Vin Crosbie's Personal Blog

For his business blog, visit http://www.digitaldeliverance.com

Technology

Shooting Immersive Videos

Vin

Join my wife and I in a video experiment: I’ve lately begun creating ‘immersive videos.’ For example, this one from aboard a tourist cruise on the Bosporus. After being trained in still photography 50 years ago (i.e., 1973-1976 at the Rochester Institute of Technology, back then sometimes known as ‘Kodak’s Photo School’, I mostly switched to videography two years ago. Moreover, I’ve now begun experimenting with immersive videos, what some people call ‘360 video’ but (to describe it more accurately) shoot video 360-degrees in all directions. For example, if you’re viewing this 31-minute video, you’ll probably be able to experience what I mean by immersive. This technology was initially created for viewing in Virtual Reality googles. However, it can also be used with goggle the way this video demonstrates: My wife and I had some spare time during October while in Istanbul, so we boarded a tourist cruise boat on the Bosporus shortly before sunset (scroll the video ahead until its last quarter.) My first experience with this cutting-edge of video actually began nine years ago when while teaching postgraduate New Media Business I purchase a Samsung Gear 360 camera. Resembling a white tennis ball atop a tiny tripod, the Gear 360 camera could capture immersive still photos and immersive video. Unfortunately, its videos and still photos were only in HD resolution (1920×1080 pixels) and viewable only via Samsung’s special software. By contrast, this 4K-resolution (3840 x 2160) video was shot with a pole-mounted DJI Osmo 360 camera which is the size and shape of a cigarette pack. (If the quality of this video isn’t 4K when you view it, click the YouTube ‘gear’ icon and switch to a higher resolution version.) What I like about shooting immersive video is that had I missed something interesting that occurred behind, atop, or under me after I finished shooting the video, I can later edit the video as if I had intended to capture that occurrence. I also like immersive videos because these allow the viewer the ability to anything and everything that occurs around the camera. While in Istanbul, I also shot immersive videos while walking through that city’s famous bazaars. I also shot some inside mosques in Istanbul and later Cairo. I post some of those here in the coming weeks.

December 30, 2020

vcrosbie

They Aren’t Coming for Your Jobs Yet, but Just Want to Dance And an Autonomous Ship will Retrace the Mayflower’s Voyage Speaking of Oceanic Voyages… A traditional ‘King Neptune’ certificate from August, 1944, as my namesake uncle, then a private in the U.S. Marine 3rd Division, crossed the Equator for the first time (at a militarily “censored” latitude) aboard the Dutch freighter Bloemfonteim, on the way to an amphibious landing at the Battle of Guam. When in 1941 the Germany invaded the Netherlands and the Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indies, the ships of the Dutch Navy that escaped joined up with Australian, British, and U.S. navies. The Bloemfonteim became an Allied troopship. I’ve a similar Neptune certificate from 1942 when my father, then a U.S. Navy ensign, crossed the Equator for the first time, aboard the battle cruiser Santa Fe. The 20th Century in Manhattan (as well as the ‘Mad Men’ era) finally ends. No matter how important who think you are, no longer shall ye get ‘power lunches’ at the Four Seasons nor drinks at 21. And the perfect big-screen TV video for ‘Star Wars’ fans who want to feel cozy this winter. And back to robots: South Koreans, showing more acumen than American capitalists., purchase Boston Dynamics. Hyundai paid a reported billion dollars for it. Japan’s Toyota already is the world’s leader in the coming field of household robotics. Hyundai wants to be that for general-purpose worker robotics. Boston Dynamics is far more advanced at this than any other U.S. company.