LARRY JORDAN
resolutions – 3840 x 1920 pixels or 4096 x 2048 pixels. Both of these work out to be close to a 5K image because of the amount of resolution necessary to fill the inside of a sphere, which effectivelymeans that VR files are about four times bigger than a similar-duration HD file. Because of this you need to plan for lots of storage capacity when you’re looking to edit VRmaterial. If you’re happy looking at equirectangular images then you can begin editing immediately, but for the majority of us that would prefer to see an image that’s more like a scene from real life, a further degree of editing is necessary. 4 Choose View > Show in Viewer > 360° and a second viewer appears, which allows you to click and drag inside the image to see the different areas within it. At this point you can start editing. Keep inmind that you are editing the entire contents of a sphere. Concepts such as zooming in, for example, don’t work, because as you zoom in on an image in the front you are also changing the images on the side and back. Bear inmind that editing VR is entirely different from editing standard video. We are still working out the ‘grammar’ of VR editing. Cuts are less frequent, while zooms are avoided. Youmove the camera less and the talent more. Creating a VRmovie is more like staging a live theatre-in-the-round production than the short, rapid pace of traditional film shooting and editing. However, as far as Final Cut is concerned, the process of editing is exactly the same. Edit a clip into the timeline, add the next clip and then trim the edit points in-between. Cuts and dissolves work fine, while wipes won’t work at all. Watch your footage 5 If you have a VR headset, such as the HTC Vive VR, Final Cut can simultaneously display video to the computer monitor and the headset. To do this, you’ll also need to upgrade to High Sierra and install SteamVR on a recent 27-inch iMac.
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Otherwise, you can use the on- screen controls tomove around the frame to be sure your programme is cutting together the way you want. There are also keyboard shortcuts, but the mouse is faster. Add titles and effects 6 One of the problems with 360° VR is that normal titles and effects don’t work because they assume the image is flat, not curved. The screen shot here illustrates what happens if you put flat text into a spherical VR movie. It’s ugly. 7 This image is one of the new titles in FCP X specifically designed for 360° images. 8 An issue is hiding the tripod. In normal video you never see the tripod because the camera shoots straight ahead. In VR or 360° filming, however, the camera shoots everything, so we need to hide this element. 9 There’s a new effect that ships with FCP X 10.4 called 360° Patch. This essentially clones a piece of the image and puts it on top of the tripod, making it effectively disappear. You can adjust position, size and feathering tomake the blend as invisible as possible. Obviously, this won’t work if you’re moving the camera as part of the scene, but it’s highly effective when the camera is stationary.
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Third-party effects There are already a number of third-party effects appearing that support 360° video in Final Cut Pro X. These include an improved image stabiliser from Re:Vision Effects, a 360° toolbox from FXFactory and stock VR footage from Pond 5. Other titles will follow shortly. In fact, using stock VR footage is a great way to experiment with this new format without investing in a camera. Once you decide you like working this way, the sky’s the limit – we are all still figuring how best to use this newmedium to tell stories and share experiences. More information https://larryjordan.com Apple has published an excellent white paper covering HDR in FCP X: https://images.apple.com/final-cut- pro/docs/Wide_Color_Gamut.pdf
TOP FCP X can simultaneously display video to a computer monitor and headset. ABOVE Hiding the tripod in stationary footage can be achieved using a cloning tool, 360° Patch.
BELOW FCP X includes titles designed to work with and look good when applied to 360° footage.
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SPRING 2018 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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