By contributing editor Chuck Fadely in New York:
PhotoPlus Expo 2013: Freedom360 rig uses six GoPros for spherical video from Chuck Fadely on Vimeo.
GoPros have become ubiquitous but now it’s come to this: Six GoPros in a Freedom360 bracket for 360-degree spherical video. Joergen Geerds from Freedom360.us invented this thing and I saw him wandering around PhotoPlus Expo in New York. His little magical walking stick with the clump of GoPros at the top stopped me in my tracks.
You have to stitch six streams of video into one and then edit on a powerful system. But new software has reduced the rendering down to reasonable times, he says. The bracket is affordable but by the time you get six GoPro 3’s, the stitching software, and a kick-ass editing system, you’re into some serious money.
To display the 360-degree video on the web, you need to be able to host Flash files – you can’t post it to YouTube.
But what really blows my mind is what is being done with these things. A long-time panoramic and VR photographer in Brazil named Ayrton is taking 360-degree video in the middle of riots. Check out his site and be prepared to get lost for hours in his videos and VR photos. (Warning: it’s in Portuguese and the home page has music on auto-play.)
