Hello everyone!
I have made a couple of interactive panoramas from 4K 24P unprocessed video captured in a short trip to Musandam, Oman.
All software used is free and the procedure was entirely automatic (only needed to choose which portion of the video to use and decide the rate of frames to be extracted).
I hope you will enjoy them:


Telegraph Island (Interactive Spherical 360º Panorama):
http://photosynth.net/view/5c25f85c-a45d-4fb7-9a6a-cbfe81dfed33


Khor Najd (Interactive Cylindrical 360º Panorama):
http://photosynth.net/view/03f50f17-cfb8-4920-ae9f-d375d5d40bb0


Regards,
Bogdan

Wow, those look amazing! Thanks for sharing ;)

Hello Bogdan,
WOW!!!! Thanks for the wonderful tip to this new technology...waiting impatiently to try it on my videos..

regards
Arun

It seems we have so many choices already in getting great panoramas from I1 footage.
What I have found fastest and most automatic procedure:
- load any video with KMPlayer and skip to the part of the video where you have done panoramic movements (camera tilts and / or horizontal rotations; looking down while flying in parallel lines ; flying sideways along the ROI; flying upward / downward filming a structure)
- use the KMPlayer frame extraction feature (Alt+G,Misc.Controls,More...); extract jpeg original frames every 8 frames (when camera movement was smooth)
- load all extracted frames into the free Microsoft Research's "Image Composite Editor" (ICE)
- generate the panorama automatically
- export the panorama as an image, local web page with interactive panorama, or upload to Photosynth
Note that even the panoramas uploaded to Photosynth may be embedded into commercial websites at no cost!
Still preferable to store the local web page of your interactive panorama on private server and only use the viewer control from Microsoft's servers.
Best regards,
Bogdan

Nice,

Thanks for sharing!

pb

Very, very nice!

Very, very nice!

Very, very nice. I am always amazed at the fantastic vistas we are able to see with these wonderful airborne cameras.

bornish@gmail.c Posted at 2015-3-18 18:03
It seems we have so many choices already in getting great panoramas from I1 footage.
What I have fou ...

Thank you so much my friend to share this.

Can you explain a little more how do you fly the panorama movements? for example, I would like to have a view close to 360, I horizontally rotate camera 360 degree without moving drone, then should I tilt camera all the way down to ground then fly the parameter of the 360 rotate circle I just did? not quite sure what should do next movement.

Wow, I just tried Microsoft image composite  editor, it was super easy to create a great panoramic....

howie121218@gma Posted at 2015-3-19 11:44
Thank you so much my friend to share this.

Can you explain a little more how do you fly the panor ...

Howie,
I think the movements you have described should work pretty well as ICE matching algorithms are pretty good in stitching frames from such camera movement. The software is able to detect both vertical and horizontal camera movements in a set of imagery and you will end-up with a spherical projected panorama. We all can try different styles of recording and see which ones work best. So far, my experience has lead me to draw the following conclusions:
- do not move the position of the I1 during panorama recording; GPS accuracy seems to be good enough to maintain the camera in approximately same spot, which is an assumption made by all software creating spherical / cylindrical panorama
- we get less parallax in a spherical / cylindrical panorama the further we are from the surroundings, thus we can expect much better results when the I1 is at a higher altitude; being further means less details but stitching of these frames at different angles will have better results
- when panning horizontally, I prefer to rotate the I1 not the gimbal, because:
* gimbal's controllable pan range is 320 degrees, thus panned recording needs to be done from -180 to 180 for a full 360 degrees coverage; I find that more difficult than 360 rotation of the aircraft
* when rotating the I1, the gimbal will try to compensate for uneven rotation speed when set in follow mode; I consider this a great feature of the gimbal, in addition to its known 3D stabilization of the camera
* it is possible to have the landing legs appear in camera view while panning the camera through gimbal motion; even with the landing gear raised completely, wind guts may force the I1 to tilt enough and bring the lower part of the leg in front of the camera view; keeping the camera looking in front of the I1 will never be obstructed by propellers / legs, as long as the wind speed / guts are safe to fly
- when taking semi-spherical panorama from higher altitude, we may not need to horizontally pan twice; having the camera tilt at 30 degrees should cover the horizon line (vertical FOV is aprox 60 degrees) and we will only need to cover the non-visible cone of 30 degrees radius bellow the aircraft; with a horizontal FOV of 94 degrees, this cone can be covered by 2-4 camera tilt movements to 90 degrees (straight down); thus, after completing a 360 revolution of the I1 with camera tilted at 30 degrees, one may choose to:
* tilt the camera angle from 30 degrees to 90 degrees, rotate the aircraft 180 degrees, tilt back the camera from 90 degrees to 30 degrees
* tilt the camera angle from 30 degrees to 90 degrees, rotate the aircraft 120 degrees, tilt back the camera from 90 degrees to 30 degrees, rotate the aircraft another 120 degrees, tilt again the camera from 30 degrees to 90 degrees
* tilt the camera angle from 30 degrees to 90 degrees, rotate the aircraft 90 degrees, tilt back the camera from 90 degrees to 30 degrees, rotate the aircraft another 90 degrees, tilt again the camera from 30 degrees to 90 degrees, rotate the aircraft another 90 degrees, tilt back the camera from 90 degrees to 30 degrees
- using the radar in the DJI Pilot application can help a lot when rotating the aircraft for spherical / cylindrical panorama; until an SDK will be available from DJI, no automation of these movements can be achieved
- using the timeline camera mode to take regular snapshots instead of video recording may result in an unresponding camera features even when signal is lost for a short time; this happened on Android and the only way to regain control was to close and restart the DJI Pilot application
- extracting frames from 4K video proved to have the following advantages for creating panorama:
* video ISO range is 100-3200 as compared to photo ISO range 100-1600
* even extracting 1 in every 8 frames from 4K video, we still get 3 stills every second; timeline mode does not offer such frequency and manually taking snapshots without dual operator ain't much fun
* one video file is much easier to handle during post processing than hundreds / thousands of image files
- using auto camera settings is widely discouraged for panorama creation and main reason is the color correction and matching of the images that need to be stitched; with video frames though, when camera movement is slow, there is a huge overlap between frames and we have the choice to pick from multiple frames covering the same area; while the camera is auto-adjusting its settings, it is still recording a large number of frames and we have the liberty to choose the one frame that offers the best transition between them
I am looking forward to hear from others on their trials and observations.
For example, I would love to hear from someone trying to capture a spherical panorama through a spiral movement (aircraft horizontal rotation combined with a simultaneous tilt movement of the camera).
Best regards,
Bogdan

Thanks Bogdan, I can't wait to try this!

markaguille Posted at 2015-3-19 18:41
Thanks Bogdan, I can't wait to try this!

Please share a link to your panorama in a comment here.
I hope to see more of these done with the I1.

Thanks for sharing Bodgan.
What I don't understand is that the left side of the panoramic picture does not fit into the right side. Being a 360° panoramic pic it should. Or am I missing something?

Is there a plug-in for your program to remove the fish eye  in the pano? Or, a bit of cropping to straighten out the horizon?

Prop-Lock Girl Posted at 2015-3-19 18:55
Thanks for sharing Bodgan.
What I don't understand is that the left side of the panoramic picture do ...

I am not sure I understand your inquiry. Are you referring to the semi-spherical panorama done at Telegraph Island?

rodger Posted at 2015-3-19 18:56
Is there a plug-in for your program to remove the fish eye  in the pano? Or, a bit of cropping to st ...

Rodger,
None of the software I have recommended here are mine, but if you are looking for a software capable to reduce / remove fish eye effect, the only one I know would be the GoPro Studio (again free, with some limitations for imagery / video not captured with a GoPro camera). Try downloading it, as it has many other great features for video processing, and it is very user friendly.
Best regards,
Bogdan

bornish@gmail.c Posted at 2015-3-19 19:17
I am not sure I understand your inquiry. Are you referring to the semi-spherical panorama done at  ...

Yes.
What I mean is that normally, one end of a panoramic picture fits more or less perfectly with the opposite end of the picture, because in a 360° view one end is at the same time the beginning of the opposite end and vice-versa.

bornish@gmail.c Posted at 2015-3-19 19:17
I am not sure I understand your inquiry. Are you referring to the semi-spherical panorama done at  ...

I have uploaded my panorama to Photosynth which provides an interactive viewer where you can use your mouse to rotate and even zoom into. Use its interface to change the viewing angle to any direction (even looking straight down) as if you where standing where the I1 was when it has recorded the video frames.

Prop-Lock Girl Posted at 2015-3-19 19:27
Yes.
What I mean is that normally, one end of a panoramic picture fits more or less perfectly with  ...

Have you tried to rotate it using your mouse?
The Photosynth viewer will not show at one particular angle the entire imagery of a spherical / cylindrical panorama, but instead will allow you to "pan" the imagery in any direction. The Telegraph Island panorama is 360 degrees (horizontally) and 110 degrees (vertically), thus you can see everything except the sky. Do try to zoom in / out also using the mouse wheel.

bornish@gmail.c Posted at 2015-3-19 20:04
Have you tried to rotate it using your mouse?
The Photosynth viewer will not show at one partic ...

Aaaaaaah... oh yeah!!!
Thanks!

bornish@gmail.c Posted at 2015-3-19 19:23
Rodger,
None of the software I have recommended here are mine, but if you are looking for a softwa ...

Bogdan, I have programs that will handle that issue. I was wondering if the one that you use had the capability.
Thanks for the reply.

- when panning horizontally, I prefer to rotate the I1 not the gimbal, because:
* gimbal's controllable pan range.......................we have the liberty to choose the one frame that offers the best transition between them.

This is really cool.  Thank you! I wonder if there is any way possible to also capture the sky so it is a complete sphere?  So, when doing this, do you just hit record and leave the camera recording or are you stopping for each 30°-90° pan to capture what is below you? I wonder if one could do a taller building by doing everything you just listed but then climbing say 50 feet and doing another 360° turn with the I1, climbing 50 more feet and doing it again?

bornish@gmail.c Posted at 2015-3-19 16:14
Howie,
I think the movements you have described should work pretty well as ICE matching algorithms ...

wow,that's awesome, Bogdan. I definitely gonna try the way you described. Thank you so much for sharing!!!

This needs to be "Stickied" before it gets buried - this is great and EVERYONE can enjoy it

Awesome Job.

bornish@gmail.c Posted at 2015-3-18 18:03
It seems we have so many choices already in getting great panoramas from I1 footage.
What I have fou ...

How many framed did it take to do th Telegraph Island?
I downloaded Microsoft ICE but it says cannot open file when I try to open 4k .Mov. Any ideas?

SkySight Posted at 2015-3-19 22:29
This is really cool.  Thank you! I wonder if there is any way possible to also capture the sky so i ...

I have no idea if we could capture the sky above the Inspire using the camera of the I1.
The technical specs say that the gimbal tilt range is from -90 to 30 degrees, and with an approximately 60 degrees vertical FOV we can't really "look" above the I1, even if the propellers would not be in the way.
If someone is really interested in grabbing the sky above to complete a 360 by 360 degrees, I guess the only option is to attach a secondary camera that is continuously recording or taking timeline snapshots during the entire flight. The software (Microsoft's ICE) would not have a problem stitching frames / snapshots taken with different cameras, as long as the photos are taken from approximately same location in space.
If you're planning to try this, please share your findings. It looks to me that the I1 can provide great material for amazing panoramic views. Moreover, the process seems to be so easy that a kid can do it with all these free automatic tools. Of course, professional photographers and professional editing software would always be able to perfect the result... I am not going to compete with them, but still very happy of the results I am having with the lack of experience I have in professional photography.
Best regards,
Bogdan

markaguille Posted at 2015-3-21 18:29
How many framed did it take to do th Telegraph Island?
I downloaded Microsoft ICE but it says can ...

Mark,
Telegraph Island was obtained from 171 frames (83 for the vertical pan and 88 for the horizontal pan).
When I have recorded the video I had no idea I can make an interactive panorama from it, thus the video was not planned for it. Only later I have discovered the ability of ICE software and upload of panoramas on Photosynth site.
Regarding the video support of ICE software, I have already asked about the error when loading *.mp4 or *.mov files from the Inspire. It seems that ICE uses external components (Microsoft Foundation) that come with the operating system when trying to load the videos. When trying to load 4K videos, most people complained about this error even that they had Windows 7 or even Windows 8.1 with all the latest updates.
Matt from the Microsoft's team replied on ICE forums that loading such 4K videos (especially on Windows 7) is a known issue. I hope that we will see an update soon to resolve the problem.
The current procedure does require an extra step from our side, but to be honest, gives us a chance to fine-tune the imagery that ICE should use when creating the panorama. Is a bit more work to extract the frames from the video, but we will always be able to select better the frames than an automated software would be able to. Not only that we can easily figure out how many frames per second are needed depending on the speed at which we captured the panorama, but if we have used automatic camera settings, we will be able to choose the frames with the best lighting conditions for getting the best stitched panorama. Loading the video directly in ICE would result in letting the software decide all this and the processing time would dramatically increase (from 10-15 mins to 1-2 hours).
In theory, a software should be able to process automatically an entire video and generate all kinds of panoramic views... but in order to get good results, such software would need much more than just the pixels. That is why I have wrote to DJI support to kindly request a utility that exports telemetry data from our flight recorder logs. Having the telemetry matched with our snapshots and videos would reduce the number of unknowns when automatically manipulating imagery. Having the position and camera orientation, a software would better estimate which frames are useful for the final result. Also, acceleration and gyroscope readings can be used to better understand the camera movement. Histogram values can help decide between frames of the same area... and so on. A software can be as smart as the data it can use.
Best regards,
Bogdan

SkySight Posted at 2015-3-19 22:29
This is really cool.  Thank you! I wonder if there is any way possible to also capture the sky so i ...

I have been recording continuously. Later, I decide which portions of the video to extract frames from. The frequency of frames extracted from a portion of the video is also decided based on the camera movement speed in that portion of the video.

Great job, very nice.
Maybe flying a looping will cover the sky-part ( just kidding ).
Get inspired to get it going.

Thanks for sharing

Hi!
After I read your article I went out and take some 4k movies of few resorts in my area and I made few quick panoramas. you can see them following this link:
https://photosynth.net/userprofilepage.aspx?user=EA6LE

Thanks for the info how to make them and also Photosynth new spin & wall features are nice. did few tests.

Regards,
EA6LE

ea6le Posted at 2015-4-2 02:30
Hi!
After I read your article I went out and take some 4k movies of few resorts in my area and I mad ...

They look great and I see you were able to make almost 360 x 360 degrees panoramas.
The spins are very well done as well.
Great job and thanks for sharing.

Hi Bornish. This is my first time use photosynth. I upload all my frames about 160, it generate the 360 views, however, you can see all the white box around each frames, I have no idea why it looks like that. Here's the link below:

https://photosynth.net/view.aspx ... p;p=0:0&t=False

Can you please help to see what's wrong with that?

Thank you very much

Have anyone have this problem?

You need to download and use ice:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=252149

Can this be used on Mac ??

GB44 Posted at 2015-5-4 03:17
Can this be used on Mac ??

Image Composite Editor 2.0 has been released only for 32 and 64 bit Windows.

Thanks, what app did you use?

ea6le Posted at 2015-5-3 04:13
You need to download and use ice:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=252149

thanks for sharing....