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What exactly is 360° for 16:9?
That's it! Lightweight 360° cameras, for the general public, are coming with enough quality to provide images to the small screen. Doesn't that speak to you? You wonder what the 360° image can bring to a 2D flat format? Yet, we, at the MediaLab, have been waiting for this since the beginning.
Let us guide you a little bit in this surprising spherical world:
When you film a 360° image, the camera is in the center and it films everything... absolutely everything. From right to left, from top to bottom, the foot that carries it, you, if you are around... Impossible to escape this enveloping format.
So imagine what you can do if you go and look for a part of the image in 16/9. If you then cut out the part that interests you, always in 16/9 format. If you add movements to it that you couldn't do with your usual capture tools.
In this video, we propose you some experiences of France Télévisions' image reporters:
New viewpoints in video
New transparency of narration: show field and counter-field at the same time
The 360° format offers the cameraman unprecedented opportunities. He can imagine movements impossible to make with his hands, his shoulder. He can be even more present where he usually poses a sports camera with a single axis. He can do more and differently than with a gimbal (image stabilizer). In short, the 360° format is full of new features to test for the cameraman and therefore even more enrichment for the reports he makes.
We can even propose a form of transparency of information by using both sides of the image simultaneously: For example, you are in a demonstration, the demonstrators in front and the police officers behind. You can show what is happening simultaneously, field and counter-field! You cut out the "demonstrators" part, then you cut out the "policemen" part. You put them together in parallel and you have the proof by the image of what is happening in front and behind at that precise moment.
"Haute-couture" in post-production
Let's put it into perspective, though: the post-production time is not yet fast enough to process long rushes in the same timeframe as images from a shoulder camera for newsreels. It takes time to re-sew the two images that make up the camera. And the cropping time to switch from 360° to 16:9 format.
But if you shoot short, 30 to 45 seconds per rush, nothing is impossible.
The cropping is done by the editing software, a dedicated software or, possibly, via a smartphone application. Attention the application for smartphone allows more speed but the quality is not the same. And for subjects that you edit at least the next day, everything becomes possible. This opens a lot of perceptive to the cameramen, editors, and the whole editorial staff, right?
The two problems being the disappearance of the seam between the images of the two cameras forming the sphere and the time it takes for a computer to stitch these two images together. These points are evolving rapidly. No doubt it will soon be nothing more than a bad memory!
Two years ago we were doing an experiment with 6 cameras forming a 360° image. It was then the solution if we wanted an initial quality that could provide a 16/9 image that could be diffused afterwards. It took several days to re-form the sphere using the 6 images before cutting the image in 16/9. This did not correspond at all to the requirements of a television news.
Today it is much simpler. And everyone can take advantage of this format.
Watch Hervé Pozzo's subject on Tout le Sport on France 3. He mixes 360° and 5D images to provide the report with all the possible image potential:
Tout le Sport : the motorcycle in 360°
A story by Hervé Pozzo broadcasted in Tout le sport on France 3
16/9 and/or 360°, web and/or TV, you now have all possibilities
To go further, a newsroom can now easily turn 360° subjects and adapt them in 16/9 in parallel. The choice to broadcast on the web or on TV, in 360° and/or in 16/9 and not in 360° etc... is entirely up to you. You are master on board. You can even test the square format?
Finally, this image naturally makes the bridge between TV and web: If you put a 360° camera on a person hang-gliding, you can use cropping for your 16/9 subjects and put the immersive video of the flight, as is, on your site. That's the bonus that goes well !
So if you feel like trying it, welcome to the world of 360° format. We will lead you on the way to make the discovery easy!
Do not hesitate !
Still frames
An overview of the perspectives offered by the 360° in the service of the 16/9. To follow the camera movements, see the video at the top of the article.
* The hardware used by the MediaLab for the 360° shooting and cropping is: a GoPro Fusion, the Adobe Première Pro software with the plug in GoPro.
