Circle Optics is launching their new 360 camera, Hydra II, which is due out this year and promises to require no post-stitching and have zero parallax distortion. It will be rental-only, a week at a time, from August 2023. However, there are already ‘live’ stitching 2D camera rigs out there and parallax isn’t a huge problem in 2D 360. Let’s take a closer look! Circle Optics are looking beyond the VR professional market, more specifically at those who might be working in 3D 360 and are already used to the sometimes laborious stitching process. They want to place their new camera, the Hydra II, with a 2D market that isn’t used to working with 3D and challenge them to start making content for a VR world that’s currently in the doldrums. The challenges of shooting 360 Shooting 360 VR 3D is already difficult enough but is usually followed by a painstaking post process, stitching overlapping camera footage together, cleaning up the stitch, and painting out any crew in the shot as well as any camera accessories like tripods and support equipment. You then edit, grade and encode a final version. That’s after collating the media from the multiple cameras you use, perhaps do a rough stitch to consider what needs to be included and how much storage you have for the stereoscopic 8K timelines you probably have. A fine stitch would then adjust even more and can be more of a hand stitching of the frames, almost like a composite...
Published By: CineD - Wednesday, 15 February, 2023