how to make a 360 video stereo for oculus

Check out http://www.gopano.com/ and http://punkoryan.com/2011/02/08/shooting-360-degree-video-with-four-gopro-hd-hero-cameras

I hope that helps.

Thanks for reply.
I must use gopro so i cannot use gopano (btw it would be really expensive). This process seems taking a long time is there any other way of shooting? i don't need an huge resolution honestly!

can i use just 2 gopro? each gopro has 170 degree of field of view, so with 2 cameras i should obtain a 340 degree video?

The way I see it, the problem comes with making it stereo (edit: at least 3D stereo, 2D is easy), since the viewpoints needs to be translated to the viewer's "eyes".

One way I can think to do this is to use something like http://www.panono.com/ballcamera (only the cameras record video, not photos), equip each camera on the ball with a fish-eye lens to match the Rift FOV. One then places the viewers eyes onto the ball so that the eyes look in the right direction, and snap the eyes to the nearest camera.

This snapping will probably be too coarse to properly provide natural viewing however. This might be solvable be analyzing nearby camera footage to obtain a depth map for each camera, and then performing a translational timewarp from the nearest camera. This would leave some occlusion holes, however. These could be mostly filled in by combining translational timewarp images from several nearby cameras, and then the remaining holes by some kind of texture synthesis.

This would probably be very resource intensive, and might not be feasible (though the depth map could be stored, as well as additional interpolated cameras, which would make it faster).

Hi Jonathan. I think I'd keep it to 2D -- he/she's working with a student's budget, and the sense of immersion you get from a wide-field monoscopic display is quite good for scenics like countryside and buildings. That said... it requires some trade-offs in directing... You want to avoid things in close foreground -- but if I understand what Nuanda's saying, that's not what he/she is going for.

A GoPro HD can shoot 170°h, so a 2-camera setup is probably fine for seated viewers. Yes... they'll be a 40 or 50° gap immediately behind the viewers head, but with the Rift's 100°h viewing angle and normal head swiveling, I don't see that being a huge problem.

I assumed (perhaps falsely, clarification OP?) that the stereo in the title referred to 3D, since 2D only requires duplication of the rendered image. I'll admit that my solution does seem a bit over-engineered just to add 3D.

There's nothing wrong with your suggestion Jonathan... I was just trying to save the poster a few euros, and a lot of editing in FinalCut. If stereo is absolutely required, your solution is the way to go.

Head over the Stereoscopic 3D subforum, it's dedicated to the topic.

This would be more complicated, but instead of a full 360 stereoscopic there's a workable solution for stereo GoPro cameras.

1. Attach device that tracks orientation of the camera
2. Record video
3. Player back video on a vr video program (VR Player, Whirligig, Janus VR) with would be a 120 degree dome.
4. Use the orientation data from when the video was recorded to shift the projection dome's position.
5. With that, assuming you sync'd the orientation data to the video, you have a stabilized 3D image that tracks 360 degrees.

For an example of how this might work (no real example exists yet), what this video on a spherical projection screen:


Note: If you have Janus VR, you can see this example here as well (copy/paste into Janus URL bar) - http://vrsites.com/assets/nukemarine_01/2/sphere_screen_360_stabilized_3D.txt

hi guys, sorry for my delay; thank you for your replies, but probably i don't explain myself really well.

I'm a novice, and i would know how to create a 360 degree video with gopro cameras, something like this for example

http://photocreations.ca/3D/index.html


I would like to set my gopro like this http://provideocoalition.com/pvcexclusive/story/stereo_3d_with_the_gopro_hero2,
start recording and walk into the place that i would film.

So, i would like to know, at the end of the recording, what should i do to see my video on my oculus with (f.e.) vrplayer? Wich parameters should i set ?

thank you again for yoour time

I just made a long post but was not logged in so it looks like it disappeared....Trying again.

I got your PM and was going to make a screen cast of the process from video footage to 3D panoramic video but the footage that I was going to use was not shot by me and I ran into too many problems...

The minimum number of GoPro cameras needed to cover the entire sphere is 6. They need to be arranged into a cube format with every other side rotated 90°. To get stereoscopic 3D you need twice this number.

But the best arrangement for S3D is to have the cameras all in portrait in a circle covering the horizon. 6 pairs are required to do this in S3D. Another camera can be used to fill in the hole in the zenith and another in the nadir. The S3D effect no longer works well in this area because l&R would swap if you rotated around, so better to have none instead.

I use VideoStitch to process the footage PTGui to create a template by aligning frames.

Ideally when shooting panoramas you want to rotate the camera and lens about the No-Parallax-Point so the images align perfectly. But with a multicamera rig this is not possible. IT is not possible to perfectly align the seams. Although it is pretty easy to force images together to make a pano and hide the errors it becomes extremely hard when it is video with lots of movement.

The distance from the L cameras to the next L camera to make up a pano is greater than the distance between L & R cameras. The error that is being tried to conceal is more than the difference that is used to show stereo. With practice it can be done reasonably. My Mobius rig tries to overcome this problem by using smaller cameras that are arranged in overlapping pairs. photocreations.ca/3D/mobius_camera_rig.html

The big difference between stitching 360° panoramic video and 360° S3D panoramic video is having twice the amount of video to work with. Needing to align the left and right footages.

My process is to load all into VideoStitch then into PTGui to create template.
Find control points between all images.
Set the control points between L & R as horizontal except for one or two at the horizon in each pair to lock them in place.

Once everything is aligned and set correctly open the VideoStitch project in a text editor and delete every other image and save as left then reopen original delete the others and save as right.

Open the right and shift the yaw so instead of the horizon aligning the foreground is aligned.

Process the two projects in VideoStitch.

Combine the two videos using FFMpeg into an over/under arrangement.

Open in VRPlayer as Sphere Over/ Under.

I still plan on creating a screen cast of my method but will be a few days.

Jim