360 Video Resolution

[tmar]

Can you please add an output resolution for 360 video? I just bought a 360 fly and the output is a 1504 x 1504 mp4. Thanks!!

[Weston@HPTuners]

Good news! Your question comes at almost perfect timing... This capability has been under development for the past month or two, and the upcoming RaceRender version 3.4 update will have great 360 degree video support. RaceRender already had some basic support for pre-flattened 2:1 aspect ratio videos (ie YouTube 360 format), but we're expanding on that quite a bit, and then adding direct support for the raw video files from the 360fly, 360fly 4K, and similar fisheye 360 degree cameras.

The 360fly cameras in particular will be the best supported and most seamless experience to start with. RaceRender 3.4 will handle detecting the metadata in 360fly videos, automatically flattening / unrolling the image for you, encoding the output video in the typical 2:1 panographic aspect ratio (or 16:9 for older OS'es), and then setting the necessary output metadata to mark it as a 360 video so that YouTube and other compatible services process it as a 360 video. We are also including a simple 360 degree metadata tool under the File menu, which is a very helpful option if you forgot to set it when rendering your video, or if you do additional editing after RaceRender that doesn't retain your 360 metadata. And then there will be a bunch of other video and data improvements coming in version 3.4 as well...

A very big milestone was completed late last night, followed by successful testing all today. There is still one more new feature left to add for 360 video, and another piece that I'd like to refine a bit further, but I expect to have something to release very soon, probably within the next week or so...

One thing to note is that due to the raw video exceeding 1080 pixels in height, Windows users will really want to be on Windows 8 or newer for best results, with Windows 10 being the ideal recommendation. There's a limit in the Microsoft video decoders we use in Windows 7, but I was able to get the original 360fly's footage to work in the 32-bit version of RaceRender when you have QuickTime 7 for Windows installed. You may have to tell RaceRender to rotate the image 180 degrees if it appears upside-down. If you're using a 360fly 4K, then you'll especially want Windows 8 or newer (or a recent Mac OS X), but a workaround if experiencing problems with Windows 7 is to set the camera's raw recording size to its 1728x1728 @ 60 FPS option (instead of 2880x2880 @ 24 or 30 FPS), which should then work with the QuickTime 7 for Windows decoders. Everything appears to work wonderfully on both Windows 10 and Mac OS X 10.11 "El Capitan".

Here's a quick teaser video from RaceRender 3.4 using a 360fly 4K with data recorded by TrackAddict: (if on mobile, be sure to use the YouTube app to get a 360 degree experience)

[Weston@HPTuners]

Update: RaceRender 3.4, containing our new 360 degree video capabilities, is now available! Download link: http://RaceRender.com/RR3/Download.html

A big change is that RaceRender now offers 360 degree project workspace options (can be selected using the "Settings" button on the main screen), which expands the relative coordinate system to account for the 360x180 degree space. Most data overlay templates and other existing templates will be applied right in the middle, with X,Y coordinates between 0,0 and 100,100 percent, and they'll look much smaller. Both of these effects are desirable and are by design, because you are effectively zoomed-out when in this type of workspace, and the center section of the screen represents your initial view in a 360 viewer. As such, you have the ability to share the same data overlay templates between regular and 360 video projects, and you also have the option to set a 360 degree project to a standard workspace to show a more conventional single point of view, if you wish to do that.

More information is available here: http://RaceRender.com/RR3/docs/Pano360.html

[tmar]

This looks great. Thank you!