wwp@yahoogroups.com:
Re: how to proceed?
Yahoo Account 2009-Sep-23 21:51:00
Hello Caroling,
I've been away for a while, working on my panorama. I'll try and get this sorted out now.
At the moment, the best way to add a cylindrical pano to the WWP is to upload "both kinds" of files:
1) for the visitors with Flash player, use a JPEG with no black borders, i.e. a cropped strip, 8000 x (whatever height it has) pixels. Then set the Flash/Jpeg configurator to "Cylinder".
2) for the visitors using Quicktime, upload a small and large MOV file "as usual". The 8000 pixels limit does not apply to MOVs.
>From: Caroling Geary <#removed#>
>To: wwp <#removed#>
>Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 9:05:06 PM
>Subject: how to proceed?
>
>>Why do I configure just for Flash? O probably for those who upload a
>>separate QuickTime. I did both the regular and interactive
>>configuring.
The reason why the tilt and zoom limits have no effect is because a "cylinder in an equirect frame" is - seen from the Flash player - simply a spherical panorama, but the setting was "Cylinder" - and for cylinders, flash is told to decided by itself.
For the black borders to disappear, you'll have to use one of the following to settings:
A) - use a "cylinder in an equirect", set the type to "Spherical" and set vertical limits for the tilt angles.
OR B) - use "cylinder only", set the type to "Cylinder". The flash player will automatically limit the tilt angles.
"Mixing" (i.e. a spherical canvas with the "Cylinder" setting) will not give the desired vertical limits.
I've switched the setting to "Spherical", and now the vertical limits work like they should.
>>The full screen version is pretty good although the panning
>>is somewhat jerky. The opening view is set correctly. So my problems
>>are that the standard size needs sharpening and the tilt limits and
>>zoom seem to have no effect, I can tilt and zoom into blackness.
Can you upload a cylinder version (i.e. no black areas on top and bottom) and then switch the type to "Cylinder"? A fresh upload like that will remove all the "automated" files which at the moment are based on the "Cylinder-in-a-sphere" source file. Once the new conversion has finished (I'm going to start it some time around midnight as seen from the U.S. - or "8 in the morning" in Europe), the flash player result should be better.
>>When configuring, I read that "pre-cropped" cylinders should auto-
>>configure. What is that? The instructions say that all JPEGs should
>>be equirects so what is "pre-cropping" ?
Oops, I have missed out on updating the "best practice" text. My bad! It's fixed now.
Yes, equirects are "preferred", but the last update of the krpano flash player has learned how to handle cylinders as well (even if it doesn't like very large cylinders yet - the 8190 pixels limit still applies - and it can't read them from MOV containers). "Pre-cropping" simply means that the photographer has removed (or not added) the black borders to pad the image to equirect ratio.
Sadly, I don't have an automated workflow for making cylindrical panoramas - all the tools which I've strung together to make it work (PanoTools, Pano2VR and others) only know how to handle or output spherical MOVs, that's why I've changed the how-to now to "please provide cylindrical MOVs in addition to the JPEG file." Yes, that's rather lazy, but I can't for the life of me think of a way to make it work. Years ago, I used MakePanorama (the little drag-and-drop tool from Apple), but it dates back to MacOS 9, and doesn't work under MacOS X on Intel.
-Markus