opposite sides and created a 1080P video with essentially 2 spherical images, one on each half of the frame. Was super easy and created well stitched videos.....but at extremely low resolution.

We recently moved up to the Kodak SP360 4k dual kit and while the increase in resolution is quite noticeable, it still seems a little soft. Also....the issue with distance parallax is bugging me. If the distant objects are aligned then people or closer object near the stitching point are either doubled or disappear in the seam itself. I do not remember seeing this issue with the Ricoh theta. It is bothering me to no end.

Is this normal with most 360 VR??? Or is it specific to the Kodak 360 only? I see the same thing in several of the Kodak samples posted here so I don't think it's just my specific unit.

Any input??? Thanks. Hoping to make regular contributions and ask a ton of questions as I get these projects rolling.

Thanks again.

[Mark Rosenzweig]

It's the standard parallax problem with two lenses that are separated. All the multi lens cameras/rigs have this issue. Here is a demonstration:

Kodak 360 4K Test Video: Stitching Issues When There are Close and Far Subjects on Vimeo

This is the flat file version. First stitching is to have the *very* close guy intact, but the far guy is split. The next stitches so the far guy is intact. Same exact clip. The lesson: keep your subjects at least 3 feet from the camera.

[Marty Hudzik]

I am experiencing this with subjects more than 3 ft away. I caught myself walking out of the shot and there was essentially 2 versions of me that merged at about 12-15 ft away finally. I'll have to do some more testing. I could eliminate some of this by calibrating the stitching in the Kodak software but it made the further horizon objects double. Also.....as people moved closer and further they would split and rejoin. On the seams only of course.

3 ft limit I can handle. 10-15 ft is going to be tougher to keep people out of for corporate shots where we want to see people moving around and working in the VR environment.

Thanks,

[Seth Bloombaum]

As you've noticed when comparing the Ricoh Theta to the Kodak SP360 footage, this will vary between cameras, or should I say, between camera rigs.

First, both rigs have some parallax error that can't be corrected with conventional stitching, and correction using traveling mattes in After Effects or something would be cost/time prohibitive in most cases.

That the Theta is better on this than the SP360 has entirely to do with the distance between the so-call No Parallax Point (NPP) aka. Entrance Pupil of the two lenses. The Theta is such a tiny thing, the NPPs can't be spaced more than about .75" / 2cm. The SP360's NPP distance looks to be a little over 3" / 7.5cm (I don't have one of those in front of me to measure).

If you want perfect stitches for near and far subjects in the same shot, the distance between the two NPPs must be 0. This is achievable in still spherical photography with multiple exposures, rotating the camera about the lens's NPP. So far as I know, there is no current video camera technology... well, almost none, because if you're willing to sacrifice some image height, (your sphere has no image info looking up and down, it's less than 180-deg high), there is some mirror lens tech that will give you a seamless 360 around.

A GoPro camera array will be even worse than the SP360, due to the greater distance between NPPs, and many more seams that show the parallax error.

What to do?

Choose near or far and stitch for it. Compose to that limitation.

Set up so that there is no meaningful near/far content in the seam area. Compose to that limitation.

Explore creating multiple stitches, and painfully merging them together in After Effects, with lots of rotoscoping. (I can't imagine doing this, myself)

I'm saying shoot around the limitation, until someone comes out with new technology.

It's kinda' tough to depend on new tech in this case, though, because although spherical video is young, spherical stills have been with us for 15 years or more, and nobody has come up with a single-shot solution, other than the 0-360 lens and the Ricoh Theta approaches.