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  1. Hello everyone,

    I'm new to these forums and am hoping you all may be able to help with an issue I am having.

    I have a few 360 degree videos I would like to convert to normal format. I believe they are 360 degree cubemap videos with six cubes, but I am not totally certain. I have included two screenshots from one of the videos at the bottom of this post. I have tried to find information about how to do this, and keep finding information about 360 degree formats that don't quite seem to match the videos I have. Do any of you recognize the type of 360 degree video shown, and know how to convert it to a normal flat format? I would be comfortable using tools on either Windows or Linux. (Linux is preferred, but I'll take what I can get)

    Image
    [Attachment 47786 - Click to enlarge]

    Image
    [Attachment 47787 - Click to enlarge]
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  2. Member
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    Search Comp PM
    Ever tried a search engine???

    https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=video+convert+360+degree+panoramic+to+norma...nguage=english

    Don't know what sort of Windows tools are available for this but as another Linux user I'd be completely FLABBERGASTED if such a thing existed for that.
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  3. Originally Posted by Hoser Rob View Post
    Ever tried a search engine???
    Oddly enough, I did try a search engine, as noted in my original post. I stated that I have already tried searching for information on how to do this, and all I have been able to find is information on how to do it with formats that don't match what these videos are using. I have also tried various free video editing programs that are supposed to support 360 degree videos, such as DaVinci Resolve and V.360° Video Converter. Again, these do not seem to support the 360 degree format of the source videos I have.

    I am also completely new to 360 degree video, so maybe you can cut me some slack instead of being a troll, eh? I am looking for a tool that will support this format, or at least actually knowing the specific name of the format of my source videos would be a huge help. If anyone can provide actual assistance in this, I would be very appreciative.
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  4. Member
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    Search Comp PM
    Try mediainfo, open your file, put it in text view - the details should be there
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  5. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    The best/most compatible place to start your search for methods & apps for working with your 360 cam’s material is that camera manufacturer’s website.

    What’s the model?

    Remember also that video is ultimately a series of timed pictures, so even if you can’t find the proper app to work with your video, you might have a better chance using tools that work with them as pictures.

    Then there is gimp and/or avi synth, ffmpeg, etc where you can batch script a conversion. If you can describe the layout, you can certainly work with it.

    Scott
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  6. Originally Posted by davexnet View Post
    Try mediainfo, open your file, put it in text view - the details should be there
    Thank you for the reply, but that will only tell me the file format for the video and audio streams, which I know. I was more looking for the specific name of the 360 degree layout for these videos. I know they are monoscopic and equirectangular, possibly cubemap. But again, I am pretty new to 360 degree video, so I'm not really sure what the exact wording would be for these videos.


    Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
    What’s the model?
    I did not make these videos, rather, they were downloaded from YouTube. However, I know some of them were originally made with a MADV Madventure 360 Camera while others were made with a Xiaomi Mi Sphere Camera. I will try searching for more info about these cameras to see if I can figure out the specific 360 degree format/layout they use.

    I do use ffmpeg for other conversions and re-encoding, but I have no idea how to write a custom script to have it convert 360 degree video to normal video. I'll see what I can find on this as well.

    Thank you for the suggestions.
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  7. Originally Posted by Musouka View Post
    I have a few 360 degree videos I would like to convert to normal format. I believe they are 360 degree cubemap videos with six cubes, but I am not totally certain. I have included two screenshots from one of the videos at the bottom of this post. I have tried to find information about how to do this, and keep finding information about 360 degree formats that don't quite seem to match the videos I have. Do any of you recognize the type of 360 degree video shown, and know how to convert it to a normal flat format? I would be comfortable using tools on either Windows or Linux. (Linux is preferred, but I'll take what I can get)
    What did you mean by "normal flat" format ? A 360 video only has limited FOV that you can use for a rectilinear or "normal flat" view . At any one time, you can only view a small part or reproject a small part of it.



    This looks like a cubic 3x2 , but it's not the standard orientation

    This looks like left, front, right, down, back, up , but the d,b,u faces look rotated

    Various programs have algorithms for Facebook 3:2 (r,l,u,d,f,b) , Pano2VR 3:2 (l,f,r,b,u,d), Blender 3:2 (l,b,r,d,u,f) , but this is not a common orientation



    If you crop the black borders, it's 3840x1920 2:1 AR , which is 6 * 1280x960 tiles

    You could extract the faces, correct the orientation , then input them into some stitcher to get various standard projections.

    This is what I needed to extract and rotate the faces correctly

    cube faces
    Code:
    c=ImageSource("Screenshot_2019-01-10_04-11-39.png").crop(0,120,0,-120,true) 
    left = c.crop(0,0,-2560,-960,true)
    front = c.crop(1280,0,-1280,-960,true)
    right = c.crop(2560,0,0,-960,true)
    down = c.crop(0,960,-2560,0,true).turnright().spline36resize(1280,960)
    back = c.crop(1280,960,-1280,0,true).turnleft().spline36resize(1280,960)
    up = c.crop(2560,960,0,0,true).turnright().spline36resize(1280,960)
    Once you have the cube faces, you can reproject into a standard equirectangular projection . I used a commercial tool here, but there are open source alternatives like hugin / panotools
    https://github.com/Xyene/cube2sphere
    https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Panotools-Script/bin/cubic2erect


    You can view the result in standard 360 viewers like gopro vr player, even "normal" video players like potplayer have this ability (video=>play 360 degree video=>always play)

    Once you have it in the "standard" equirectangular projection, there are many tools that can handle it. The reason I would do it this way, is so you can "choose" which area to view or transform into a "normal" or rectilinear projection . For example, in bigsh0t in shotcut (see below)


    Image
    [Attachment 47797 - Click to enlarge]






    Originally Posted by Hoser Rob View Post

    Don't know what sort of Windows tools are available for this but as another Linux user I'd be completely FLABBERGASTED if such a thing existed for that.

    Windows has many commercial alternatives, but there are various opensource/cross platform command line tools that can reproject various projections, and hugin/panotools is cross platform

    A useful one for video is shotcut with the bigsh0t frei0r plugin to map equirectangular to rectilinear(flat) It's GUI based and you can change the settings of the 360 view right on the timeline

    https://monochrome.sutic.nu/2018/09/17/bigsh0t.html
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  8. Sorry for the extremely late reply to this. Life events got in the way for a while, and I didn't have any extra time to work on this until now.

    Originally Posted by poisondeathray View Post
    What did you mean by "normal flat" format ? A 360 video only has limited FOV that you can use for a rectilinear or "normal flat" view . At any one time, you can only view a small part or reproject a small part of it.
    That is pretty much exactly what I meant, I want to reproject a part of the video into a non-360 degree video centered on the person in the video.

    Originally Posted by poisondeathray View Post
    You could extract the faces, correct the orientation , then input them into some stitcher to get various standard projections.
    After the advice you gave on this, I spent some time figuring out how to do this with ffmpeg. I am now able to isolate and modify each cube/tile individually. I also installed Shotcut with the Bigsh0t plugins you suggested. However, I still don't know how to use these to go from my input video to the "standard format" you mentioned and showed in your example image. There are a few things I still need to know in order to put these to use:

    1. Exactly where does each cube need to be? You mentioned my source appears to be left, front, right, down, back, up. You also offered three examples of orientations used by different programs. So, if I'm going to be using Shotcut with the Bigsh0t plugins, which orientation do I need to use, and how does each cube need to be rotated?

    For example, should I be using an orientation of left(no rotation), front(no rotation), right(no rotation), back(rotate 90 degrees), up(rotate -90 degrees), down(rotate 90 degrees)?

    2. Once I have moved/resized the cubes so the video is in the proper orientation to use in Shotcut, I assume I will need to use the Transform 360 filter to convert it to a standard hemispherical 360 degree video before I can move on to the reprojection step. If this is the case, what settings do I need to use with the Transform 360 filter (yaw, pitch, roll)?

    3. Once I have a standard hemispherical 360 degree video, what program can I use to reproject a portion of the video, following an object/person, to end up with a normal looking, non-360 degree video?

    From your post it sounds like Shotcut might be able to do both steps 2 and 3. If this is the case, please go into more detail about how I can do that.

    Again, thank you for all the great help/advice as I am trying to learn more about these tools and 360 degree video editing.
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