Slashdot Mirror
Technology for Capturing 360 Degree Video
Inzite writes "EnterNetica R&D is working on a new spherical video technology for capturing and presenting full 360 degree scenes using a 180 degree lens, by adaptively predicting the camera's surroundings. Video extrapolation techniques have been proposed in the past, but this is the first time I've heard of an entire hemisphere of the video image being "guessed". The article also talks about feature film presentation using fully-immersive video in the future."
This way we can be INSIDE of a pr0n movie!
Maybe I'm missing something, but the article doesn't explain why they don't simply place two cameras back to back, then use their software to splice the result and apply the correct perspective. All they say about it is that "it's against the laws of physics to take a 360 degree photo. That just seems odd.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I think the closest we've seen to this so far is Disney's Circle Vision in Disneyland, except that rather than a simple 360 video, we're talking about spherical video.
Did anyone bother to ask the customers what they want?
...a 360 Degree TV to watch it!
Circumcision is child abuse.
Not even first post and it's slashdotted.
Whilst the camera is looking the other way, someone could easily show in a message saying:
FIRST POST
but nobody would notice.
The site's already down, but based on the small blurb ... I don't see how this is possible. You're basically guessing at 50% of the scene, of which the only hints you have are land/sky textures.
If that's all this is about, I've been doing it for years in Photoshop. It's called the Clone/Healing Brush tool.
I used to think Linux was cool -- then I turned 14.
something tells me that something like this could usher in a new era of pr0n. 3d goggles and a vibrating chair, oh my!
/dev/random
Google Cache Link, Since the webserver is already dead:
w w.prweb.com/releases/2005/9/prweb288725.htm+site:h ttp://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/9/prweb288725.ht m&hl=en
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:zYFN61BG0lEJ:w
Anyone have a mirror?
They also tried this guessing tech for their database but it doesn't work so well.
Here is google cache: thanks google.
I can't wait to see what movie theatres do with this technology. Maybe not our typical theatres, but yenno... like the one's at theme parks or something. I'm sure can make a pretty cool short movie with this.
The patent on Disney's Circlevision camera system has expired.
Google links on EnterNetica
(a) OPTICS ADVANCES BRING VOLUMETRIC VIDEO TO LIFE
(b) Pressbox link
(c) Cleaner, Crisper Volumetric Images
Company webpage
http://www.prweb.com.nyud.net:8090/releases/2005/9 /prweb288725.htm
OT pondering instilled by TFA...
//OT
In Jack McDevitt's Hutch series of books, the passengers on intersolar flights passed thetime by "starring" in movies digitally redone with the passengers as the characters.
I was thinking about how hilarious this would be in real life, and how it could reinvigorate certain movies in theaters with minimal seating if they had decent hardware to sample random audience members (one person per group). I realized a fisheye lens can capture deptch with the right software.
Imagine how "cool" it would be to revisit Indy Jones or Star Wars or Usual Suspects where someone in your group was one of the actors? Even a bit part would lead to great inside jokes, and meeting up with new groups would be easy, too.
I'd spend $20/ticket for the social experience.
360 degree camera hack
pretty cool, simplistic yet inventive hack.
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I just spin in circles really fast while holding the camera out.
I suppose there is the drawback of dizziness and eventually falling down.
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
This would be pretty cool combined with the VirtuSphere.
Bradley Holt
...as a director.
I mean, part of the idea of a "film" is controlling the perspectives and what you present to your viewer. Somehow I have a hard time imagining this going past the art-house type movie, because the amount of work that the director has to do increases dramatically. Since you can't be sure what direction your audience is looking it, it would make it difficult to have a feature film in the sense that we're used to it...for example:
Jim: Wow, that guy just robbed a bank!
Sue: What guy? I was looking at those flowers over there.
[Camera whirls around, both get dizzy and throw up since they can't tell where to focus]
I'm being silly, but it just seems pretty difficult. That said, it's a cool technology, and if someone could tell me how they plan to deal with that whole focus issue in the context of a feature film, I'd be interested to hear it.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
There were teams using Amigas doing this years ago. I recall 2 such products: ProVu, and Cosmo. ProVu was used for "interior design." And Cosmo was used by cosmetic surgeons.
My ZooLoo
There is comparable software that might be of interest along these lines ... check out:/
http://www.pixtra.com/
http://www.ptgui.com/
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
http://www.360dof.com/
http://www.arcsoft.com/products/panoramastitching
I'm just wondering why are they using the word 'volumetric' so much when all of their images are still 2d projections? I always through that volume applies to something with three coordinates/DOF.
Immersive maybe, but its not volumetric.
you don't have to watch sex on TV, you can have it on TV!
At Siggraph this year, there were two similar systems on display. They are unbelievably cool.
1) Point Gray's Ladybug2 has five cameras mounted in a box about the size of, say, a stack of three decks of cards.
2) Immersive Media's system has 11 (!) cameras in a sphere about 2 inches on a side.
Both systems do real-time stitching of the multiple images into a panorama.
We're looking into them for the obvious motion-picture visual effects applications. The resolution (both spatial and dynamic) is not ideal for motion-picture work, but the ability to have an extremely small, lightweight, panoramic capture is a tradeoff that is worthy of pursuit. In the past (say, on The Fast and The Furious) we used six ARRI 435 cameras mounted to the side of a motorcycle, to the tune of several thousand dollars a day rental, hundreds of pounds of weight, and fairly compromised images in other ways (bad lens flare, extremely bouncy images.)
Thad Beier
Hammerhead Productions
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
My local non-league football team (association football, that is... OK, soccer if you like) has a bloke who films every match using a camcorder, and produces DVDs for harcore fans (of which there can't be that many: 800 is a good home crowd).
I've not seen the DVDs in question, but it seems to me that producing adequate footage of a football game from a single vantage point, zooming and panning on the live action, must be quite a challenge.
It occurred to me that with a very high enough resolution CCD, and a very wide angle lens, one could capture the whole game using static cameras, and pan and zoom in post-production. With a few of these (which could run unattended) you could get very good coverage of a live event, deferring all decisions about zoom levels, pans etc. until afterwards.
What's that you say? Off topic? Er, OK. While a 360 degree capture might not be appropriate for a sporting event (unless you were also interested in capturing the crowd -- since the camera couldn't be in the middle of the pitch), you could use the same technique in other circumstances to capture an event then edit it down afterwards.
Back in the 90s dot com boom I saw a prototype camera for doing 360 degree panning quicktime static images that was essentially a camera pointed vertically, with an extreme almost spheroid "fisheye" lens. The image would be processed to change the distorted fisheye image into a panoramic 360 degree view (The only direction you could not pan in was down, because the camera was there. Obvously down is the least interesting direction for panning, although I suppose you could have mounted the camera upside down if the ground was important.). The prototype seemed to work fine.
Why can you do the same thing with video? Is it because processing a "fisheye" image is just too processing intensive for 30 frame a second HD video? Is the technique patented and so off limits for other companies? Is it that a video image is too low-res to do translations from a distorted fisheye without blurring? Why do it the elaborate way described in the article when the fisheye technique seems a whole lot simpler?
I saw the prototype in person, so unless the company was commiting outright fraud, I am pretty sure the fisheye thing works.
this has been done a long time ago by BeHere, who have done 360 video for years, works with quicktime and realvideo
they even had a couple of short Films on iFilm where you where part of the action (a plane crash video and you as a patient in an old peoples home) and could move the camera around to see people talking to you (sound was stereo too) pretty mind blowing in 98
but whats old is the new new right ?
Or you could, like, duct tape a bunch of cheaper camers into, like, a ball.
have a look see.
Atom is timing out for me (prolly slashdotted) but the films in question are here
The New Arrival
The New Arrival is a surreal tale about the departure of an old friend. The surprising ending will make you want to watch it again and again - from every angle!
Coming Of Age
Little Jimmy is taking his first airplane flight! What joy and wonder awaits him for his 13th birthday? A plane full of neurotic actors, drunken pilots and harried flight attendants, that's what. As if things couldn't get worse, the plane itself starts to fall apart. Catch every bit of the dizzying aerial action through the wonders of immersive film technology.
And yet, the technical obstacles to capturing and presenting fully immersive video are massive, accounting for the fact that there is no straightforward way to capture a 360 sphere.
Build a sphere made of small digital cameras/lenses, integrate the picture and then create a 360 perspective.
I am not sure what they meant by technical obstacles unless they were trying to build a spherical lens?
Now we will NEVER be able to walk behind the camera and flip it off unnoticed!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
360 degree views using a 180 degree lens are perfectly possible: you're just not looking at it right.
If you point the lens directly UP (or down even), then it will cover 360 degrees around you. You could extract a 360 panorama from that fish-eye image and remove the distortion fairly easily (although it would be processing intensive).
MadCow
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
What happened to it?
t id=109&tid=128&tid=218
http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/09/26/1334220.shtml?
A shameless plug to another projects like the work done by Point Grey:
http://www.ptgrey.com/products/spherical.html
www.micoy.com - these guys have already perfected the real deal. No extrapolation needed. Having actually experienced this technology, I must say it is quite impressive. They just recently won a worlds best technologies award by beating out the US Navy.
They've alread produced 360 degree lenses, and mounts for analog and digital cameras. The math's already been done to change this convex lens structure back to a linear view; it's been around for almost ten years. They have numerous licensees, and so 180 degree lenses seem like a cripple.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
For it to be truly immersive, shouldn't they be bragging about 4 \pi steradians instead of 360 degrees? One's a measure of a spherical surface area and the other only describes a circle!
Also, why doesn't π or π give me \pi? It seems to work in general HTML... Interestingly enough, & still works (and a handful of others).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
My approach to this problem would be to take a camera that can capture say 60fps and mount it on a tripod like device that spins it 360 degrees at 30rpms. Then you have software pull every 30th frame for each angle. To avoid blur, it may have to spin faster than 60fps but I'm sure it will have to be a multiple of 30 (or whatever the fps capture rate is).
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
His name is Dave, and I'd recoment his site, for local events. (if you're in North Carolina) http://david.rencher.us/
Time is comparison of movement to other movement.
I seem to recall going to a big theater at Disneyworld (pre-epcot) that had screens all around the room, except at the very back.
There were no seats in there, so that you could turn around and look at any screen you wanted.
The movie wasn't very long, but it was pretty neat.
I'm pretty sure I didn't hallucinate this, so if anyone can help complete my recollection, that'd be great.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Now, let's see someone use 2 of these devices to film a 360 degree film in 3D. Or would you need 3rd camera, to fill in those spaces where one camera blocks the other? And how would you begin to display the result?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
The point is not how to catch a 360 degrees scene, but how to view it!
The actual view angle of a scene we can enjoy is a fraction of a 360 degrees, if we don't count the case of Mr. Marty Feldman.
So we should move our eys and neck in order to embrace the whole scene and then loose the rest of it.
It seems that someone in the movie industry is willing to save the money for a good scene shooter and photo director!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
You take a 180 degree fisheye lens, attach it to a camera, choose a virtual 180 degree line and rotate the assembly around that line. Then stitch the pictures together. You don't have to extrapolate nor do you lose any of the picture and have to "guess" as the article mentions. I am not sure what they are doing that seems "revolutionary", except maybe they have packaged the full unit and are showing it off. Either way, why are they having problems extrapolating to the hidden part behind the camera.
From TFA Naturally there's a degree of uncertainty, but you'd be surprised just how much is predictable ... This way they'll never need to point the camera at him.
like Tom Cruise's artificial expressions - so predictable
Forget 360 Degrees, its all about 21 quadrance and 3/5 spread!
feature film presentation using fully-immersive video in the future
That will suck. First off, I can't really take in more than what's in front of me anyways. Am I going to have to twist around to see the characters and/or action? I remember a 360 movie in Disney world and it was more annoying than neat. Then there's the fact that part of the art of cinema is putting things in a frame -- if there is no longer a choice of what goes in and what doesn't, it's less and less of an art. Then there is the fact that by increasing the cost of filming, set design, distribution and projection, that these films will be even worse than what we are accustomed to.
I think there's a great untapped use for immersive technology, but feature films are not it.
Cheers.
360 Degrees only describes one angular dimension...
Quicktime had the same quality of image 8 years ago when it comes to still images. Now, it is true that this is more of hardware breakthrough, but the image quality doesn't seem to be much better than QT. I'd like to see some video to get a better feel of what this hardware can do.
Why oh why couldn't Myst V be done in 360 degree video!!! Damn kids and their "computer graphics"....bah humbug.
I can see the defense now:
"Yes, well, that is my client on the security camera breaking in, but that camera system uses volumetric estimation, so that image could be an extrapolation and thus is inadmissable"
Just have full 360 camera mounted on a RC controlled unit.... have the camera guy in some kind of vr room and there ya go... dumbasses
I checked out those systems at Siggraph as well, and asked the reps there what the dynamic range of these systems were. One wasn't sure, so phoned in, and got a figure of 10bit (ladybug). The other was 8bit.
That's a fair bit in lack of range / fidelity (depending on what exposure you're looking at).
On the up side, both are entirely computer controllable, so it would be feasible to quickly switch exposure levels. This does mean a reduction of temporal frequency depending on the number of exposures you'd be looking at, but that may not be much of an issue - as you mentioned, the resolution is too low to be using this as live backdrop source as it is. But for CG integration (reflections, refractions, relighting), it should be quite nice.
They call their technology volumetric, but from the description you get the idea that it's just flat, non-stereographic video captured and projected in a spherical way.
Not that it isn't interesting and immersive, but given the recent interest in stereo by big names such as Spielberg, Cameron and Rodriguez, I was hoping that it would have indeed been at least 360 stereographic, if not holographic, which volumetric IMHO kinda implies.
J
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
since when are there 360 degrees in a sphere?
has made me think long and hard about weird random stuff like this. I'm assuming they're talking about a spherical camera that captures a spherical image, or at least a half a sphere. Not some sort of retarded donut thing. The already kinda did that; it's called The Matrix, only backwards.
To record a regular movie, you need film that is basically three dimensional: two for the two dimensional image you'll see on your TV and one for time. What we end up with is an image that should be 2Ds of space and 1D of time, but isn't because we don't have the ability to move about in time as easily as space, so it ends up being a series of slices of 2D spacetime. You could stack them into a cube instead of a strip so that you have a 3(Space)D image. We've converted a time D into a space D. When you load the strip into the projector and play it, that third space D is converted back into a time D, so we have 3S -> 2S+1T. Now, there's a problem with this spherography (if you will). Spherography consists of 3S + 1T = 4D, so to record this, we're going to need 4S right? So we do what we originally did: instead of having a 3D stack of slides, we place the slides side by side, compressing 3D into 2D. To do this to 4D, each frame would be a sphere, and the "strip" would be a string of these frames. So you load them into the spherography projector and it jams some light inside and projects onto the giant silver sphere that is the theatre.
A new problem arises when you're carrying a big box of these things around and you drop the box. Either you say you're VERY Catholic and you need a very long rosary, or it's an extremely long set of anal beads. I'm not sure which is worse.
you could just use two cameras back to back. Unless I'm missing something really simple.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
You guessed wrong. A videosphere is cooler than a mere circle.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
My current work project deals with real-time presentation of a 360 degree video feed. We used the Ladybug camera to record 30min of footage in a contemporary glass studio. The video feed is later projected inside a hemisphere. You use a trackball to change your viewing direction at a rock solid 60Hz update rate.
Note that having a good 3D sound system is essential for this type of installation. Since you only see half of the world, a full 3D sound field can give you important clues about things which happen behind you.
We'll show this starting October 6 at the Sydney Powerhouse Museum (Australia). Enjoy.
The result is that you'd get blurring or pixelation of the resulting image towards the extremities, making it relatively useless for entertainment/ security purposes. You'ld know someone was jacking a car, but may not have enough data to determine who the perpetrator was. I'd expect consistent resolution across all angles of vision for it to be considered true, spherical video.
If this is what they've got, then good job. Else what's the difference between this and mounting a pair of OmniMAX cameras back to back and using software to stitch in between? Surely predicting a narrow band of data (less if you use more rigs) is easier than swinging a camera around willy nilly and trying to guess the invisible region.
EnterNetica R&D is working on a new spherical video technology for capturing and presenting full 360 degree scenes using a 180 degree lens, by adaptively predicting the camera's surroundings. Video extrapolation techniques have been proposed in the past, but this is the first time I've heard of an entire hemisphere of the video image being "guessed".
That's nothing new.. women have had this technology for centuries. My girlfriend is so good at it, she doesn't even feel the need to look in the rear view mirror when reversing. (Although the dents in the rear bumper would seem to suggest otherwise).
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
BTW, I'd like to see the opposite of this concept. Imagine sevral fixed cameras pointing at an interesting scene, say a boxing game. You build a real-time 3D model of the scene and then create a virtual image filmed from any vantage point. It would allow you to have views filmed from the inside of sporting events. Imagine seeing from the eyes of the guy being hammered by Tyson... Then again it might not be such a good idea...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I don't understand the problem here. This is not new technology. A number of planetariums around the world have been doing full-dome, 360 degree video for a number of years now. I don't know all the technical aspects of recording such video, but it is obviously already being done. The planetarium at which I am the director is currently negotiating with two companies to convert our planetarium to full-dome video. Projection is done by a single projector in the middle of the room. It can project any image which can be stuffed into a computer including full-motion, full-dome video, and still images. If you want to know more go to www.spitzinc.com and http://konicaminolta.com/kmpl/about/index.html