

A few possible approaches will be discussed more broadly at the end of this chapter, using the Foundry’s Nuke as well as Adobe’s After Effects as an example. The methods for creating a stitch by hand can vary immensely though, depending on software, artist skill and the cameras used. But if your needs are met, it may very well be worth the loss of fine-grained control.įor times when the loss of control and colour information is unacceptable, some may want or need the flexibility to control the merging of footage. Distribution ready here meaning web-compressed, with very few offering a way of working with higher bit-depth or dynamic range source material. Many of the applications are however intended to be one-stop-shops, meaning that they take footage in and deliver a final, distribution ready video at the other end. The workflows shown below try to leave some flexibility in the workflow by using the templates as a base while still allowing intervention down the track. As the features are matched based on their distance to the camera (the parallax problem again) if the template was created from an inaccurate set of features, the resulting seam lines may be less than perfect. This unfortunately means that they do not take into account the fact that the scene might change as actors or the camera-rig moves around.
PTGUI 360 VIDEO STITCHING SOFTWARE
At present, most stitching software works by analyzing a specific frame, creating a template and combining all the frames of the shot using that template. Many more software packages exist and a list is included at the end of the chapter.Īutomated stitching is a massive timesaver, not to mention simplifying the process considerably. PtGui and Hugin were not created for video, but both can be set to run as a batch process on a number of frames. Stitching is a three part process that involves the removal of any distortion on the images introduced by the lens, matching common features in the footage between the cameras, and aligning the frames into a lat-long.Īll three of these steps can be automated to a large extent with varying levels of success using special software like PtGui, AutoPanoVideo and Hugin.

Once synchronized, it’s time to start stitching. If the cameras started more than a few seconds apart, it might be advantageous to create a trimmed take as well, as large gaps can lead to false positive synchronisation. Most of the software packages will allow you to do the synchronization as part of the stitch, but if this is not the case it might be better to use a more sophisticated editing program like After Effects to align and export a new sequence beforehand.
PTGUI 360 VIDEO STITCHING FREE
Although this might seem like a daunting task there are a number of tools already available, with more advanced and free versions becoming available every few months.īefore stitching begins though, it is important to synchronise your footage, using any of the methods in the previous chapter. Stitching in VR quite literally refers to taking all the footage from all the cameras in the rig, and arranging them into a single image.
