[HN Gopher] Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video...
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Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video for Vision Pro
Author : tosh
Score : 265 points
Date : 2024-12-17 14:18 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macrumors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macrumors.com)
| freedomben wrote:
| Cool! Though I sincerely hope it's not using some Apple
| proprietary format that won't work with non-Apple devices.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Given Blackmagic is a brand well-known for using their own
| proprietary format, for actually selling cameras boasting
| CinemaDNG support that they after the fact quietly disable in
| favour of BRAW, they are hardly a good choice for someone who
| cares about interoperability and open standards.
| tecleandor wrote:
| What I see from the PR [0] is that it's using a new BRAW
| version ('The new Blackmagic RAW Immersive file format...)'.
| So it's as open as BRAW, that is, not much. But at least (I
| guess/hope...) you should be able to export each "eye"
| separately in a different format.
|
| Converting to the "Apple Vision Pro" format is the last step
| on the pipeline, after editing. 0:
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20241217-01
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Wasn't that due to RED patents?
| strogonoff wrote:
| CinemaDNG is an open standard. I am using a camera with
| CinemaDNG support. It came out around the time BM did the
| bait-and-switch. Another model came out a couple years
| later, also with CinemaDNG support. It shows that BM is
| using RED as an excuse to lock people in.
| vanchor3 wrote:
| RED has a patent on compressed RAW. Apple tried to
| invalidate it but failed, so anyone who wants to use the
| concept of compressed RAW has to license it from RED.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Raw is not an acronym.
|
| CinemaDNG is not a compressed format. It is a directory
| with DNG files. DNG is an open raw photo format. Both DNG
| and CinemaDNG predate REDCODE.
|
| My camera records 4K 12-bit CinemaDNG with no compression
| and is in the same price segment.
|
| If BM, given options they had (which also include things
| like "pay RED" or "recall products"), chose to silently
| remove the support for CinemaDNG in cameras that they
| sold advertising CinemaDNG support, I doubt blaming RED
| is anything but a PR tactic.
| tom1337 wrote:
| Unfortunately the Immersive Video seems to be a proprietary
| format. Also if I understood correctly you can't even edit this
| format right now cause DaVinci Resolve is missing an update for
| that...
|
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/media/release/20241217-0...
| diggan wrote:
| I've seen people edit 180 videos in Resolve for quite some
| time. I don't find any details on the various formats it can
| output, but surely at least one of them will be editable if
| you have the camera today.
|
| The article you linked mentions it uses BRAW which is indeed
| supported in Resolve today already.
| gardaani wrote:
| Which open format can handle this kind of video? The Cineform
| video codec can store stereo video, but I don't know if it
| would be suitable for this.
| fastball wrote:
| Does that matter? If it is a lossless format, you can always
| convert it to another one after capture.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Is anyone making movies specifically for the Vision Pro? Apple
| could certainly afford to sponsor a few films to bolster their
| catalogue. Although for a creative the tiny potential audience
| makes it seem very unappealing.
|
| Then again... Maybe if AVP owners represent an audience that
| you'd like to target it wouldn't be a bad decision. Everyone that
| owns one will probably be starved for special content and I'd
| imagine they'd be willing to buy something specifically made for
| their niche platform.
| tom1337 wrote:
| I'd argue that (similarly to 3D captured footage) you can just
| record both formats in the same time so you can still target
| the big audience. Wouldn't wonder if we're going to see few
| Apple TV exclusives which are in "normal" 4K and also offer
| Immersive View for Vision Pro owners.
| XzAeRosho wrote:
| I think the answer it's in the Blackmagic website:
|
| >the world's first advanced cinema camera designed to shoot for
| Apple Immersive Video
|
| I think they are tapping early into an emerging "new" video
| format.
| klabb3 wrote:
| 3D TV back at it again.
| tlyleung wrote:
| Apple has commissioned Submerged, the first scripted short film
| captured in Apple Immersive Video
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJcUtVIB_g
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple looks to be getting out of the feature movie business in
| general and focusing on TV where it is seeing a lot more
| success.
|
| But based on the Vision Pro demo I would expect to see them
| prioritise non-fiction content e.g. Planet Earth style movies,
| concerts, athlete profiles etc.
| oDot wrote:
| I research live-action anime[0] and this looks really cool,
| especially if there's fine-grained control over each sensor and
| especially if you can change the lenses (in a supported or
| unsupported manner).
|
| Anime has the advantage of being drawn frame-by-frame, thus able
| to "change" lenses, cameras, etc mid action-packed shots. Using
| this may allow for shooting two different setups at once,
| achieving a similar effect.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/@weedonandscott
| xattt wrote:
| Not only anime, but other types of animation as well. :)
| oDot wrote:
| Indeed, I was just staying in context :)
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| How many vision pros did they sell and how many people are still
| using them?
| martin_a wrote:
| I thought that product was discontinued completely?!? I think
| new models were said to take at least until early 2026, not
| sure I'd invest in this without proper playback devices on the
| market...
| tatrajim wrote:
| No, it's still rolling out globally, and has a growing group
| of owners, particularly using AVP for productivity
| applications after the recent system software update allowing
| ultrawide screen sharing of mac screens. See /r/visionpro on
| reddit for developer chatter and the latest developments.
| tatrajim wrote:
| Perhaps around 400K sold? Production to date is said to be
| limited by Sony. The AVP is very much alive, especially with
| the recent system software update allowing ultrawide viewing of
| mac screens. See the reddit group /r/visionpro for lively
| discussion of the latest developments.
| OliverGuy wrote:
| 8TB for 2hrs of footage is crazy even compared to other high end
| cinema camera, going to be an interesting work flow for anyone
| editing this as thats not a a trivial amount of data even by
| today's standards
| diggan wrote:
| > is crazy even compared to other high end cinema camera
|
| Is it really? I haven't touched "high end cinema cameras" but
| if my consumer camera can generate ~1TB/hour and it's a
| "normal" consumer camera, I'd easily expect 4x that in high end
| cinema gear for 3D video (multiple videos stitched into one
| essentially)
|
| But again, haven't used any of those or looked it up, so what
| do I know. It doesn't sound outlandish to me though.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> if my consumer camera can generate ~1TB /hour and it's a
| "normal" consumer camera_
|
| If your consumer camera generates 1TB/hour then you're
| generating data as fast as a Red Komodo [1] recording at 6K
| "VFX, Extreme Detail Scenes"
|
| Consumer quality? A high-end iphone can record 4K 60FPS video
| and an hour's footage takes up 24 gigabytes.
|
| And you're watching 4K 60fps video on Netflix? Youtube? Maybe
| 12 gigabytes an hour.
|
| [1] https://www.red.com/komodo
| diggan wrote:
| Fair, maybe "prosumer" is more fitting, was thinking of the
| Pocket Cinema 6K (also from Blackmagic). Not exactly "high
| end cinema camera" so I still think the data rate doesn't
| sound out of the world.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Raw 8K video at 60 fps out of something like a Nikon Z8 is
| around 1.5 TB/hour, 400-500 MB/s.
|
| Of course most people wouldn't shoot at 60 fps for
| historical reasons, and raw video codecs are intra-only so
| data rate scales linearly with fps. They're just relatively
| heavily lossily compressed raw images in a box, basically.
| wtallis wrote:
| > A high-end iphone can record 4K 60FPS video and an hour's
| footage takes up 24 gigabytes.
|
| According to https://support.apple.com/en-us/109041 4k60
| recording in ProRes needs 220 MB/s storage, so an hour
| would be ~792 GB. Sure, you _can_ choose to throw away most
| of that data with more lossy compression, but the barely-
| acceptable bitrates used by streaming services are not at
| all the right point of comparison here.
| perfmode wrote:
| Seems like Synology NAS with 10Gbit Ethernet is the way to go,
| based on the research I've done so far.
|
| Does anyone have better ideas?
| dijit wrote:
| Thunderbolt external raid is better, for a solo video editor.
|
| There are options from caldigit on the low end:
| https://www.caldigit.com/t4/
|
| or qnap on the mid end:
| https://www.qnap.com/en/product/tvs-h874t
| mycall wrote:
| OCuLink or CameraLink also come to mind.
| jkestner wrote:
| I've been curious on the real-world throughput of a
| directly attached Thunderbolt RAID vs a 10GB (single or
| bonded) Synology NAS. It's annoying to have to go to my
| desk to connect to the USB-C Drobo, and I have to jump ship
| sooner or later.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I have gone down this path myself for doing 8k editing.
| TB3 attached SSDs IO to my Mac at about 3GB/s. The ones
| on my server connected over 10GB fiber Ethernet actually
| only reach about 800MB/s and I suspect that that macOS
| networking stack is just not at all optimized for 10G.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| 10GBit networking is really only 1.25GBytes per second,
| so 800MBytes/s isn't saturating the link, but is 64% of
| the way there. TB3 has a theoretical throughput of
| 40GByte/s so 3GByte/s => 24GBit/s is 60%. Realistically
| both are lower to the theretical link performance than I
| would have guessed, so there may be some bottlenecks
| involved beyond just computational overhead, but it makes
| sense TB3 was going to win assuming the storage had the
| bandwidth.
| jkestner wrote:
| Yeah, was going to say, I'd take 800MB/s. I get a mere
| 180MB/s on this Drobo 5C (filled with 7200rpm HDDs) --
| theoretical max is 625MB/s.
| diggan wrote:
| Well, the bottleneck is probably getting that off the camera
| somehow, rather than how to get it elsewhere once off the
| camera.
| threeseed wrote:
| Synology wouldn't work well here.
|
| To prevent causing issues upstream you would want to write to
| a fast NVME SSD first before backing up to a HDD array.
| Unfortunately, it doesn't support this use case as the NAS is
| designed for movie streaming, offices, security cameras etc.
| sofixa wrote:
| 10Gbit would be the bare minimum, 8TB at 10Gbit would take
| 1h46mins. Assuming the disks aren't bottlenecked, which means
| SSDs.
| sroussey wrote:
| Yeah, you would want a Thunderbolt 5 external RAID device.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| That's some serious 2025 level disk tech. I want it.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> going to be an interesting work flow for anyone editing
| this_
|
| We've had techniques for editing videos on underpowered PCs
| since the 1990s. Possibly earlier.
|
| You use something called a "proxy workflow": For each 8K source
| video, generate a 480p "proxy" with the same frame timing but a
| much more manageable amount of data. You edit the entire film
| using the 480p videos. Then once you're happy you "render" the
| video - which swaps the high quality sources back in and
| produces an output file. The final render might take all
| weekend for an hour-long video - but you've only got to do it
| once.
| smitelli wrote:
| They did that with film too. The editors sliced up a copy of
| the developed film, called a "workprint," spliced it all back
| together, and produced a list of numerical edit points as
| they went along.
|
| Then a person called the negative cutter would go through the
| list, duplicate the editing decisions on a high-quality
| negative without the generational loss, and that would go on
| to become the final print.
|
| That's why sometimes you'll see a deleted scene from a movie
| whose picture quality looks quite poor. That was most likely
| taken from the workprint, and never went through negative
| cutting or any finishing.
| ethagknight wrote:
| Great input on the low quality deleted scene, never made
| sense to me!
| whycome wrote:
| same. I always wondered if the proper hq film for some of
| those scenes is stored away somewhere.
| paxys wrote:
| What filmmaker is going to put in all this effort and spend $30K
| to shoot videos for a single platform that no one uses? At the
| very least they need to ditch the proprietary format and support
| Quest and other headsets.
| echoangle wrote:
| Don't filmmakers rent cameras for a few days/weeks?
| mikae1 wrote:
| Yes.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Almost always.
| smitelli wrote:
| Yes, and in some cases you can casually chat up the people at
| the rental house and find out what other (potentially high
| profile) productions the equipment was used on.
| mycall wrote:
| Are you implying the Vison Pro ecosystem is dead and Apple will
| abandon it? Sometimes the supporting hardware takes time to
| manifest itself.
| jl6 wrote:
| At the current price point, the AVP is destined to achieve a
| market position similar to LaserDisc.
| jsheard wrote:
| It's obviously going to get cheaper, but rumor is the
| second generation will only get the price down to about
| $2000 which is still well above the "lol nope" threshold
| for most people. Third times the charm?
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/13/apple-might-
| release-a-2000...
| jl6 wrote:
| Hopefully, but I don't think it's obvious. We don't seem
| to be currently in an era of plummeting hardware prices.
| dmarcos wrote:
| "VR will become something everyone wants before it
| becomes something everyone can afford" Palmer Luckey
|
| People that bought Vision Pro at $3,500 they are not
| using it all that much. A lower price will just result in
| more headsets gathering dust.
|
| VR has no product-market fit except for a couple of game
| niches. Far from the "next computing platform" that
| justified investment of tens of billions of dollars a
| year.
|
| Headsets and platforms need fundamental rethinking before
| optimizing for price.
| parasubvert wrote:
| This is false.
|
| People that bought Vision Pro are often using it for
| multiple hours a day. I am sure some collect dust, but
| many are heavily used.
|
| The Meta Quest is outselling the Xbox series. VR clearly
| has product market fit, but it doesn't yet have iPhone or
| iPad levels of market fit.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| And maybe it just... won't. We shouldn't use that as the
| stick.
|
| Sometimes it's ok to make Lamborghini and it's not a
| failure to say it has less owners than the Corolla.
| dmarcos wrote:
| Making a niche product is fine but that's not the "next
| computing platform" that justifies $16B/year investment
| by Meta alone.
| dmarcos wrote:
| You have data to back up your claim that "Vision Pro
| owners are using it often multiple hours a day? That's a
| shrinking tiny fraction of AVP buyers based on my
| experience. I've been in the industry for a decade. I
| have an AVP, know many other owners and devs with
| published apps. I'm myself the dev of moonrider: most
| popular WebXR application so see the industry numbers.
|
| Also sales /= usage and retention. Engagement is what you
| need to grow a platform.
|
| Your numbers about XBox sales might be true for a brief
| period of time between Quest2 and Quest3 releases. Still
| what matters is engagement and retention.
|
| As mentioned only product-market (albeit niche) fit for
| VR has been some games subgenres. Can you point to any
| other applications with significant numbers?
| parasubvert wrote:
| > You have data to back up your claim that "Vision Pro
| owners are using it often multiple hours a day? That's a
| shrinking tiny fraction of AVP buyers based on my
| experience. I've been in the industry for a decade. I
| have an AVP, know many other owners and devs with
| published apps. I'm myself the dev of moonrider: most
| popular WebXR application so see the industry numbers.
|
| I have no more data than you do when you say a "shrinking
| tiny fraction" of AVP buyers. I've been in the industry
| for 30 years. We both have our anecdata.
| dmarcos wrote:
| Do you currently have any published content on any
| platform? Burden of proof is on the one making a claim.
| One of the signs of product-market fit is word of mouth
| organic growth. I'm a dev with published content and know
| a plethora of other devs. None seeing significant growth
| or improved retention. If you're right the evidence is
| really hidden. Any forum or community where I can talk to
| the users that are using AVP a ton?
| n144q wrote:
| takes time -- how long are we talking about here?
|
| Vision Pro has been released for near a year now. I don't
| think it got the traction that's anywhere close to the hype
| when it was first announced. Not even among VR enthusiasts,
| let alone the mass consumer market.
|
| There is an Apple Store near where I live. When I walk by it,
| 9 out of 10 times there is nobody around the Vision Pro
| booth, when many people are playing with iPhones and iPads.
| jsheard wrote:
| The Vision Pro also doesn't exist in a vacuum - Meta have
| spent much longer trying to make this work, with hardware
| that's literally an order of magnitude more affordable, and
| are still struggling to find any mainstream adoption.
| atrus wrote:
| Honestly, I'd say that the vision pro is going to get less
| traction with VR enthusiasts because it's not _that_ much
| better in some respects, and much _worse_ in many others.
| The vision pro is much more suited to people who haven 't
| used any VR before.
| wrboyce wrote:
| Have you used an AVP? I am surprised at your claims.
|
| My friend has one and I've got a Quest 2 and I was
| absolutely blown away by the AVP, significantly better VR
| experience in my opinion.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Then why haven't you switched - I mean, how would you
| replace your existing VR use cases with Vision Pro as an
| upgrade, not mere same ballpark alternative with
| workarounds, set aside its upfront price?
| wrboyce wrote:
| Bit of a weird "gotcha" this to be honest, but I don't
| use my Quest all that often and the AVP is too expensive
| for my taste.
| parasubvert wrote:
| Cost aside, the main reason to keep using a Quest 3 or
| PSVR2 are controller support and PCVR support. And
| exclusive games.
|
| Vision Pro supporting PSVR2 controllers will help a lot.
|
| The final piece is getting something like ALVR or Virtual
| Desktop to support PCVR without requiring fiddling.
| theshackleford wrote:
| The AVP can't meet most of what I use VR for, and is
| incredibly expensive in my country to boot, so by default
| the Q3 wins.
|
| The Q2 has horrible lenses that induce a terrible
| experience. I had mine for all of a week before I sold it
| and decided to wait another gen. The Q3 with better
| lenses is a significantly better product than Q2.
| wrboyce wrote:
| Yeah, the same friend has a Q3 too which I tried after
| the AVP and it was noticeably better than my Q2 (and
| pound for pound, held its own well against the AVP).
|
| I've not had any issues with my Q2 though, I can play for
| quite extended amounts of time and it tends to be my arms
| and legs that stop me playing!
| parasubvert wrote:
| This isn't true.
|
| It's more that the Vision Pro deliberately prioritized
| certain things that Meta or Vive or Valve or Sony have
| not: geometrically stable pass through, wide library of
| popular 3D movies via AppleTV and Disney+, high
| resolution immersive environments, seamless
| keyboard/mouse/trackpad migration between PC and native
| apps, strong iOS/iPadOS ecosystem integration, high fps /
| low latency wireless ultra-wide virtual displays for the
| Mac, etc.
|
| In some ways it focuses on what the Oculus Go was trying
| to do but was underpowered to really do it. It's meant to
| replace other iOS devices for general productivity and
| entertainment, and to complement a Mac.
|
| It's not focused on VR gaming though it can do that.
|
| I have a Oculus Rift dev kit, Ovulus Go, Quest , Quest 2,
| Valve Index, PSVR2. The AVP is _much_ better of an
| experience on almost every level but three: too much
| motion blur when moving your head (this isn 't bad when
| watching high fps video), lack of controller support, not
| so great hand tracking (which the Quest had to do well
| due to lack of eye tracking). The controller support
| should be fixed with the Sony PSVR2 partnership. Motion
| blur and hand tracking I suspect will be software fixed
| as they evolve to prioritize active fitness with the AVP.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| The vision pro has not been released. All you can buy is a
| dev kit.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Vision Pro has been released for near a year now. I don't
| think it got the traction that's anywhere close to the hype
| when it was first announced.
|
| In the first year, they were constrained by the number of
| displays Sony could produce.
|
| > Sony, the supplier of Vision Pro's ultra high resolution
| OLED microdisplays, can't manufacture more than 900,000
| displays per year. Apple needs two displays per headset, so
| this bottleneck would impose severe limitations on how many
| Vision Pros can be produced.
|
| https://www.uploadvr.com/apple-vision-pro-production-
| severel...
|
| As far as I've seen, their sales were in line with the
| number of units they could be expected to build, at least
| until Sony is able to ramp up production.
|
| > 2024 Apple Vision Pro Shipments Estimated Between 500-600
| Thousand Units, Micro OLED Key to Cost and Volume
|
| https://www.trendforce.com/presscenter/news/20240118-12003.
| h...
| rchaud wrote:
| Most of the world is facing affordability problems. A $3500
| helmet is not top of mind for anyone. Apple isn't going throw
| money at this for much longer I feel. Immersive videos are
| not a selling point when considering the tradeoffs of using a
| headset.
| sneak wrote:
| I feel like people forget that hardware takes 3-4 years to
| bring to market.
|
| This is so that people can begin making content for the
| Apple AR headset that comes out 3 years from now, not the
| $3500 devkit.
| philmcc wrote:
| Thank you for having one of the few reasonable takes on
| the Vision Pro.
|
| People also forget how bleak the iPad app market was for
| the first year or so. They also forget that VR has
| existed for the quest for the better part of 12 years and
| there are .... 4? 5? very good apps.
|
| Even now there's nothing -incredibly- compelling for the
| Quest. I'm not a hater, I've owned 5 of them starting at
| DK1.
| rchaud wrote:
| The iPad cost 14% of what AVP does, so comparisons to it
| are largely meaningless. iPads took off because a huge
| population of grandparents and kids had a use case for
| it....Netflix, Youtube and Newspapers on a device that's
| less complicated and cheaper than a full computer.
|
| No such equivalent exists for AVP, it's a new type of
| device for pretty much everybody.
| rchaud wrote:
| If it was a dev kit, they could have simply kept it under
| wraps and provided beta access to gauge developer
| interest, instead of the usual overwrought keynote.
|
| Who builds half a million units of a dev kit?
|
| Some stuff you can just tell is going to flop. This is
| one of them. Apple still doesn't get that people dont
| want to put on highly conspicuous headsets to watch a
| movie or play a game, they're fine using a phone or
| tablet for that. Zuckerberg still pretends like he didnt
| spend 2 years and untold billions trying to will Horizon
| Worlds into relevance. Similarly, nobody talks about
| immersive video on AVP as some kind of gamechanger, not
| even the usual Apple consumer strategy whisperers like
| Daring Fireball.
| sneak wrote:
| No, there's no way to keep a devkit like that under
| wraps.
|
| This is a 5-10 year strategy, not a 1-2 year one.
| rchaud wrote:
| We're several years into that process already then. Apple
| researched this space for years and their first released
| product was a giant flop with no developer interest.
| Apple famously doesn't release anything until they "get
| it right". So the sound of crickets after an Apple event
| is already a warning sign.
|
| The closer you get to that 5-10 years, the more these
| types of capital intensive projects start looking non-
| viable (think Apple EV) compared to cash cows like the
| App Store and iCloud.
| parasubvert wrote:
| How is the AVP a giant flop? They're largely supply
| constrained by Sony. The plan was to sell a few hundred
| thousand units. Which they have.
| parasubvert wrote:
| Almost everyone that has experienced AVP immersive video
| has absolutely described it as a game changer.
| rchaud wrote:
| And yet it sits unsold on store shelves. A "gamechanger"
| in Apple-ese means tens of millions of units shifted.
| Apple is in the business of selling Big Macs, not wagyu
| steaks.
|
| Apple is not Sony, who were happy to keep investing in
| their ecosystem even if people didn't buy it (Betamax,
| MiniDisc, GPS addon for the PSP).
| parasubvert wrote:
| "And yet it sits unsold on store shelves. "
|
| Citation needed. The AVP is priced for supply
| constraints.
|
| 'A "gamechanger" in Apple-ese means tens of millions of
| units shifted'
|
| Not at all. That may be an external party's definition of
| success. It is not Apple's.
|
| "Apple is in the business of selling Big Macs, not wagyu
| steaks."
|
| I can't even begin to describe how wrong this statement
| is, even based on a cursory glance of their current
| product line.
| sroussey wrote:
| The original Mac was $17000 in today's dollars and people
| said the same thing.
| knifie_spoonie wrote:
| Did you accidentally type an extra 1 there? The original
| Macintosh launched at $2.5K which is a bit over $7K in
| today's dollars.
| rchaud wrote:
| The original Mac had the benefit of being a computer, a
| pre-existing product category that people were familiar
| with, and already purchasing in growing numbers.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| You also have the Meta Quest 3 trucking along. That one is
| desperate for higher-quality 3D videos.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Filmmakers funded by apple.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Studios
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| Filmmakers have already been using it to produce the existing
| immersive video content, so that's kind of a silly question.
| But it works for VR180, too, if that's your cup o tea.
|
| Moreover, it's not really a proprietary format and you can
| already play them officially on Quest.
| hu3 wrote:
| So title is misleading. It shoots videos for other platforms
| as well.
| diggan wrote:
| I dunno, Blackmagic clearly collaborates with Apple, and
| probably would have made this camera regardless of Apple
| Vision Pro or not, but once the two marketing departments
| came together, they decide to launch it with Apple Vision
| Pro filming in mind.
|
| That's not to say it cannot be used for other things.
| Blackmagic frequently market all their cameras for
| prosumer/professional film-making, but you can use the
| cameras for so much more than just recording films,
| although the marketing is geared towards film-markers.
| Doesn't make it misleading.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| They're just echoing Black Magic's own pitch that it's
| "designed for" Apple's platform and format, and that's
| evidently true given the specs and features. I don't think
| of that as misleading.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| My take is "designed for Immersive Video" in the sense
| that Apple's format has very high specifications, and
| most other HMDs do not demand 8k per eye or 90fps. This
| camera meets the minimum specification for the Immersive
| Video format, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't also be
| able to render the output to other formats.
| dagmx wrote:
| You are mistaken in your last point. The Quest doesn't play
| the Apple Immersive video formats, only their MV-HEVC stereo
| format.
|
| Nobody has been able to extract Apples immersive videos yet
| and I'm not convinced the Quest has the decoding power for
| it.
|
| It's a lot of pixels to decode (16k at 90fps) , while also
| doing reprojection of the frames
| (https://hackaday.com/2024/04/18/unraveling-the-secrets-of-
| ap...) and I don't believe their Qualcomm chip used has
| enough juice leftover to do that.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| You're right. I was thinking of spatial video on the Quest.
| Immersive video is different, but I guess my point is that
| it's not mystery meat either. The barrier is as you said
| the performance required to push the pixels, not the format
| per se.
| lm28469 wrote:
| $30k is not particularly expensive for a cinema camera
| dylan604 wrote:
| It is rather expensive for BMD though. It's not like this is
| the full set of panels for Resolve with that price tag.
| diggan wrote:
| Is it though? Two URSA Cine would run about the same cost,
| and this camera effectively are two URSA Cines put into
| one.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yes. Because it's twice the cost of the URSA Cine.
|
| The equivalent to the Cine from other makers starts at
| the $30k and goes up depending on what options you want.
| Except, at those prices, you're only getting 4K. Red,
| Arri, Sony, etc won't even get out of bed for anything
| less than $30k.
|
| That's just BMD's DNA to give the customer so much bang
| for their buck. Every thing they offer is so much lower
| MSRPs than competitors. I remember when they first
| released Resolve for Mac, for free after BMD acquired
| DaVinci. Of course it couldn't do much without a $20k
| MacPro build, but the software was free. This was running
| right next to the $50k Resolve Linux build, so naturally
| it was jaw dropping.
| ryandamm wrote:
| Red has two cameras that cost less than $10k.
| dagmx wrote:
| This is the same cost as the standard Ursa Cine 17k however
| that it is derived from
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20240912-03
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Yeah, the $30k is a drop in the bucket of the many millions
| you need for a modern production. The real cost will be the
| editing to make sure it's actually a good experience.
| Andrex wrote:
| And the tech would be enough to make a 2012-era James Cameron
| drool.
|
| Sometimes tech is amazing.
| backspace_ wrote:
| MKBHD will probably race over to buy or cover that piece of
| equipment. Hopefully no tickets for speeding will occur.
| almostgotcaught wrote:
| > What filmmaker is going to put in all this effort and spend
| $30K to shoot videos
|
| Pornographers
| fidotron wrote:
| Felix and Paul studios built their own "cameras" for
| stereoscopic 3D back before even the Oculus dev kits were
| widely available. There is an ecosystem of similar studios that
| did this, and that is where the better stuff on the Meta Quests
| comes from.
|
| If you pay attention in their work you can see how they try to
| hide the hard drive array that was required, and sometimes also
| the accountant holding on to it so that it doesn't get swept
| away.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I was at a studio in that ecosystem you describe. In the
| early days of live action VR, we were building our own rigs.
| We experimented with different camera bodies, lenses, and
| configurations. Camera configurations changed when the
| software could create 3D by using data from all of the
| cameras. It was a lot of fun just from raw R&D and having
| someone paying to rent all of the various camera gear to
| essentially play and create things. At least until the fad
| was recognized for what it was, and the funding dried up
| makestuff wrote:
| Yeah there needs to be a common format for all of the headsets
| to adopt or at least apple needs to provide an easy way to
| convert into their format (maybe they already do in final cut
| pro).
|
| IMO vision pro is like the first iPhone/iPad and in a few years
| if they keep refining it there will be a larger adoption.
|
| I think the main thing is that it should support full mac os
| apps without tethering to an external macbook/mac mini. They
| need to move the compute out of the headset itself and into the
| battery module. Apple probably would never do this, but imagine
| if you bought a mac mini sized compute module that could go on
| an external display or connect to a vision pro device. If the
| compute was separate the headset would be significantly lighter
| and more comfortable.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I'm guessing the same ones that use extremely expensive 3d rigs
| that are only used for theatrical 3d runs of movies? 30k isn't
| all that much
| jsheard wrote:
| It's ever-increasingly common for 3D movies to not actually
| be filmed or rendered in 3D because it's so much cheaper to
| fake it in post.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3D_films_(2005%E2%80%9.
| ..
|
| Of the 13 3D movies released this year only four are native
| 3D, and those are all fully CGI animation, so none of them
| used 3D cameras. Avatar 2 (2022) was the last movie to use 3D
| cameras for live action shots and Avatar 3 is the only
| upcoming movie known to be using them. It's beyond niche at
| this point unless your name is James Cameron.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Well of course, movies are composited so heavily these days
| that you can simply toss another step in the pipeline and
| have a 3d conversion. It's amazingly easy now.
| brabel wrote:
| In the late 90's I think, there was a movie where a neural device
| was created that allowed anyone to "record" their brain activity
| so that it could be replayed later by anyone with a device for
| that. But it became like a drug as people got addicted to it and
| couldn't stop living the virtual experiences of others (this was
| a long time ago so I hope I remember the story correctly)! Some
| people wanted to experience murdering someone, or having sex with
| a famous person... cool stuff :D Anyone knows which movie was
| that?
|
| Anyway, this feels like the beginning of that.
| BrentOzar wrote:
| > Anyone knows which movie was that?
|
| Strange Days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Days_(film)
| sho_hn wrote:
| Which, amusingly, required development of a customized camera
| to film:
|
| > The film's SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot,
| required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical
| preparation.[5] A full year was spent building a specialized
| camera that could reproduce the effect of looking through
| someone else's eyes.[5] Bigelow revealed that it was
| essentially "a stripped-down Arri that weighed much less than
| the smallest EYMO and yet it would take all the prime lenses.
|
| It's an unfairly forgotten film. Much like _Blade Runner_ ,
| it suffers from a clunky plot but has quite smart world
| building.
| parasubvert wrote:
| Film geeks still talk about Strange Days. It has a cult
| following.
| brabel wrote:
| Thanks so much, I had tried in vain to find this movie
| before, but it's truly forgotten! I loved it at the time, it
| made a serious impression on 17yo me, will see if I can get
| to watch it again after so many years.
| wrboyce wrote:
| Out of curiosity I pasted your comment into ChatGPT and
| asked it which movie you were referring to and it got it
| correct.
|
| I find GPT quite useful for those "tip of your tongue" type
| queries, and have used it to name movies and actors quite a
| few times.
| brabel wrote:
| Ha, I don't know why it didn't occur to me to ask AI :D.
| Will remember that next time.
| nickzelei wrote:
| Wow what a loop close. I've also been wondering randomly
| about this movie with no idea what it was called. I
| remember this film and it left an impression on me. I'll
| even bring it up to people from time to time. Didn't occur
| to me for some reason to have a GPT try and guess it.
|
| What's funny is that there are others out there that are
| thinking the same thing regarding that film. Cheers!
| gedy wrote:
| Brainstorm (1983)?
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0085271/
| flippyhead wrote:
| No, you are all wrong. I had this idea first!! When I was 8.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| That's a movie I haven't thought about in awhile. Decent
| flick.
|
| I saved a newspaper clipping from a local theater showing
| "BRIANSTORM". My father's name is Brian. 7 y/o me thought the
| misspelling in the ad was hilarious.
| baoluofu wrote:
| Could be Brainstorm (1983) perhaps?
|
| Also, see the last episode of season one of Black Mirror.
|
| And "brain dances" in Cyberpunk 2077.
| rvnx wrote:
| We will probably go through:
|
| Thoughts -> (electric signal) -> LLM decoding and calling a
| generative model -> (electric signal) -> Brain
| akie wrote:
| I think that it's a Black Mirror episode:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You
| mapt wrote:
| You mean every other plot involving brain computer interfaces
| since the 1950's?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
| brabel wrote:
| As others are pointing out, it was Strange Days... even
| though it may seem like a common plot, that movie is pretty
| unique IMHO in how far it takes the concept.
| b0bb0 wrote:
| Strange Days.
| ntxy wrote:
| In Neuromancer(1984) it's called Simstim. I think Strange Days
| got it from there.
|
| Fragments of a Hologram Rose (1977) also by Gibson already had
| this.
|
| Does anybody know even earlier instances?
| wordpad25 wrote:
| cyberpunk on Netflix did it most recently
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Yes it's called "brain dance" in the Cyberpunk 2077 lore
| which that show is based on.
| foobarian wrote:
| Strange Days. Tom Sizemoore's best. "The issue's not whether
| you're paranoid, Lenny, I mean look at this shit, the issue is
| whether you're paranoid enough."
| jtmetcalfe wrote:
| It's either STRANGE DAYS or EXISTENZ - maybe BRAINSTORM but
| that was early 80s
| PaulHoule wrote:
| https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1003017-brainstorm
|
| is underrated, the visual depiction of the lab is like
| Crichton's Looker. In my mind Research Triangle Park is as cool
| as it is this movie, in real life it falls short only a little.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Going a bit farther back, we had _Brainstorm_ (Natalie Wood 's
| last movie):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film)
|
| There was a scene, where one of the researchers looped a porn
| scene, and they busted down his door, to find him in bed,
| twitching.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I don't think this is the movie you're referring to, but _Until
| the End of the World_ has a similar device to record images
| from the brain. At first it is used to help a blind woman see.
| But later people start using it to record their dreams and then
| watch them--which becomes addictive.
| LaSombra wrote:
| Website announcement,
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursacine...,
| doesn't even mention the Vision Pro and refers to Apple once.
| leshenka wrote:
| But they refer to it in a tweet that is linked from the article
|
| https://x.com/Blackmagic_News/status/1868723512455970999
| hutattedonmyarm wrote:
| On the _preorder_ page they 're talking about the "URSA Cine
| Immersive":
|
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursacine...
|
| which seems to be more in line what the article talks about
| capnrefsmmat wrote:
| That's the page for their normal, non-3D, non-VR cinema camera.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| That's the wrong page, wrong product
| dagmx wrote:
| You're looking at the wrong product. That's the Ursa Cine 17k
| not the Ursa Cine Immersive.
|
| This is the page you want
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20241217-01
| consumer451 wrote:
| Thanks for that link.
|
| What I find interesting is that there appears to be no way to
| view the live video on a set of goggles for the camera
| operator, or the director. At least, it's not mentioned in
| the link above.
|
| Also, it seems like Apple must have contributed to
| Blackmagic's investment in this product, right? There are
| ~300k Vision Pros, so maybe Blackmagic will sell a couple
| hundred of these units? Without Apple's involvement, how
| could they have justified the investment in hardware and the
| new version of Resolve?
| dagmx wrote:
| Regarding the nicheness of it all:
|
| My background was in film where I also worked on stereo for
| certain big projects. I know some anti-Apple folk will
| criticize my comments below so I want to be clear I'm
| talking about 3D video specifically.
|
| I think it's a bet on the future. Even though Apple aren't
| high volume, they've dramatically shifted the professional
| stereo video landscape more than anything else in the last
| decade.
|
| This is everything from bringing full resolution stereo
| videos for home viewing , to making a seemingly
| standardized format for 180 videos. Even if the latter is
| just restricted to their platform.
|
| If I was BMD, I'd be seeing how everyone else is now
| following Apple in this specific area. Even though Meta
| were first, they're undeniably also following Apple in some
| key areas. Same with Android XR. You can just look at their
| software releases/announcements over the last year as
| evidence.
|
| If DaVinci can output to a range of formats, then it
| reduces the issue of it being apple specific. It's a bet
| that they'll be effectively the only professional game in
| town when all the brands (Apple, meta, Google) want to
| start driving content.
|
| Beyond that, I don't think the outlay for hardware is that
| high. It's largely based off the Cine 17k, so most of the
| investment is amortized there.
|
| Also even beyond the VR space, there's the market for
| immersive experiences like projection events, the Vegas
| sphere, theme parks etc...
| neom wrote:
| You also benefit from people who are bleeding edge either
| staying in, or entering, the backmagic ecosystem. I read
| through the comments and most people are focused on the
| cameras. I know the blackmagic folks from back in the
| day, been to their lab etc, if you know them they're all
| about "the blackmagic look" and their thought (at least
| in the start) is they just need people to fall in love
| with the profile of their imaging, and they will be stuck
| in the ecosystem. Anyone I know who shoots BM is obsessed
| with their IQ.
| dagmx wrote:
| Yeah the black magic folks have such a great perspective
| on workflow and ecosystem.
|
| Their color science too is very nice and I think they're
| making good moves with the 17k.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > I think it's a bet on the future. Even though Apple
| aren't high volume, they've dramatically shifted the
| professional stereo video landscape more than anything
| else in the last decade.
|
| > This is everything from bringing full resolution stereo
| videos for home viewing , to making a seemingly
| standardized format for 180 videos. Even if the latter is
| just restricted to their platform.
|
| I'd assume Porn already achieved all of the above. The
| format seem to have mostly settled, and the volume
| produced are relevant.
|
| Apple might succeed in the "not first but best" approach,
| but do they have that much of an impact on the landscape
| right now ? In particular while this camera is marketed
| toward AVP movies, Apple being an early partner and
| probably footing the bill for most of it, is a weaker
| signal than BlackMagic doing it on its own as a forward
| investment.
| ada1981 wrote:
| The coolest part about AVP is being able to look around in an
| immersive environment; this seems like it's only going to give
| you 3D but not immersive correct?
|
| You'll turn your head and the image will just stay fixed in 3D in
| front of you?
| marxisttemp wrote:
| No, this is for 180VR immersive video. There are already plenty
| of stereoscopic, non-immersive cameras.
| dylan604 wrote:
| "There is an included 8TB Blackmagic Media Module that is able to
| store approximately two hours of 8K stereoscopic video recorded
| in Blackmagic RAW, and Cloud Store is supported for fast media
| uploads and synchronization."
|
| Um, okay, what is supported and what is achievable are two
| entirely different things. Even with the fattest of pipes,
| uploading media content to the cloud is only considered fast if
| you're a turtle or a snail. Even with 12Gbps connection it takes
| 10-12 minutes to transfer 250GB files.
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| Cloudstore is actually a on-set NAS product. So it grabs the
| footage as you are shooting it locally for on-set network
| playback and syncs to a remote cloud in the background.
|
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagiccloudsto...
| dylan604 wrote:
| what a horribly misnamed product then
| samatman wrote:
| Great name actually. Stores it on the way to the cloud,
| then stores it in the cloud.
| alberth wrote:
| What does this get you, that the ~$2k Canon Dual Fisheye 3D VR
| Lens not get you?
|
| https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/rf5-2mm-f2-8-l-dual-fisheye...
| dagmx wrote:
| A lot!
|
| Firstly, it's an actual cine camera so has a lot of cine
| features for reviewing, output, formats that are recorded etc.
|
| Next is the lenses, this has a wider inter pupillary distance
| so will feel more dimensional and natural. It also has wider
| coverage.
|
| Then there's the sensors and readout: this can capture 8K per
| eye, for 90fps. This is required for the Apple immersive format
| because it partially surrounds you and so you need 8k per eye
| to make sure you have good resolution coverage for the portion
| of the video shown on the 4k per eye display.
|
| There's no other commercial product that compares to this.
| alberth wrote:
| Can you not get this capability with a RED camera + Canon
| Fisheye lense?
|
| _I'm no photographer_ , but it seems like it'd be tough for
| someone to justify spending $30K on a single purpose camera -
| when you could just use an existing high end camera like RED
| + new lens.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Is this a serious question? a RED camera does not have
| stereovision and has no other way to retain depth
| information.
| amarshall wrote:
| Both the V-Raptor & Komodo have an RF mount and thus can
| accept the Canon Dual Fisheye lens. The resolution is a
| lot lower, and neither sensor is well-matched to the
| lens's image circle.
|
| The whole point of the Canon Dual Fisheye lens is to
| record stereoscopic video on a "standard" single sensor
| camera.
| zamadatix wrote:
| "Is this a serious question" is hard to take as anything
| but an insult. Any actual trolling or the like will
| naturally sink on HN without the risk of attacking
| genuinely curious questions.
|
| With the example Canon lens approach alberth had linked
| the device does not need to natively support stereo. The
| downsides, and why one might still spend 30k on an
| alternative, is said lens approach effectively halves the
| sensor area and the optics system won't be quite as well
| designed as a natively optimized one. Also the device is
| aimed to match the AVP precisely e.g. 90 FPS at full ~59
| MP resolution.
|
| I doubt they expect to sell many units but the units they
| do sell are for top professionals looking for the
| absolute best stereo quality they could get for the AVP,
| not for prosumers or average productions which would be
| fine with the slight quality and workflow bump to save
| 20k.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > "Is this a serious question" is hard to take as
| anything but an insult.
|
| So is "I, as a non-photographer, openly question the
| utility of this pro-photographer tool to pro-
| photographers", though.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Hmm, I have no trouble finding "Can you not... I'm no
| photographer but it seems like it'd be tough" type
| questions as genuine curiosity about an expert field
| instead. It's certainly possible to interpret it as an
| insult if one likes, that's often an easy task, but it
| definitely feels like it's not the only way to interpret
| the question.
| spiderice wrote:
| Hard disagree. A person who is ignorant in a certain
| subject is allowed to ask questions about that subject in
| order to learn.
|
| > Can you not get this capability with...
|
| Can be interpreted as "this is pointless.. you can do
| this other thing for way cheaper" OR "help me understand
| why this exists because I don't understand it". GP is
| _clearly_ in the latter camp and saying "as a non-
| photographer" to make that clear.
|
| Since we're already quoting HN guidelines
|
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Even after they were told it has a ton of value add. It
| indeed irked me the wrong way and that's why I took that
| tone.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Lenny Lipton, who developed the RealD system used in
| theaters today worked on the end-to-end problem of stereo
| movies in the 1970 used a pair of 8mm cameras hinged
| together, there were similar rigs used in the 1950s.
|
| Today I adjust stereograms so that most objects are close
| to the paper or screen by sliding them horizontally, but
| I think Lipton is right that it is better to make the
| cameras converge though all my stereo cameras are
| parallel.
| dagmx wrote:
| I feel like I already covered the answer to your question
| in the comment you're replying to.
|
| The canon fisheye lens does not have the same IPD as this
| lens.
|
| Beyond that, you'd still be limited by the sensor. The
| highest RED sensor is 8k? This is 8k per eye. Thats double
| (actually slightly higher than double).
|
| So, you could make something inferior, yes, but not the
| same capabilities.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Moreso than the "this exact Canon lens on this exact
| sensor" I think the question is more "why not this Canon
| lens approach on normal high-end camera so you don't have
| to buy a 30k camera which does one specific thing". You
| do answer that but maybe not in a way that's directly
| obvious to general extension for those not versed in
| professional photography or videography.
|
| Blackmagic does have e.g. a 12k non-stereo Ursa Cine but,
| like you hint at, whatever they can have in the non-
| stereo can always be better in stereo because a 2x sensor
| setup has 4x the sensor area as a 1/2 sensor setup.
| Sensor area (for equivalent class sensors) determines the
| quality of the recording. When quality is what's
| important to a professional setting then it doesn't
| matter (in this market segment) there is a solution which
| is 20k cheaper if it's always going to be inferior by
| design. They don't expect to sell many of these to
| professionals even so it's fine it doesn't make cost
| sense to the average person.
|
| The rest of everything (recording workflows and settings,
| IPD, framerates, editing software) can all be identical
| with either approach but the sensor area is sensor area
| and there is nothing which can be done to fix that.
| dagmx wrote:
| I'm not sure the Ursa Immersive is actually two sensors,
| though it might be. It's based on the Ursa Cine 17k
| (which is shockingly close to the exact resolution
| needed) so it might be a single sensor as well.
|
| Which would help with synchronized sensor readout.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It claims dual sensors in the product page https://www.bl
| ackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20241217-01#:...
|
| Of course it's still possible that's really just one
| sensor with a logical split, which would be some
| disappointing marketing.
| dagmx wrote:
| Ah good catch. I suppose they can effectively halve the
| 17k in that case.
|
| But very impressive that they have such tight
| synchronization between sensor readouts to feel
| comfortable splitting it.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > Blackmagic does have e.g. a 12k non-stereo Ursa Cine
|
| But that's still not 16k of pixels. You don't even need
| two 8k sensors to make this work. Just aim the stereo
| lenses at different parts of a 16k sensor. The Canon
| solution is simply lacking IPD and pixels.
|
| > Sensor area (for equivalent class sensors) determines
| the quality of the recording.
|
| This is false. Going to get up on my soapbox again here:
|
| Larger sensors actually have _more_ noise (noise is
| proportional the square root of the area).
|
| It's easy to understand the confusion, though: Putting a
| larger sensor behind the same lens is the opposite of
| cropping... you get a larger field of view and less image
| detail. Thus, keeping field of view the same, a larger
| sensor forces you to use a lens with a longer focal
| length.
|
| Now, if you re-grind the original lens to have a longer
| focal length, you encounter another problem: The same
| physical aperture divided by the new longer focal length
| means that you have a _smaller focal ratio_ (the number
| in F /<number> gets bigger). You have a dimmer lens!
|
| So, to keep the _same focal ratio_ ("F-stop"), you need a
| lens with a larger physical aperture... That larger
| physical aperture is _collecting more light_ onto your
| sensor!
|
| That's _why_ everyone seems to think larger sensors are
| better. It's the lens you are _forced_ to use, not the
| sensor itself.
|
| Since light collected is directly proportional to the
| area of the lens (and lens area will be proportional to
| sensor area, see above) and sensor noise is only
| proportional to sqrt(area), the signal to noise ratio
| goes as area/sqrt(area) = sqrt(area).
|
| But that's not the same thing as saying a larger sensor
| is better... you could have just used a lens with a
| larger physical aperture in the first place. You don't
| _need_ a larger sensor to do that.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > But that's not the same thing as saying a larger sensor
| is better... you could have just used a lens with a
| larger physical aperture in the first place. You don't
| need a larger sensor to do that.
|
| Most optical aberrations increase with high powers of the
| f-number so it's highly undesirable to make ultra-fast
| lenses, so it quite quickly becomes cheaper to use a
| larger sensor with a slower f-number. Try matching a
| jellybean 85/2 lens on a full-frame sensor on e.g. MFT.
| It's going to be rather expensive. Then try matching a
| 85/1.4 or 85/1.2 (nowadays not uncommon) lens and you
| find yourself at "that's not physically possible".
|
| Coincidentally, full-frame sensors can be made from just
| two stitched exposures on a regular chip stepper, so
| they're sort of the largest sensor size before cost
| explodes. Meanwhile S35/APS-C offers some real cost
| savings (single exposure).
| fxtentacle wrote:
| As someone who has designed a customised camera with a
| CMOS sensor, I feel the urge to disagree: in my
| experience, the biggest issue for quality was that the
| sensor readout generates heat and that heat triggers
| random charges in the sensor. Using a sensor with larger
| pixels means the readout energy is spread over a larger
| area, thereby having a lower intensity. So in a way, a
| larger sensor works like a larger heatsink. This effect
| is also why astronomy photographers cool their equipment.
|
| You're of course correct that the better lens helps. But
| a bigger sensor can also be better by itself.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's an interesting question to compare video quality in
| mono vs stereo.
|
| In stereo you really do have more visual information.
| It's not unusual for 10% of the pixels in a stereogram
| (say a close up of a person) to be unique to one channel.
| On top of that you have left and right eye pixels that
| are shared which must be equivalent to more than one mono
| pixel even if they aren't equivalent to two.
|
| Although I get MPO's with two JPEGs in one file from my
| New 3DS, stereo content is frequently delivered in side-
| by-side format as one big JPEG. Stereo movies and TV
| frequently use side-by-side with half horizontal
| resolution on the assumption that stereo is feeding your
| eyes and brains more data although it probably doesn't
| match the original perceived resolution.
| Melatonic wrote:
| But for 30K you could use multiple Red cameras no?
| dagmx wrote:
| Not without compromising something.
|
| Here's the RED body list
| https://www.red.com/productcategory/Camera-BRAINs
|
| There's no brain for an 8k sensor where you could have
| more than one for the cost of this. So you'd have to at
| the very least compromise on resolution.
|
| You'd also have to construct a multi camera rig which
| adds to both cost and size/weight/difficulty. So you'd
| compromise on the ergonomics of it.
|
| Then you'd have to add the lenses. These have them
| integrated. Finding comparable lenses would set you over
| your comparable budget.
|
| Okay, then let's talk storage. This has 8TB on board.
| Getting an equivalent for the RED would also set you over
| the budget.
|
| Finally, connectivity. The only REDs that you could maybe
| bring under budget need additions to add connectivity. So
| you're compromising there.
|
| And at the end of the day, 30K for a camera of this
| caliber is insanely cheap. I think everyone getting
| caught up on the cost has only dealt with prosumer stuff
| at best. Anyone at the professional level has been awed
| by black magic's ability to bring this and the Ursa Cine
| 17k at the price point that they have.
|
| Besides, the cost for everything else will far outpace
| the camera. The camera is the one thing you don't want to
| skimp on. You have a bad camera day, you ruin everything
| else and waste more money than you'd have saved.
|
| I'll reiterate: 30k is an absolute bargain for this or
| the 17k.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| > it'd be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a
| single purpose camera
|
| I don't think hobbyists are the target market. Isn't that
| price in-line with any studio-quality camera? (I have no
| idea if this qualifies as a studio-quality camera, but I
| can imagine at least a few studios would be willing to try
| it out).
| aeturnum wrote:
| Also, the most common scenario for this camera (and most
| pro-level production cameras) is that they are rented
| per-job. Eventually it would makes sense to buy one if
| you have enough work for that camera, but most people and
| productions start with rentals.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| TV studio cameras can apparently reach nearly 10x this.
|
| Pro equipment can reach prices that seem unbelievable to
| prosumers.
|
| https://youtu.be/RkTaMyatsTo
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I remember a story about the Phantom Flex[0] High-Speed
| camera.
|
| It's an awesome camera, but note the absence of a price,
| on the Web site. I think it retails for around $80K.
|
| [0] https://www.phantomhighspeed.com/products/cameras/4km
| edia/fl...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think how you couldn't really zoom a video in the 1970s
| short of printing it to film and doing optical tricks. By
| 1980 you started to see frame buffer effects in
| commercial TV and you could have zoomed but didn't have
| enough pixels to do much.
|
| In the digital age zooming video is completely routine
| and if you've got a picture with absurd megapixels you
| can do it in a big way.
| haldean wrote:
| There are quite a few cine cameras that are more than 10x
| this amount, and there are a few that are 100x. For
| example, there are Panavision cameras that you can only
| rent direct from Panavision that require that you have
| half a million dollars of insurance coverage to rent.
| There are ARRIs that you can buy from B&H that are $100k.
| $30k is definitely in the range of something that
| individual DPs/operators could own, although it's getting
| into rental territory for lots of people.
| kalleboo wrote:
| > _it'd be tough for someone to justify spending $30K on a
| single purpose camera_
|
| These are cameras that productions rent by the day for a
| specific shoot, not something they buy outright. Similar to
| high-end cine cameras, slow motion cameras, underwater
| cameras, etc.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, I think initially most will be going to "customers"
| in the San Fernando valley.
| harrall wrote:
| A cinema camera is $50 to $100k (Sony Venice or ARRI ALEXA
| 35). That cinema camera is much better to use for a film
| crew and puts out a higher quality.
|
| WITHOUT the cost of additional lenses. Then you add in
| sets, lighting, generators, cast, etc.
|
| All of this is _fractions_ compared to maybe millions of
| dollars for marketing.
|
| And if you are a small film crew, you rent.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| By "small" they mean, "Total cost of production for a
| feature length movie coming in under a few million
| dollars"
|
| Outright purchasing a camera and equipment vs renting
| them for a shoot is a waste of money unless you're a
| production company that is going to use the equipment
| over and over again until it falls apart, and even then
| if you rent it it is on the rental company to handle
| maintenance and providing replacements in case of
| equipment breakdown, so it can still be a good deal for
| you.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > it seems like it'd be tough for someone to justify
| spending $30K on a single purpose camera
|
| For mass market consumers, you can already shoot in Apple's
| spatial video format with an iPhone.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I have the $5000 Canon 8k setup, and I have filmed with
| the Vision Pro and iPhone 16 Pro. The latter two produce
| content that is nearly unwatchable. Extremely
| noisy/filtered and the iPhones IPD basically doesn't
| exist.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > nearly unwatchable
|
| Reviews in the tech press do not agree.
|
| > Apple iPhone Spatial Video Looks Amazing on Vision Pro
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-iphone-spatial-
| video-...
| Philpax wrote:
| It's good enough for personal use, but absolutely not
| good enough for professional use, especially in low-light
| scenarios.
|
| Source: own an AVP and an iPhone 15 Pro
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Very few movie shoots actually own the camera they use.
| It's standard in the industry to rent a camera from a
| vendor for the duration of filming, which makes the MSRP of
| the camera, if not totally irrelevant, then a pretty minor
| detail.
| brink wrote:
| This reminds me. Back in the day, HTC made a 3D enabled phone
| with a 3D screen and camera.
|
| I would love to see that attempted today again with how much
| progress we've made in terms of screen resolution and camera
| quality.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Evo_3D
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Not sure why but during the HTC Evo and Nintendo coming out
| with the 3DS having the screen be 3d (Stereoscopic since you
| can use it without lenses) didn't take off.
|
| The iPhone 15 and 16 pro models can take 3D photos and videos
| right now https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/spatial-
| photos-record...
| BizarroLand wrote:
| The 3DS was fun but it was gimmicky, and it wasn't great.
|
| I would love to have a 3d tv that works without glasses even
| if it was a limited depth thing (like multiple screens on top
| of each other to create real depth within a confined space)
| but I think the technology of the 3DS screen wouldn't scale
| to larger screens.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| > like multiple screens on top of each other to create real
| depth within a confined space
|
| iirc this is effectively what looking glass displays do
| [0], or at least the early prototypes I saw, split a
| projected beam across 16 or so panes of glass. I've only
| seen the little one in real life but it was pretty
| enchanting. They go up to 32" and 64", something like
| 20,000 dollars tho [1] I don't know if they've actually
| made any sales of the larger formats
|
| I was recently googling for whether these displays
| supported Apple Spatial Video and the answer was yes after
| some 3rd party conversion and playing media back straight
| from the iPhone it was recorded on, sounded annoying but
| feasible [2]
|
| [0] https://lookingglassfactory.com/about
|
| [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/looking-glass-unveils-
| second-gen-...
|
| [2] https://stereoscopy.blog/2024/09/22/how-to-use-the-
| looking-g...
| qingcharles wrote:
| What is wild is that I saw a flat screen lenticular Canon
| display playing some custom DOOM clone in about 1998 at a
| video game developers event. It must have been at least 17"
| 4:3. It always seems it was something that accidentally
| fell back through time because it was so far ahead of its
| time. I remember feeling like a caveman because I put my
| head around the back like I was looking for the magic of
| how it worked.
| astrange wrote:
| The New 3DS was quite good, but being a relatively cheap
| Nintendo portable with backwards compatibility concerns it
| was pretty low resolution.
| kallistisoft wrote:
| I was big fan of my HTC Evo, I found the 3D images to be
| immensely helpful when taking documentation photographs. I
| could take just two images and get all of the info I needed
| to capture vs taking ~8 from multiple angles and having to
| mentally envision the relative dimensions of the space
| afterwards.
| kalleboo wrote:
| I had a SHARP Aquos Phone SH-12C with a 3D camera and
| lenticular display and some of the photos I took with that
| phone are some of my most treasured photos since the 3D aspect
| really brings you back to where you were.
|
| But back then everyone just said "3D is a gimmick I hate it I
| just want an normal TV" and the fad died.
|
| https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/SH-12C
|
| The iPhone recently added support for actually shooting spatial
| photos in addition to videos so I need to try that out.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Nice. There was also the RED Hydrogen phone which may have
| been the same display, it was a flop but IMO they were just
| early on the whole 'charging $1200 for a smartphone' thing.
| Its legacy is now just the prop smartphones announced by the
| villain in "Don't Look Up"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hydrogen_One
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I have about three Fujifilm FinePix digital 3D cameras. Fun to
| play with if you like stereo photography (although consumer-
| level quality images, but still decent).
| whycome wrote:
| I think it would be totally possible for an iphone to come out
| with two camera bumps - on either end of the phone to maximize
| 3d depth. And then when you fold the phone, it becomes a 360
| cam....?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| tried all those. the fire phone 3d with the 4 ir cameras was
| the only decent implementation... sadly completely ruined by
| the dystopian amazon android running on it.
| chakintosh wrote:
| Now you can watch MKBHD getting caught speeding in 3D while
| reviewing this camera
| backspace_ wrote:
| Careful, people here might look down on that kind of joke!
| oflannabhra wrote:
| I'm guessing there is a lot of negativity towards the Vision Pro
| here, lots of it deserved. However, the immersive video aspect is
| the one thing Vision Pro delivers that I think is truly unique
| and new. I'm not sure that is enough to support a $3500 hardware
| product, but I encourage anyone to try the demo and utilize the
| immersive video. It was an otherworldly experience for me, and
| news like this is very exciting as it will allow more content to
| be available.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| "Immersive video" is literally just high-resolution, wide-fov,
| 3d passthrough videos. As usual, Apple is selling a common
| feature of e.g. the Quest 3 under a different name and for a
| much higher price. You can get the same experience without
| having to shell out several grand.
| dagmx wrote:
| Your comment is incorrect in many ways. Based on your
| comment, I don't believe you've actually tried it?
|
| Firstly, it is not passthrough video.
|
| Secondly, you cannot currently have the same experience on
| the quest. You can have lower quality versions of it, but
| immersive video is 8k per eye at 90fps.
|
| There has literally never been cameras available to consumers
| to capture that till this specific camera. Unless you did
| professional custom camera rigs.
|
| As someone who owns both a Quest and a Vision Pro, and has
| worked in stereo for a large portion of my career, the two
| experiences are not remotely comparable when it comes to
| video today. The quest excels in other areas, but this is one
| where Meta have very weak coverage on.
| oflannabhra wrote:
| Yes, I have tried both and AVP is a leap ahead.
| Tepix wrote:
| For reference, here are the per-eye screen resolutions for some
| VR headsets: - Apple Vision Pro: 3660 x 3200
| pixels - Pimax 8K X: 3840 x 2160 - Pimax
| Crystal Light: 2880 x 2880 - HTC Vive Pro 2: 2448 x
| 2448 - HP Reverb G2: 2160 x 2160 - Meta Quest
| 3: 2064 x 2208 - Sony PS VR2: 2000 x 2040
| - Pimax Crystal Super 3840 x 3840 (57 ppd, unreleased)
|
| The VR180 3D footage gets spread to 180deg (horizontal) and
| inside your HMD you see around 70-90deg (again horizontal2) or so
| at a time. You can see that below 8K per-eye image resolution,
| you will start noticing a decrease in visual fidelity.
|
| --
|
| 2 the Pimax has around 159deg horizontal FoV.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It gets even more complicated when you consider what geometric
| format it records in.
|
| If it records "naively" where the vertical pixel maps to the
| angle relative to the horizon, then you get the least amount of
| detail around the "equator", and you get the most at the
| "poles" above and below you. Which is not only totally
| imbalanced, but imbalanced in the worst possible way!
|
| Back in 2017 Google introduced a new format that YouTube VR
| uses:
|
| https://blog.google/products/google-ar-vr/bringing-pixels-fr...
|
| It's called an Equi-Angular Cubemap, so each pixel represents
| the same amount of area in a VR projection.
|
| Unfortunately, outside of YouTube it still hasn't really taken
| off as far as I know, although some VR video players support
| it.
|
| I wonder if Blackmagic records in it? Or more generally, in
| what shape does the 180deg image fall on the rectangular sensor
| -- and so how does actual resolution _vary_ across the VR
| projection?
| matsemann wrote:
| My Gopro MAX uses EAC for the 360 videos. But ironically I
| have to go through the hassle of converting it to
| equirectangular before uploading to Google Street View..
| quitit wrote:
| This outlines how Apple approaches the immersive video format
| to put the most pixels on the horizon line:
|
| https://blog.mikeswanson.com/apples-mysterious-fisheye-
| proje...
| crazygringo wrote:
| Wow, that is fascinating -- I had no idea, thanks. That
| definitely takes the cake for most bizarrely "optimized"
| method. But putting the horizon at a 45deg angle is
| certainly a creative solution.
|
| Interesting that it's such a strange transformation, even
| the author of that article hasn't been able to decipher it
| exactly. The Google EAC seems so straightforward and
| "neutral", I'm surprised Apple created their own format
| (unless Google's format requires licensing, but I don't
| think it does).
| esperent wrote:
| > I'm surprised Apple created their own format
|
| There's nothing surprising here, it's been Apple's style
| for the entire time I've been working in tech - 15 years
| or so - to create formats that they control and
| preferably which only work on Apple devices. It's a big
| part of why their walled garden is so strong.
|
| > _Additionally, the format is undocumented, they haven't
| responded to an open question on the Apple Discussion
| Forums asking for more detail, and they didn't cover it
| in their WWDC23 sessions_
|
| Unfortunately, this is completely normal behavior from
| Apple and I've run up against it far too many times.
|
| When finally forced, by regulation or industry pressure,
| to answer questions, open their format up, or support
| other open formats, they pay lip service and drag their
| heels in every way possible.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I don't know why you are getting downvoted. What you say
| is true. They originally said facetime would be an open
| protocol based on jabber... didn't happen. Heck, they
| created their own cpu (undocumented) for some reason.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated than that right? There is
| definitely a corporate component there (FaceTime is one,
| iMessage is another) and they have a strong tendency to
| attempt to .. extort? .. others to pay for their
| standards. But they usually use standards that are
| available.
|
| If they do build something on their own, they have a
| reason. Most often technical. E.g. lightning is strictly
| better than any alternative that was available when they
| were introducing it (and that it didn't become the USB-C
| form factor is partially due to them wanting high
| licensing revenue). And really... you don't get why they
| created their own CPUs? Which hands down beat anything
| else out there on perf/watt and allow their systems to
| have incredible battery runtime on really tiny batteries?
| withinboredom wrote:
| Is it that complicated? Instead of being an industry
| leader, they seem to just want money and sticky users.
| I'm not an Apple hater by any stretch, but this seems to
| be a fact. In other words, they could have lead the way
| to better calls/sms by making facetime the standard, but
| instead we have green bubbles. Literally, they are the
| reason their own competition exists. They could have made
| their CPU architecture available to anyone willing to
| pay, but instead it is exclusive and 100% non-portable.
|
| In other words, there could be some Apple in literally
| every device on the planet, but they decided they didn't
| want that -- for some reason. That is the part I don't
| understand. It seems like such a short-sighted play.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Apple are a hardware company. One that's deep into
| software because it helps them sell that hardware, but
| ultimately still a hardware company. Having their
| software running on other company's devices doesn't help
| them in the goal of selling more iPhones, if anything it
| harms that because why buy an iPhone to be able to
| Facetime with the family when you can by a cheaper
| Android device instead?
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| > Instead of being an industry leader, they seem to just
| want money and sticky users
|
| But that's the job of a company...
|
| > but they decided they didn't want that -- for some
| reason.
|
| Because they are a consumer company. They depend on a
| strong asymmetry between their customers and them. It
| would be really hard for any other company to rely on
| Apple as a supplier. Afaik the only relationship that
| exists in that way are company phones, but those are not
| handled by Apple directly, but rather through carriers.
| Apple simply doesn't have any experience in being a
| supplier (and probably also large aversions to becoming
| one from their own treatment of their supply chain).
|
| Linus Torvald's repeatedly says something very insightful
| about "enterprise grade hardware", he describes it as
| "over-priced crap that doesn't work". Which is correct in
| the sense of "it doesn't comply to standards and only
| works in one specific combination". But that's literally
| where the value of "enterprise" comes from. There is
| someone that provides an in-depth description of a single
| use case and the appropriate solution and sells that. It
| isn't supposed to work in many scenarios. It's supposed
| to work in one. But for that one you have to guarantee a
| certain quality level and if you fail that you will have
| to pay for that. That is simply not how Apple operates.
| They are the big dog. Always. That's why they broke up
| with Nvidia
|
| But my point was: They didn't introduce any format for
| the fun of it. There always was a reason. Nearly always a
| technical one. Sometimes "only" a business one (which one
| could argue that qualifies for "for the hack of it")
| withinboredom wrote:
| > But that's the job of a company...
|
| By that logic, Google isn't a company despite setting
| industry standards.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's well known Jobs policy and strategy. "One standard
| port, two proprietary ports" is the version I've seen,
| the standard port is for ingestion and export,
| proprietary ports are for sharing within tight knit Apple
| circles.
|
| Variants of this principle is seen everywhere throughout
| their systems and architectural designs, thankfully
| backfiring often enough that Apple isn't taking over PC
| any time soon.
| esperent wrote:
| The downvotes were expected. I've found that anytime I
| say something critical of Apple downvotes are sure to
| follow.
|
| Even in technical threads were people are literally
| struggling to complete work because of Apple's attitude
| (my experience here mostly relates to support for 3d
| browser apis over the last decade) there's still a
| largely negative response to any perceived Apple
| criticism.
|
| I'm actually pleasantly surprised that my comment here is
| no longer downvoted. I guess HN folks are more savvy than
| typical web devs.
|
| To be honest I'm not sure I'm even criticizing Apple. I
| don't like it, for sure, and it makes my life harder, but
| it's clearly a sound business strategy that has served
| them well.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _There 's nothing surprising here, it's been Apple's
| style for the entire time I've been working in tech - 15
| years or so - to create formats that they control and
| preferably which only work on Apple devices._
|
| Assuming no intentional bias, it's personally hard for me
| to imagine how anyone could be in the industry for _that
| long_ and not understand Apple 's contributions to
| formats and other standards we take for granted.
|
| * Apple was the first major adopter and popularizer of
| now-de-facto standards like 3.5" floppy drives, USB, Wi-
| Fi, and DisplayPort, and additionally created (and gave
| away) DisplayPort Mini
|
| * Apple co-developed and popularized IEEE 1394
| (FireWire), USB-C, Thunderbolt, and USB 4
|
| * Apple created the ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF),
| which is the basis for MPEG-4 and many other time-based
| and image file formats
|
| * Apple popularized today's most popular compressed media
| formats, and will do the same for AV1 (with hardware
| decode in M3 and newer Macs today, and Apple TV soon)
|
| * Apple dropped a proprietary OS for the BSD-based OS
| used across their product line, from wearables, to
| mobile, to HMDs, to laptops/PCs
|
| * Apple used its open source WebKit to advance modern web
| standards, and are one of the few defenders against
| Google's near-total hegemony of web technologies
|
| * Apple's contributions to and investments in open-source
| technologies like Clang/LLVM and Swift have helped all
| developers directly and indirectly
|
| Using an as-yet-undocumented projection format to argue
| the opposite isn't super-persuasive, since Apple eats
| their own dog food (sometimes for years) before promoting
| it to an open, generalized industry standard (e.g.
| "QuickTime Movie" container format).
| spookie wrote:
| To be fair they forked KHTML to make WebKit. Even if they
| wanted, they needed to remain open source. Same with
| Blink (Chromium), a lot of shared history there. But that
| would take way too long to explain.
| steelbrain wrote:
| Thank you for posting this! It's very helpful. Just want to add
| a caveat for the reader. While resolution is important, the
| display technology matters just as much if not more. Pimax
| Crystal Super, for example uses QLED tech, so its backlit and
| its color accuracy, contrast will not be in the same ballpark
| as Apple Vision Pro which uses micro-OLED panels.
|
| A pixel, is not always a pixel. There's more to the story.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| remember when all the VR headsets were shitty and all the
| enthusiasts would say that resolution isnt the metric to use to
| judge VR headsets
|
| clowns
| dmix wrote:
| They were probably talking about games not using one like a
| desktop or to watch movies
| andybak wrote:
| You're confusing two different things and being obnoxious
| about it.
| rajnathani wrote:
| The Pixmax 12K OLED also looks really cool on their website,
| thanks for sharing about Pixmax (TIL).
| spookie wrote:
| Take a look at the company Varjo. They make a pretty good
| headset.
| mdswanson wrote:
| I've described what kind of video this camera is intended to
| capture: https://blog.mikeswanson.com/apples-mysterious-fisheye-
| proje...
| somethingsome wrote:
| Hey! Nice writeup, Just something is missing, some MPEG formats
| can encode this kind of video in OMAF specification.
|
| Edit: I'll certainly read the rest of the articles!
| mdswanson wrote:
| Thanks! Indeed, there are other formats (like OMAF) that
| describe some of this. In fact, I helped to author one a long
| while back called OPF.
| dagmx wrote:
| I just want to say that your analysis is great. I reference it
| whenever the discussion comes up about the technicalities of
| Apples solution.
| mdswanson wrote:
| Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| I guess the next step here is a video encoder that is natively
| recording spherical videos ?
|
| Any projection is bound to separate areas which could be
| compressed more efficiently together.
|
| A native stereoscopic spherical video encoder could improve
| compression even more, since side by side views are quite
| similar in general.
|
| Now that's an interesting problem to solve ! (and a very hard
| one probably)
| somethingsome wrote:
| It is developed in the mpeg standard already, there is a
| whole group of people for that from some years ;)
| astrange wrote:
| > A native stereoscopic spherical video encoder could improve
| compression even more, since side by side views are quite
| similar in general.
|
| Existing video formats already support this for interlacing,
| although you could also let inter-prediction refer to earlier
| parts of the same frame and get most of the benefit.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Did WWDC end up filling in any additional blanks from your
| article?
|
| Thanks!
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It has nothing on this
|
| https://www.kandaovr.com/Obsidian-Pro
|
| Panoramic photography for VR is on my bucket list although I have
| a huge list of other projects such as having a reliable camera-
| to-audience system for stereograms I shoot with another other
| camera from that company
|
| https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-ego
|
| Note there are cheap pano cameras too
|
| https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-3
|
| though my Uni has a resource center for that kind of thing and I
| can probably talk my way into borrowing one of the better ones.
|
| Stereo panos can be absolutely amazing on a consumer VR headset,
| I've greatly enjoyed crowd scenes from Paris such as in front of
| the Louvre and an observation deck on the Eiffel tower.
|
| The 3d economy more fundamentally needs some kind of photo-to-3d
| technology and that is going to take multiple photographs from
| different angles, a depth camera helps but in one shot it does
| not give you the pixels that are only visible on the L or the R
| channel in a stereogram because of obscuration.
|
| I've got a friend who makes 3-d models using a $265 million
| camera
|
| https://mastodon.social/@UP8/111915448546172624
|
| one thing we've talked about is where to get the missing pixels
| that aren't in any of the photographs, it's a tougher problem for
| him as a scientist than it is for me because he can't make stuff
| up.
| porphyra wrote:
| "Nothing on this" is an interesting way to put it. Two 8,160 x
| 7,200 large sensors has various pros and cons compared to eight
| APS-C 24 MP sensors. If you want panoramic field of view, the
| latter is awesome. If you want high resolution for stereo in a
| particular direction, you'd want the former.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The market has shown over and over again that viewers are
| indifferent to stereo movies. Sure I will watch an awful Star
| Wars movie on my Quest just because it is in 3d but I am just
| about the only one.
|
| Pano content in VR really is something new.
|
| Apple's lack of vision with the Vision Pro is shocking as is
| the arrogance that somehow a $3k headset will revive interest
| in something people wouldn`t pay an extra $5 for at the
| movies.
|
| With twice the memory and a desktop grade processor the AVP
| could trash the Quest 3 at immersive application but Apple is
| stuck on a backwards and conservative vision of mobile apps
| floating in the air - totally mundane sci-fi (Washuu had this
| in _Tenchi Muyo_ ) but a $3k headset has to do all, not just
| what one rich dude thinks is stylish.
|
| If you are doing any VR or AR work you realize memory for
| textures is terribly short and 'more pixels' is the road to
| nowhere.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| this camera is also used to create immersive environments,
| not only for watching "movies"
| Terretta wrote:
| The Alicia Keys demo in AVP is not a "stereo movie" and
| people didn't have the opportunity to hang with their
| favorite celebs in what feels like reality.
|
| Lots of as-well-made-as-able 3D "stereo" movies in Disney
| etc that work on AVP beautifully. None of those are the
| same "you are here now" sense as the Alicia Keys demo.
|
| Agree with you on Apple's seeming reluctance to empower a
| new UX/UI for the AVP affordances. Having a multi-window
| iPad strapped to your face is less compelling. Over the
| past 15 years one notices how much of iOS UI was invented
| by the market (pull down to refresh, for instance). Perhaps
| they want to see what people come up with for this.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> Perhaps they want to see what people come up with for
| this._
|
| Not going to happen without jailbreaking the locked-down
| VisionOS.
|
| Apple could choose to enable for 18 months, then
| integrate the best use cases into the platform.
| Terretta wrote:
| What would jailbreaking allow that couldn't be mocked up
| in AR mode instead of iPads-strapped-to-face mode?
|
| Yes, you'd have to have your various "apps" in your same
| "suite" app (like Microsoft ships Word, Excel,
| Powerpoint, inside Office for iPadOS), but third party
| apps wouldn't know your new UX/UI paradigm anyway.
| walterbell wrote:
| Integration with 3rd party devices, which Apple is
| refusing to do in the EU?
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| The market hasn't really shown that. It has shown that
| viewers are indifferent to FAKE 3-D movies, which is what
| studios troweled out as fast as they could... ruining a
| major opportunity.
|
| Most people have seen maybe three real 3-D movies from
| among: the Avatars, a Pixar movie, Hugo, The Hobbit, the
| Transformers one where they tore up Chicago, and... yeah,
| I'm hard-pressed to name another movie right now that was
| shot in 3-D... oh, and Drive Angry. Which no one saw.
|
| The vast majority of movies offered in "3-D" were post-
| processed junk.
| bag_boy wrote:
| Can you tell me more about pano content? What does that
| mean?
| galago wrote:
| I have a QoocamEgo and have found it pretty disappointing even
| at that price point. It takes about 30 seconds to start up,
| chews through battery quickly, and has poor autofocus. I set
| focus manually by guessing and then use "sport mode"
| (1/120second) otherwise it will use low shutter speeds which
| produce motion blur handheld. Also, even though it will shoot
| close up items, I've found that the offset is too great for
| most viewing scenarios. So, I would say composing images that
| include subjects 3m to infinity is about the best.
| somethingsome wrote:
| Having a user stuck in the center of the scene is what kills
| immersion in my opinion, but at the same time I develop free
| navigation systems for VR :)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Those two products are doing totally different jobs. This is
| great for events, VR, and so on.
|
| The BlackMagic design is aimed squarely at cinema use, where BM
| is already one of the industry standard platforms for color
| grading and increasingly for editing, and already highly
| respected for image acquisition. This matters because film
| distribution agreements increasingly mandate specific
| technologies for production to mitigate the risk of customer
| complaints abouts image quality.
|
| The 3d part of the camera is somewhat relevant for the cinema
| release market (and VR headset users who want to watch a movie
| in 3d...but I think this will remain a small market because
| wearing a helmet/goggles to watch a movie is inherently anti-
| social), but even if you never plan to release in 3d it's nice
| to be able to acquire that way for vfx purposes. Recording
| ground truth 3d information during acquisition is always going
| to be superior and cheaper to inferring it computationally from
| a monocular image.
| rramon wrote:
| I watch a decent amount amount of lower league football (soccer)
| and one of the main pains there are automated cameras that track
| the ball and move accordingly, often missing crucial moments due
| to latency.
|
| A setup with a fixed VR camera and a 180 FOV could totally
| transform the experience, because now with a VR headset I'd be
| the one tracking the ball with my head movements like in a real
| stadium.
|
| Many smaller local clubs suffer from low attendence due to local
| factors like people leaving the area, not having time or just
| bigger clubs playing at the same time.
|
| This could be overcome with global audiences and live VR
| recordings (where you're still able to move your head) and
| potentially be a nice source of income for many clubs selling
| virtual stadium tickets.
| ec109685 wrote:
| The veo camera does that. Quality isn't that great but because
| they buffer and capture a wide angle view of field, they can
| make it seem like a ball is being tracked by a moving camera.
| top_sigrid wrote:
| Or missing crucial moments because they mistake a referee's
| bald head for the ball:
| https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/11/3/21547392/ai-camera-o...
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Technically it's also two cameras in one and would allow for
| various option if it would be programmable. Like taking video and
| stills at the same time. Normal fps and slow mo. With attachments
| one could record two different angles. Macro attachment. Record
| 8k while streaming HD. But they never offer you a programmable
| camera system.
| jcarrano wrote:
| If the spacing between the lenses is equal to average human eyes,
| then that thing is huge!
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| In the behind the scenes video for Apple's "Submerged" film,
| the camera looks about the size of carry on luggage.
| consumer451 wrote:
| This was also posted on one of the best niche subs,
| r/cinematography.
|
| Here is that thread [0], with mostly professional takes. One
| interesting take-away:
|
| > I've pre-ordered one. Vision Pro sales will be around 1/2M at
| the one year mark, and there's a total of about 3 hours of
| immersive content available on the headset across every app right
| now.
|
| > That's a once in a lifetime content opportunity.
|
| [0]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/cinematography/comments/1hhvwfv/bla...
| dangus wrote:
| Or it could be the next 3D video, a gimmick that peaks and
| fades away quickly among the mass market.
|
| If you ask me, the Vision Pro's sales up to this point justify
| discontinuation. I think that Apple is only making investments
| in Vision Pro because they don't really have another long play
| for "the next great device form factor," and because Meta
| hasn't thrown in the towel yet Apple presumably refuses to sit
| back while Meta dominates marketshare for a specific type of
| app platform.
|
| I think that Apple and everyone else is very aware that VR/AR
| is more likely than not be close to the maximum user base.
| Meta's been doing everything it can to make the platform stay
| within impulse buy territory because they know it's not really
| a purchase that potential customers are going to seriously
| believe that they'll spend hours and hours every day using like
| a traditional game console or PC graphics card. Meta has to
| convince you to buy a device that they must certainly know from
| their own telemetry that users only interact with for a handful
| of hours every week.
|
| The only reason Apple is sticking with it is that it's a long
| term play and they have unlimited money. Or maybe because they
| refuse to give up until Meta gives up. They can't let Meta own
| a computing platform out of pure business ego.
| dannyw wrote:
| There was the Newton, PDAs, and Symbian phones before the
| iPhone.
|
| The technology might need another decade (or two), but I
| think it's very shortsighted to think VR/AR is close to its
| maximum user base.
| curiouscavalier wrote:
| Agreed. There's a lot of variables (and I think price is a
| big one). But, while slow, adoption in enterprise is
| showing signs that the basic concept has some legs. Even if
| the tech today needs some time to marinate.
|
| That said I also don't think we're are a time-local maxima
| of users either.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Back in the era of Palm Pilots and Blackberries, most
| people didn't have one, but the people who did have one
| tended to use them extensively every day. Today, most
| people don't have VR headsets, and most of the people who
| do are letting them collect dust on a shelf in their
| closet.
|
| In the first case you have a type of product that is
| evidently very useful but isn't ready for the general
| public. In the second case, you have a product that early
| adopters can't find a routine use for.
| scherlock wrote:
| There have been VR headsets since before there were PDAs.
| The first VR Headsets were made in the 80s by VPL
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPL_Research). This no where
| near being a new idea, this is a forty year old idea that
| gets a resurgence every 5 to 10 years then everyone
| remembers why it never caught on the last item. It is a
| niche consumer peripheral, but it has a lot of applications
| in professions such as Architecture, Engineering, Medicine,
| Aerospace, and Training. But those industries can probably
| only support one or two small manufacturers.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > * think that Apple and everyone else is very aware that
| VR/AR is more likely than not be close to the maximum user
| base.*
|
| Maybe for current device clunkiness and capabilities.
|
| I expect that would change if it could do a good job of
| replacing desk screens, or let people spend their commute
| staring at a hud instead of staring at a phone.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Everyone is trying to do that, but the tech just isn't
| there yet. We would need to double the resolution of the
| best VR headsets to be able to properly simulate 1920p
| screens at any reasonable distance.
|
| But at the same time everyone knows that the tech will get
| there eventually. A lot of current VR products seem to
| mostly exist to position companies to be able to exploit
| the market once the tech gets good enough.
| gpm wrote:
| Vision Pro, based on its name, its pricing, its marketing,
| the state of the OS/ecosystem at launch, and so on and so
| forth was never meant to "sell well". It is an early entrance
| and closer to a devkit than a typical apple consumer product.
| This was universally acknowledged (as far as anything is
| universally acknowledged) from the get go.
|
| It seems like that you could have made the conclusion that it
| should be discontinued before it went on the market if "poor
| sales" justifies that for this device.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| you're reading too much. pro in apple parlance only means
| "the most expensive of this model line".
| lupusreal wrote:
| "Everybody" wanted the first generation of iphone despite
| it being grossly deficient in numerous ways (OS/ecosystem,
| hardware, price, etc), even compared to the extant
| smartphones / blackberries of it's time. People overlooked
| all of those deficiencies because the premise of a
| smartphone that was one big capacitive touch screen was
| extremely compelling.
|
| With the Vision Pro, that kind of enthusiasm just isn't
| there. If it was going to be the next big thing, there
| would be a lot of hype for it even though its rough around
| the edges. The general public isn't rejecting the Vision
| Pro because it costs too much and has no apps, they're
| rejecting it because wearing a computer on their face isn't
| something they're interested in.
| theshackleford wrote:
| Most people I know are in fact rejecting it due to cost,
| and have instead settled for a Q3. You can get a second
| hand car here for what they want for a Vision Pro. It's
| too much even for the hardcore Apple fans I know for an
| unknown, hell, I'm into VR and have been for longer than
| I can remember now, I have the disposable income and it's
| STILL to much, even for me.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _Most people I know are in fact rejecting it due to
| cost, and have instead settled for a Q3_
|
| I don't know who you know, but I'd be very surprised if
| most of them have either of those..
| theshackleford wrote:
| Telling on myself but almost everyone I know plays
| games/works in IT. Yes, I am a man child surrounded by
| man children/women children I suppose.
|
| All up at least 10 current active VR users. Usage scale
| ranges from "an experience 3-4 times a year" to "years of
| daily active usage."
|
| Another mate joined just recently who is not really into
| gaming, but got a quest because he actually wanted a big
| tv/projector but it's not feasible living in shared
| housing. I actually told him not to, I just didn't think
| he would enjoy it, and despite enjoying jt myself, I
| actually don't promote it much to people I consider
| "normies"because I know it's niche and I don't think it
| really is for most people, but interestingly he has been
| really happy with it entirely for movies.
| AJRF wrote:
| >> was never meant to "sell well"
|
| Doubly crushing for Apple given it sold worse than their
| low expectations, they shut the production manufacturing
| and cut sales expectations from 800k to 400k.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I believe that the cinematographer who I was quoting has much
| more short-term practical goals.
|
| What he might be thinking is that there are 400k to 500k
| people who have already spent $3500 on a device which
| currently has no content. If he got 10% of them to "spend" $2
| on his short immersive video experience, that would cover the
| cost of the camera + shoot + profit, in his first successful
| attempt.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| You could also say those stats show there is no market. How
| many owners are even MAU anymore? Most VR headsets collect
| dust after the initial wow phase passes and you run out of
| content.
|
| How much are you spending on marketing to reach those
| users?
| consumer451 wrote:
| Those are entirely good points.
|
| However, the reason that I put "spend" in scare quotes
| was that it might be the case the these indie immersive
| content creators get their content subsided, or bought
| outright, by either Apple or some content app maker.
|
| source: 100% supposition by someone who has never owned a
| VR headset.
| jfengel wrote:
| I hope he finds what he's looking for. We've been fumbling
| about to find a visual language that really clicks for VR
| storytelling. It feels like there ought to be one, and if
| he can find it, it can be as huge as moving pictures.
|
| As it is right now it feels like those early days of film,
| which seem incredibly awkward because they didn't know how
| to use it to tell a story. But they were clearly casting
| about for something they knew was there. It just took a
| while to find.
| dagmx wrote:
| > the Vision Pro's sales up to this point justify
| discontinuation
|
| What are you basing this on though? From all accounts they're
| pretty close to selling the number of units they could
| manufacture.
| dangus wrote:
| I'm basing this on reports that it has not crossed the
| million unit sales number. Possibly just barely crossing
| the 500,000 mark right about now.
|
| These are sales that are on par with the Nintendo Virtual
| Boy.
|
| And if they can't manufacture any more than that, they have
| an even bigger problem.
|
| It's now been a year and a half since the first model was
| announced and there is no sign of a second model to move
| the product into a more mass appeal device.
|
| We saw critical follow-ups like the iPhone 3G and Apple
| Watch Series 1/2 come out as quick releases that were in
| retrospect very important to establishing a practical
| device that a regular person might consider buying. I think
| the fact that we haven't seen one yet is a huge problem.
|
| If Apple couldn't make another leap in a calendar year it's
| clear that they will never catch up to Meta. Meta is out
| there selling a gazillion Quest 3S bundles to your local
| Costco impulse buyer.
| dagmx wrote:
| I suspect your expectations for sales are much loftier
| than Apple's.
|
| The million sales mark was from one single report by Kuo.
| Kuo himself previously said they were limited to ~900K
| display units which is ~450K devices and other analysts
| have said the same.
|
| There is no other source saying 1M was the target that I
| know of that doesn't trace back to Kuo. If they are at
| ~500K units then they've exceeded the initial sales
| target that Kuo himself laid out.
|
| For your second point about a follow up, you're comparing
| product announcement to product launches. The product
| itself only launched 10months ago. You're expecting a
| second iteration within 10 months, of an entirely new
| product class for them ? Meanwhile other more popular
| Apple products often go longer between releases. Even
| Meta are around two years between products within a
| device class.
|
| Your last point of comparing to a meta quest is misplaced
| too. They're different classes of the same device
| category. There's no way Apple are expecting to compete
| with a device a tenth of its price for total sales.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| But the products are not 10x different in quality and
| especially there is not 10x more content on the AVP than
| the Quest
| dmix wrote:
| Plenty of people made tons of money off 3D. Way more than 30k
| Kwpolska wrote:
| People made money off 3D thanks to 3D cinemas. 3D glasses
| are cheap, often disposable. VR headsets are expensive and
| clunky, I doubt we're going to see VR cinemas with
| comparable capacity.
| omoikane wrote:
| Will this one have a global shutter or a rolling shutter? The
| tech specs doesn't seem to say either way.
| knifie_spoonie wrote:
| Definitely a rolling shutter. I think no word on the readout
| speed yet, but I've seen 12ms quoted for the 12K LF sensor.
| kiernan wrote:
| Which formats or types of devices would give you the best ability
| to attempt to future-proof the capture of (relatively low short-
| term value) home videos of random family moments?
| sbochins wrote:
| Seems like a strange thing to be building around. Lots of money
| has gotten into VR and it has been around for a while now. It has
| never gotten out of the geek niche and likely won't. It's the
| only way I play games nowadays and wish it would gain wider
| traction. But, I'm very pessimistic about normies buying these
| headsets and watching these VR videos.
| jsiepkes wrote:
| Meanwhile I still can't even buy the Vision Pro itself in the
| Netherlands.
|
| Sure, I could get one from Germany. However I did that with a
| Google Pixel 6 Pro and that turned out to be hell when I needed
| to claim warranty on it. Which required an address in Germany. So
| I'm not really inclined to go down that road again.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Maybe this is a dumb question but why can't you just record video
| with two iPhones evenly spaced with some kind of jig and
| synchronized the video output to get something usable for a 3D
| video?
| kazinator wrote:
| The lenses are too close together for serious 3D. Like say you
| want to stereoscopically shoot a cityscape from a highrise
| building. A couple of inches of separation won't do anything; you
| need the cameras a few feet apart.
|
| What's the point of integrating two cameras into one unit, when
| you can just capture with two cameras. It's a software problem.
| Tepix wrote:
| You eyes provide decent 3d, don't they?
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