Roto Photo - Single image 360!

[James Emory]

Apparently this device allows for the capture of a 360 panarama all in one image eliminating the need to stitch multiple images together. I wonder what would happen if you shot video with it?

www.roto-photo.com

www.roto-photo.com/equipment.htm

[Jonathan Jones]

Originally Posted by James Emory

I wonder what would happen if you shot video with it?

It wouldn't be good. You would end up with a horribly distorted ultra fisheye effect. The benefit of this unit is that you don't have to take multiple snapshots to stitch together, but it still requires software that I believe accompanies the unit that allows you to take the ultra fisheye image and export it into the final QTVR render file. Effectively, this is still the same end render format that the stitched versions use, as it still presents an image that is navigational with only a set frame reference at a time, just like any standard QTVR that you have to navigate around to view all the angles.

You could still use a video device and in the raw image you shoot you would theoretically be able to film in a 360 degree pattern, but it would just look like a very bad trip and be pretty much be unviewable.

It would be very cool to have some type of holographical video format that the end user could navigate through- maybe some future technology.

This does remind me of a feature I saw once in a theme park. (I think it was Disneyland but not sure) It was a round room with aisles designated by hand rails. The audience got to see a movie projected onto screens situated around the room. The movie was shot using multiple cams mounted on a single unit covering a full 360 then projected in unision onto each of the synced screens. So the viewers could see in all directions by turning as they wished. One scene had the cameras chasing a cat or squirrel or something up a tree. That is what the handrails were for - people would get dizzy.

As an interesting thought, you could probably shoot the fisheye video using this unit, and then find a way to project it onto a domeshaped screen roofing the viewers using a superultrawide projection (probably 220 degrees) so viewers wouldn't block the projection. The center of the screen (top of the roof) might not have an image, but the 360 degree view would fill the edges of the screen and become and surround the viewers. I wonder if that would work.
-Jon

[Giroud Francois]

it should work on on a progressive camera.
you just need to export the video as a set of pictures, then process to get them flat.
the result can be played in a panoramic window, the same as you do for panorama, except this time it is a moving picture.
The you can replay the action, looking in different direction.
probably it would give very poor result in DV , since resolution is too small.
I think a progressive 720p HDV cam should give a better result, but you will loose a lot of pixel since the picture obtained is square and HDV is rectangular.
you need to find a 1024x1024 ccd camera.

[Bill Ball]

Off topic I know. But Jon you are probably thinking of the Canada exhibit at Disneywold's Epcot. I saw that exact film/steup at the Montreal Worlds Fair in 1967 and they are still showing it at Epcot today! How embarrasing for Disney that they are still running the same thing after almost 40 years. The young Canadians working there were certainly embarrased by it.

[John C. Chu]

It would be "distorted" yes, but I remember a couple years back, a web-based movie/video viewer that dewarps the moving image on the fly that did just that.

Never did find it again.

It was a quicktime VR movie that is in "real time".

You could watch a "movie" and have the option to look in any direction you want while the actors continued talking etc. With sound, motion.

[James Emory]

What I was most impressed with was the use of this tool for aerial 360 panaramas. Did you see those demos? When you can look up and down in 360, you think, how is the camera supported?