Spherical video with the Phantom 3 4K

[nagel616]

Ok, I saw the mounts for the Solo and the Kodak SP360 4k cameras, and bought the Solo. But hated the Solo, had many issues, so I returned it, and got the Phantom 3 4K. But, as you know, no mounts for spherical video.

Well, I mounted a pair of Kodak SP360 4k cameras to my Phantom.. And for a quick test / early evening, and a quick low res render, the results aren't so bad!

Just need to spend some time in post, make the propeller ghosts disappear, and I will be happy!

If people are interested, I will post pics of my mounting setup..

 

[jeganx]

Ok, I saw the mounts for the Solo and the Kodak SP360 4k cameras, and bought the Solo. But hated the Solo, had many issues, so I returned it, and got the Phantom 3 4K. But, as you know, no mounts for spherical video.

Well, I mounted a pair of Kodak SP360 4k cameras to my Phantom.. And for a quick test / early evening, and a quick low res render, the results aren't so bad!

Just need to spend some time in post, make the propeller ghosts disappear, and I will be happy!

If people are interested, I will post pics of my mounting setup..

Can the output become a watchable vr 360 video? How do you make the legs disappear?

 

[nagel616]

Watchable in realtime, as in linked? I'm not that technical, I can only see the gimbal's cam that came stock while in flight.. I wish I could send the Kodak camera signals back and have them auto stitch together so you could view in real time 360 in a FPV headset, but that's way above my head.

So... both of the Kodaks are recording as well, and after I download their footage after the flight, I use Autopano Video Pro 2.5 to do the stitching and spherical adaptation. On a PC you obviously view with the whole click and drag bit, but if you view the footage on a smartphone in the youtube app, and toss the phone in a goggle setup (I have a Galaxy S5 with Zeiss VR1 headset) its VR 360. Turn your head to look where you want. Which means I gotta stop spinning the drone in flight or it spins your view in 360 LOL.

Making the legs disappear is easy, its more to do with the mounting of the cameras. One is mounted to the top of the drone on a GoPro helmet mount, the other is screwed to a gimbal guard beneath the legs (forcing you to hand launch and land). The top camera catches a bit of the propellers and I saw ghosting in my first, albeit quick, rendering. I took a bit more time last night, added a ton of control points and used masking a bit (the overlap between cameras is ALOT) and rendered this video this morning.. (its the same stock footage as my earlier video, just more control points and propellers eliminated)

I'm finally off today, so I will take some pics of th setup and post them this afternoon, as well as hopefully a better sample video with mid-day lighting.. LOL, its all a big learning curve for me, both drones AND 360° video.. I'm also rendering it in 4k mode now (only 1080 on the last 2 vids),so we'll see how much clarity that brings to youtube (if its not too big a file).

 

[Soween]

Hi Nagel616,

I REALLY love the idea of having Drone + 360!!! and what you did is really nice.

Some questions:
- would you be ok to share how you did it?
- with photos on top of it, would be perfect ;-)
- I watched some videos (there are not a lot) with 360 videos, and I find that the quality is not super good (compared to a straight P4 or similar), is the stiching the issue in this case?

Thank you again for being on the edge!!