First download the .xml file from here. In AVP, go to Edit, then settings, then edition.
Click on this folder.
Then from there go to Kolor-Presets-cameras- and you'll see all the other lens presets. Drop the .xml file into there. Now reopen AVP and it should show up as a lens preset, in the area that says "Stitch As"
First download the .xml file from here. In AVP, go to Edit, then settings, then edition.
Click on this folder.
Then from there go to Kolor-Presets-cameras- and you'll see all the other lens presets. Drop the .xml file into there. Now reopen AVP and it should show up as a preset.
The Kodak Pixpro sp360 4k (2 cameras back to back) is a fun 360 video rig. It's a great first rig, or if you already have a 6 or more camera rig, this can be a great second rig.
If you're familiar with the ricoh theta s, this is like a prosumer version of that. The quality is somewhere between gopro and theta.
First things first. This is not really made by Kodak, it's a company out of Hong Kong called J. K. Imaging who is legally using the name of Kodak. When I ordered the camera, it came earlier than expected and someone called me to make sure it was going to arrive early enough which I thought was cool.
The output of two cameras after stitching is easily 4096x2048 at 30fps.
The fov is 235 for one camera so there is plenty overlap between the cameras, and in a pinch you could just use one camera (if you still want spherical, you could just turn the camera around to film the ground when you are finished shooting and then photoshop the nadir).
Not a stellar low light camera, but still does well considering the small package. It maxes at 800 iso. The latitude is almost as good as Gopro hero 4 (just judged with my eye, not any real scientific test).
It can overheat, but so can GoPro's especially when recording at 4k. Haven't had any real great tests on this matter yet.
Software
Stitching- they come with a free stitching software that's OK for consumer, but not for pros. It can do a decent job of stitching, especially if you have nothing moving in the stitch point. There are some basic adjustments they call calibration. Most useful is probably distance which sort of allows you to move in and out. Max output from the software is not quite 4096x2048, which is strange because the footage is definitely over that resolution.
Still if you're just getting into 360, you can ease your way in without having to invest in Autopano Video Pro (yet).
If you use avp, one tip is to use the lens profile entaniya 220 to stitch.
Mobile apps - The apps for ios and Android are also almost good. It allows you to change white balance and exposure value, but the preview that you really need to see, where you can click and drag to look around, doesn't seem to really work. It sort of starts moving and doesn't stop, or stops and won't do anything, this is for ios or Android. I'm hopeful they will update this and it will work ok eventually.
My personal opinion though, and this is the same with a gopro rig, is to set the cameras how you want, based off of the preview of one (either from micro hdmi or the app) and then don't use the app or wifi remote, it drains power too fast and can cause overheating faster. With the two camera setup, if you push record at the same time you should be able to get it to be within 2 frames.
Accessories
The vr package comes with a bunch of goodies.
The mount is almost really good. I like the fact that each one gets screwed into a 1/4 inch fitting, but it covers the SD card, and access to micro hdmi and micro USB. I used a Dremel and cut a square in the bottom of the mount so I can quickly access this area (see photos).
After modification, I really like the way it works because all cords go down and the cards are accessible with tweezers, all with out having to take out the cameras. I also am able to mount external power ( I believe it had to be able to provide 5 amps, so if you are interested in what I am using, let me know).
I highly recommend this way because if you have to rely on to changing their batteries, you must take out both cameras and easily take 5 minutes to change 2 batteries that probably only have about a 2 hour use. The bottom is a gopro fitting and I recommend throwing away the selfie stick that comes with the package and instead, modify a gopro tripod mount (so that it only has two plastic interlocking pieces as well as remove the screw).
See pictures for example. It sucks that you have to modify it this way, but I've done crazier things to make a 360 rig work right so it is what it is. Perhaps I'll send this review to them and others will help sway them to make a better setup.
There is a remote, but I haven't used it and probably never will, so if your interested in that you may have to search somewhere else. Again mainly because it drains battery and can cause overheating faster.
There's a suction cup I wouldn't trust and there are other accessories, which you can find on their website.
I've got a video on how to stitch Kodak with AVP on my YouTube channel, to watch it, click the link https://youtu.be/MGxtMsmu2Pk
Feel free to ask any questions you may have, and I'll try to answer if I can.
Today, I want to go over how to concatenate your videos. I am using a PC with windows 8.1, but FFMPEG also works with Linux and Mac. Only the last step is unique to windows.
To me, this really isn't as complicated as it sounds, but there are a lot of steps so this may not be for the faint of heart.
Also, from what I understand if you install FFMPEG the wrong way, it could lead to your computer to not load properly. The author of this article is not liable for anything that happens if you go this route.
Enough of the disclaimers! For the advanced user, it's an invaluable tool to have in your collection.
I want to thank and acknowledge Jim Watters, I stumbled upon his method in a Video-Stitch forum after searching for a better way to concatenate (I was using a paid program that could only do one at a time).
There are several ways to concatenate videos, but most of them only allow you to concatenate one video sequence at a time. The FFMPEG way, allows you to concatenate as many video sequences as you want, all at the same time. Plus it's FREE, so we highly recommend it!
In this video, I explain concatenating and show you my prefered method.
To install the software and batch files needed, continue reading the blog.
Concatenation is a process where you join multiple videos without re-compressing (which degrades the quality). For 360 video this is especially important if you are filming with cameras like GoPro's, that have a 4 Gb limit due to FAT-32 file allocation.What happens if you go over that 4Gb limit is that your GoPro makes a new file. So if you have a situation where you need to film continuously for several hours, instead of ending up with 6 really long files, you'll end up with something like 24 different files, broken up into 4GB each, with the last one being a little smaller.
Before we get into it, Kolor just released Autopano Video Pro 2.3.0 beta, which has an importer that concatenates the files while importing. I will test this feature soon and let you know how it works, but even if it works like a charm, there are still many instances where being able to concatenate is a great tool. One example is if you have footage already shot that you need to concatenate, another is if you don't have AVP loaded on your computer when you first dump your footage and a third is, you can make a video, then add intro and credits without having to re-compress your video. In short, it's a great tool.
The first step is to download and install FFMPEG. This isn't as straightforward as it sounds, but there's a great article that gives step by step instructions here.
The only thing you need to do differently is to instead of putting the FFMPEG folder directly on you C drive, put them in C:\Program Files.
So if you were to dig into the directory it should look like this:
C:\Program Files\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe
Once you've followed all of those steps, you can use the command line tool to do all sorts of compression and concatenating. To find out more about FFMPEG, go to their website. If you're not a coder, like the author of this blog, then the next step is especially helpful for you, but coders follow along too.
Jim Watters made a batch file that works really well, to use it follow these steps.
Then paste this file in your Send To folder. If you don't know how to get there, paste this into file explorer: %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo
After you've done this last step, you can literally select the videos you want to concatenate, right click, send to, concat videos
FFMPEG will ask you to specify a name and your videos will automagically start concatenating, and you can do this with as many videos as your computer will handle.
To change the location of where your files go, find the ConCatMovies.bat file, right click, edit and where it says
"set "IMAGETEMP=c:\temp\"
just change c:/temp/ to wherever you want the files to go. I usually create a Concat folder on an external drive and change the destination, so it will look something like:
"set "IMAGETEMP=h:\concat\".
Also a good thing to note is when you are selecting the clips to concatenate, make sure select from last clip to first clip, for example with four clips named 1,2,3,4 that you want to join, you would select 4, then 3, then 2, then 1, or shift select 4 then go to 1.
The reason for this is what ever the last clip you select is, this will be the first clip. So if you were to select 1,2,3,4 instead, it would join them as 4,1,2,3 because 4 was the last thing you selected.
Always check the order in ffpeg before you start the process.
Look at the end of the file names, Ep1 should be first, but the order is incorrect.
If selected in order from 1,2,3, ffmpeg will put 3 first, then 1,2...
So always select backwards, 3,2,1 etc.
Thanks again to Jim Watters for this great way to concatenate.
I hope this article is helpful for you and if you get stuck anywhere, comment below and I'll try to guide you in the right direction.
