Did you know that most 360 videos need to be “stitched”?
The consume of 360º videos and virtual reality experiences has increased dramatically in the last 2 years. Hundreds of new viewers are engaged daily, but only a few of them wonder what’s behind this incredible technology.
Maximum FOV (Field of View) of current lenses is around 180º horizontally*, while the human eye covers only 114º.
Thus, evidently this makes impossible to take 360º pictures with only one lens. So as a minimum we require two of them, and then bring them together in a proper way.
This process is known as “stitching”. As my grandma stitches my winter jumper, VR professionals stitch videos. And it is almost as difficult as stitching jumpers!
Stitching turns the individual videos into a single seemless panoramic video. The resulting video typically covers 360×180° FOV in a “world map” style of geometric projection. Stitching can be done automatically by specific software, but best results are obtained when edited “manually” by a professional to not miss any detail.
There are recently launched services that make the stitching process more smoothly: VideoStitch and Kolor are the most well-known software.
Besides being properly stitched, our videos need to be also perfectly synchronized. A gap of a few milliseconds between both videos would led on a total mesh for the viewer.
All in all, post processing a 360º video is not an easy task, but with knowledge or powerful programs we can achieve good results!
To get a taste of how stitching takes place in action, pay attention to the following video! The good stuff begins at 2:08.
*We are not considering omnidirectional cameras due to lack of commercialization.
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