360 degree camera?

[mrbios]

Anyone used one in school?

 

I'm not sure of what the overall goal is for its use is but i've been asked to have a look at 360 degree cameras, such as the "360 fly" and with an interest in using google cardboard to view the videos!

 

The issues for us being how the videos are stored, how they get from the device to the network (if at all!), what the cheapest devices are to stick inside google cardboard (lol i love that name!) and anything else anyone can mention. There's also talk of getting a little drone to fly around the field and attach the 360 degree camera to. Is there anything that works well in a shared user environment?

 

Got to admit, it sounds REALLY cool, and I'm sure there's an educational purpose to it but I'm like a deer in headlights with excitement when someone tells me they want a 360 degree camera and a drone. I mean, I'll clearly need to be the one testing it out

[Oaktech]

I would look at the Ricoh cameras.

 

I'm getting into this at the moment.

 

I've got the Theta S and it's basically a toy for me. I've not really put it to any practical use yet although there is a plan to attach it to my mate's OctoCopter.

 

Video can be stored internally on it and downloaded the way you'd do it with any camera, or it can stream to your smart phone. You need the phone app anyway because it acts as the viewfinder/settings panel.

 

https://theta360.com/uk/about/theta/s.html

[dhicks]

The issues for us being how the videos are stored, how they get from the device to the network (if at all!), what the cheapest devices are to stick inside google cardboard (lol i love that name!) and anything else anyone can mention.

 

I have an event to film this Friday that I was thinking to get a 360 degree camera for - I've been wanting one for a while, but the Bublcam I was going to order sold out the instant it was available. The models currently available from Jessops would seem to be the 360Fly, the Kodak SP360 4K and the Ricoh Theta S. Both the 360Fly and the Kodak have a field-of-view of around 240 degrees. The Kodak has a neat mount available which houses two cameras, but that then requires stiching two lots of video together (it also requires buying two cameras). The Kodak's included stiching software doesn't seem to be all that great, and third-party stiching software is around the £500 mark, about the same as the camera itself. I think I'm going to wait until something that does in-camera stiching becomes available - the Bublcam or the Giroptic.

 

From what I can make out, once you have your footage in an MP4 file as a equirectangular projection it's actually quite easy to do whatever you want with it. YouTube will host it for you, or you can host it yourself and write your own 360 degree player - actually way easier than it sounds as there's a Javascript library function to do the projection part of things for you, you just add the user interface controls.

[Arthur]

The issues for us being how the videos are stored, how they get from the device to the network (if at all!)

This might be of interest...

 

www.edugeek.net/forums/news/150936-youtube-now-supports-360-degree-videos.html#post1440706

 

+

 

https://developers.google.com/cardboard/vrview#media_capture_and_hosting

 

Real World Capture

Taking 360 photos and videos is increasingly easy and affordable. VR Views can use images generated by any camera that support the equirect-pano format described above. For users interested in getting started quickly, a few of our favorite solutions are listed below:

 

• Cardboard Camera App: This free app for Android allows users to quickly capture stereo 360 images.
  
• Ricoh Theta: A very popular, relatively inexpensive solution for capturing mono 360 images and videos.
  

Edited March 31, 2016 by Arthur

[dhicks]

I think I'm going to wait until something that does in-camera stiching becomes available

 

As it turns out, I wound up buying a Kodak SP360 4K - currently stocked, it would seem, by Jessops, but not Amazon. I bought the single camera, not the two-camera setup, so I have a device that can see around 235 degrees. It suits what I want to use it for, which is filming live events (comedy shows, school plays, etc) in a discreet fashion - with a wide field of view you can set up a camera on a monopod near the front of a stage and capture all the on-stage action for later editing without having to be standing there getting in the way with a camera.

 

The hardware compares well with my GoPro - the SP360 is small, action-camera sized, slightly smaller than the GoPro. I used it to film a friend's comedy show, running continuously for 3 hours or so (I had a 128GB micro SD card for storage raw - footage seems to be recorded with a bitrate of around 60kbps, so make sure your SD card can handle that). I ran it plugged in to an external USB battery, which seemed to work well - after three hours the battery on the external battery still had plenty of charge, and the battery in the camera itself still reckoned it was full, so with a full external battery your limitation is probably going to be the memory size (128GB gets your around 4 hours recording time). The camera does get quite warm, but not as warm as the GoPro, which got nearly too hot to touch when running off an external power supply for a couple of hours.

 

The software available from Kodak (well, JK imaging) for the camera is actually okay once you get the hang of the interface. You can trim clips to length and convert to YouTube-uploadable equirectangular format, and that's about it. The camera itself records in 4GB chunks, so you'll need to get something to stick MP4 files together. The software handles those combined files just fine, though, so it's not a huge issue.

[NotSoFast]

I got the Ricoh Theta S for school. It creates 360 photos and video really easily. My use cases are y6 transition, showing kids what some of the more expensive trips are like before they commit, and lesson observation. Still playing at the moment but one issue is that the video loses a lot of quality when uploaded to YouTube. For £250 though, I think it's well worth it. I'd be interested to hear what cheap devices people can recommend for popping in a cardboard.

[dhicks]

https://developers.google.com/cardboard/vrview#media_capture_and_hosting

 

Just for anyone else trying: the Kodak SP360 4k records 2880 x 2880 square aspect-ratio videos which need to be converted to an equirectangular projection for use with the Google's new plugin. For whatever reason, the video output from the Pixpro software for use with the SP360 doesn't seem to work with the Googlel plugin, although the video file itself plays okay if simply double-clicked in Windows explorer. It could well simply be my machine being rather old and slow, I haven't tried on any different machines yet. Re-encoding the .mp4 file to a new .mp4 file with the same resolution via Online Video Converter seemed to solve the problem, so maybe it's simply a codec issue of some kind.

 

Also, the GoPro-style connector on the bottom of the various mounts provided with the SP360 are the wrong way around for mounting to a GoPro base - they are three-pronged rather than two-pronged. I've crafted (okay, bodged) an adaptor using a couple of lolly sticks with holes drilled in them, which seems to be holding quite steadily so far. If you mount via the standard camera-style 1/4" thread hole you block access to the SD card slot and power input, which is a problem if you want to run off an external power supply.

 

I've got some test footage with the camera in "front" mode, then converted for use with the Google plugin, and it works well. Bear in mind that this time last year the best equivilent option (a GoPro black, with a backbone modified lens mount, plus a separate lens) was two or three times the price, the SP360 really is good value for money for what it does.