Add an immersive effect to your timelapse with the spherical pan & zoom

With Panolapse360

This fairly simple tool allows you to animate panoramic time lapses by extracting a classic or fisheye view from a panorama. Because the orientation of such a view can change over time, it is possible to create the illusion of a camera rotating and/or zooming during the shooting.

Note: this working mode may require a lot of disk space for large projects.

Image conversion

As we have been able to detail in other blog articles[How to correct the horizon of a timelapse made with Tikee ?], Tikee does not generate a complete panoramic. However, Panolapse360 does not accept partial panoramas (in v1.20).

The first step is to integrate each Tikee image into a larger equirectangular image, a bit like we were able to do in the previous article[How to correct the horizon of a timelapse made with Tikee ?].

For this, you can use the “Batch conversion” feature of the “XnConvert“.

Multiple conversion in XnConvert

First add the folder containing the renamed images, specify the output folder, and go to the tab “Actions” > “Add action” > “Image”.

Multiple conversion

Add the action “Reframing“, specify 6960×3480* px as dimensions for a source that is 4260×1534 px. You can then click on “Lancer” to trigger batch conversion.
*to be adapted according to the initial resolution of the sequence with the formula: HEIGHT = ORIGINAL_HEIGHT/0.441 and WIDTH =2*HEIGHT

Choose to export the images in a new folder in jpg format to ensure compatibility with Panolapse360. 

To avoid possible quality losses, you can change the compression options in the “General” tab of the batch conversion tool.

Image loading

When launching Panolapse, click on “Import photos“. The software will then ask you for the type of input image, and the type of view you want to output (“Fisheye” or “Normal“).

Panolapse : home screen

Panolapse : sequence selection

The type of output view “Fisheye” allows to have a wider field of view at the price of a slight distortion. No need to enter the focal length or crop factor at this step as we use a type of view “Equirectangular“.

View modification

Once your sequence is imported, you get an interface as follows:

Panolapse : editing interface

In 1 the view and edit window of the view. You can change the view by clicking in it, zooming with the wheel, or changing the roll angle with a right click (or Ctrl+click).
En 2 the list of frames in your sequence with their orientation and focal length.

Select the first frame (see <2) and move the current view by clicking in the view and moving the cursor.

Panolapse: editing a view, first frame

Once you are satisfied, select (and check) the last frame of the timelapse and choose the desired orientation.

Panolapse: editing a view, last frame

You can then see that the software has interpolated the views in the video by clicking on the button “Preview“.

You can add other key frames in the same way for more complex movements. You can also check “Enable zoom” to have an additional degree of freedom on the views you can have. Don’t forget to check that the frame of your interpolated view does not leave the area defined by your image. To do this, you can select any frame in the list to update the view.

Video generation

When you are satisfied with your virtual camera movement in the timelapse, click on “Export frames…“.

Panolapse : Video export

Select the output resolution of the video (limited to 720p in free version), as well as the output folder, and click on “Queue for render“. The final step, “Render all” will generate all frames of the video in the output folder and the video file. Here is the final video generated:

With Adobe Premiere Pro

For this part we will start from the project created in the previous article[How to correct the horizon of a timelapse made with Tikee ?]. We then obtained a sequence named “FullFrame_horizon“.

Sequence with corrected horizon

Because we are looking to create a video in a classic format (such as HD 1080p for example), we will create a blank sequence in this format.

Adobe Premiere Pro : sequence creation

Slide the sequence “FullFrame_horizon” existing in this sequence and apply the plugin “GoPro VR Reframe”.

Adobe Premiere Pro : Plugin GoPro VRrame

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You see then that the view has changed, we have gone from a sequence in equirectangular format to a fisheye type sequence. This plugin interpole between a normal view for a pronounced zoom and a fisheye view for a wide shot.

In the plugin settings, you have access to the angles “Yaw/Pitch/Roll” to control your view.

You can also navigate by clicking in the view (possibly by holding down Ctrl).

The angle management in this plugin is not as intuitive as in Panolapse. We recommend that you first adjust the “Yaw“, then alternate between “Pitch” and “Roll” to get the desired view.

If you want the view to change during the video, you must click on the “stopwatches” to the left of each of the angles and the FOV. This activates change by key points. You can then navigate in the timeline and adjust the settings to your convenience, key points will be automatically added.

Adobe Premiere Pro : configuration with key frames

Setting the parameter “smooth transition” at 100%, you will obtain more fluid and natural transitions.

For export, it’s the same as usual, click on your sequence and press <Ctrl>+<M> to display the export window. Or File > Export > Media.

Adobe Premiere Pro : Sequence export

Final video generated: