360 camera, editing and playback

Does anybody have hands on experience with 360 in FCPX?

1) Which camera do you recommend?
2) Which app do you use for stitching?
3) Is Dashwood 360 the best solution for FCPX?
4) Which playback solution supports changes in audio playback following the direction you're looking?

I would suggest giving the Ripple Training crew an email, they have just started doing a series of VR 360 tutorials. .rippletraining.com/
Justine

Dash wood is the only FCPX solution, and is really fantastic. You can contact Dashwood directly. FCPWorks is also a solid source for accurate and knowledgable info on 360VR work inside FCPX.

I watched this:



Then bought a Theta S and made this:



Very easy to do and I experimented including text and video inserts. I've found that you can use Slice X and Track X on the footage too.

You basically edit on a 1920x960 timeline. The quality isn't great on YouTube. It looks a bit better via Facebook but is best viewed on the Theta S app on the iPhone. It's easy to use with Google Cardboard or the Viewmaster viewer that I have.

I found the Dashwood software very easy to use and reasonably priced. I used the Express version.

When using the 360 VR viewer in conjunction with FCPX make sure you go to Preferences/Playback and select the Dashwood option in the A/V Output drop down. Then from window menu make sure that A/V Output is ticked.

I'm still experimenting with it but there are lots of unexplored creative uses for it.

I've not idea about the audio options though.

Cheers,

James

Q. Which camera do you recommend?
If you are an editor that wants to explore VR video and need good enough footage to learn from and for low-end projects: The Kodak SP360 4K Dual Pro Pack . It is a pair of very compact fisheye lens cameras (with 235° field of view) that comes with a rig that positions them correctly to capture 360° video with overlap to allow for stitching.

Q. Which app do you use for stitching?
Everyone eventually uses Kolor Autopano Video - on a PC. Although it runs on the Mac, all professional stitchers (that is now a who new job) run it on PCs configured with as many 2016 GPU cards as they can afford.
While learning, if you use the Kodak SP360 4K Dual Pro Pack (or the more affordable Ricoh Theta S ), you'll only be dealing with a very simple stitching boundary - between the front camera and the back camera. In this case you can use the stitching done using the supplied app (Kodak) or in the cloud (Ricoh).
I expect that as a tradeoff between quick production and sharing on social media, most viewers will earn to tune out the think kind of stitching line from these low end rigs and become immersed in the content of VR videos.

Q. Is Dashwood 360 the best solution for FCPX?
Yes. Nearly all the features most VR video makers will need initially are available in Dashwood 360VR Express . It has all the current features of the full Dashwood 360VR Toolbox that small and medium VR video producers need. The toolbox is used by high-end VR video producers to make 3D VR video - when you make videos that send different images to the left and right eye to get a feeling of depth inside the sphere of video.
As Dashwood tools are available through the FxFactory Pro Apps app store system, you can download trial versions of both Dashwood products that have all the features of the paid version but with a watermark until you decide to buy.

Q. Which playback solution supports changes in audio playback following the direction you're looking?
No free desktop players yet, but the iOS and Android YouTube app recently added ‘3D audio’ (binaural) playback. That means you can share unlisted YouTube videos with clients for playback on their phone.


@Alex4D

Hi Alex,

thank you very much for your presentation at fcpworks/NAB - gave me that '<clunk>Aha!"- moment what VR is good for, outside games and real estate sales videos....

Re-framing.

Looking forward to some football games, VR cam installed right over green, and IN POST you decide which way to pan/tilt and follow the ball... niiiice!

So, my question is, you recommend here 'for a starter package'

alex4D wrote: … good enough footage to learn from and for low-end projects:.. Kodak SP360 4K Dual Pro Pack....

which is a 1k for camera only. Do those devices deliver a 'broadcast acceptable' quality, when using 'just a flat selection' of the recording? Or is this still a domain of that 60k$ ball, the ripple-twins show in their actual tutorials?

...

Karsten,

The SP360 4K Dual Pro Pack is a pair of 2880x2880 cameras. They combine together to produce a 3840x1920 movie, which equates to 720p when viewed using a phone or VR headset, or when extracted for a flat video.

If you want a flat 1080p, you'll need at least 5120x2560 equirectangular output, which means stitching together at least 5 4K images, if not more. That's 5x the price of the camera, plus the rig to hold them all together.

The question is whether the jump from around €1200 for the dual SP360 rig to the €2300 custom Go Pro rig delivers enough of a difference in quality.

@Alex4D

Kirsten,

As regards resolution, the main two HMDs: Oculus Rift and HTC Vive only send 1080x1200 to each eye. As they have a horizontal field of view of 110°, that means the resolution for all 360° horizontally is only 3535 pixels, which is less than 4K.

For Cardboard-based headsets, the resolution of top Samsung phones sends 1280 by 720 to each eye - at most, some pixels aren't visible through the lenses. For now 4K is enough for learning and experimentation.


Alex

alex4D wrote: … a pair of 2880x2880 cameras. They combine together to produce a 3840x1920 movie, which equates to 720p when viewed using a phone or VR headset, or when extracted for a flat video.
...

wow, close to instant, your reply :woohoo:

last Q
what is the math behind those calculations?
2 x 2880 x 2880 = 3840 x 1920 .. equates 'flat 720p' ... hu?

thanks for taking the time answering this super beginner Qs...

==edit==
haven't seen your 2nd reply ... I notice 360° and 3D are often mixed ...
any nomenclatura? VR=3D and 360°, 360°=360° only?

As regards 3D and 360° video AKA VR Video, the choice when having sent each eye as you choose where to look around inside a sphere of video means that film makers can choose whether the same image is sent to both - 2D (monoscopic) or 3D (stereoscopic).

The advantage of 3D is that you feel the depth of everything you see around you.

Most production will be 2D for now. It requires more than twice the effort and budget to make 3D VR video. Twice the cameras/media/storage, just for starters.

@Alex4D

I'm currently using an SP360 Dashwood 360VR combination which is working well.

Cameras are such a terrible investment in VR right now because the pace of development is so fast. I agree with Alex, that I'd check out the Kodak for a low cost solution. I personally use a 10 GoPro rig which allows for less parallax and a much higher quality output. Still monoscopic (2D) for now as the playback resolution of 3D stuff just isn't great. My rigs will probably be replaced over this summer with a higher end camera as we do more and more professional 360 gigs.

A lot of 360 video stuff is PC only due to the fact that Oculus hasn't released an update to their mac runtime drivers in over a year. But you can still create videos using FCPX on the mac with Dashwood tools. In my experience AMD cards are more reliable, even though some of the tools (VideoStitch) only run using CUDA Nvidia cards. Super frustrating and I've had to build a lot of PCs this year.

Also, protip - iFFMPEG is a must have tool for the mac if creating binaural audio streams to send to GearVR unless you love mucking with the command line. The file type requirements aren't something you'll find a preset in compressor for to get the best quality. To my knowledge, no desktop players support 360 audio yet (which is a shame, since I think 360 audio is even more important than the visuals).

I'm going to revive this thread and ask, today, August 2017, what are camera recommendations? Especially with Dashwood being free and macOS High Sierra coming very soon.