Watters Poker Tournament
an interactive panoramic movie with audio
2048x1024, flv
83MB 5 min
requires Adobe Flash player.
Version 10 recommended
with a good video card
I shot my VR video by pointing my camera in different directions for each sequence. I tethered the camera to my computer capturing a jpg image every couple seconds (jpg transfer faster than raw). There was no option with the software to trigger camera from computer but save on camera not computer.
I wanted to display as many frames per second as possible, and to compensate for the camera capturing slowly I acted everything out is slow motion too. I played the audio at slow speed and timed my acting to it. It only helped marginally. Instead of a frame ever 2 seconds I got a frame every 1.5 sec for playback.
I used video editing software to do the blending of each sequence to the timing of the audio. I was only able to output to 2048X1024. Although it was possible to input images as big as 6000x3000 I had to down sample them all to 4096X2048 to prevent it from crashing when rendering. Maybe with a newer version I will be able to output at a higher resolution.
I was able to batch transform each sequence of images, but I did the blending using masks in the video editing software. The timing of the triggering of the camera for each sequence was not constant. By using the video editing software I was able to position the time of each transition precisely to match the dialog and audio.
In some directions I might have 4 frames to stretch out to last 20 seconds in another direction I might have 20 frames.
I did take advantage of of the fact that a large percentage of the scene does not change from start to end and use a single uncompressed image to cover this. Only the pieces that actually get updated are revealed with a mask and get blended into the frame. I am hoping that this would go a long ways in shrinking the size of the finished compressed video.
This is really is an experiment that I hope to improve on next time with a better script and better actors. ;-) (I play all 5 characters in this one)
I also set up the audio to be 5.1 sound so the direction could change as the video is panned. But none of the the viewing software has this feature yet. So for this render the movie has sterio sound that does not change with rotation.
The Making of movie is a time lapse movie showing the setup and the filming of the first two characters. No sound but with text comments.