HDR Wireless Live streaming(Flow Tours) - 4K resolution in YouTube Live

how hot is in there in the office?

It’s cool. I’m going out to lunch. Stream is at 54 minutes. No problems.

image

1 Like

Could you share the temperature please approx.? Are you using any air conditioning device is there an open window, any airflow in the office? Thabks,looks great and in h.265 streamed to my own platform it looks even better…

likely about 25C in air-conditioned office. No open windows.

Error Code: CAPTURE_HW_FAILED

image

I checked DCIM and there was no video recording, so I’m assuming that the settings are accurate

Thanks for sharing, Craig! This is a good result, as camera was a bit hot when started!
Around 23°C or less it could work for hours, much of a difference actually those 2°C difference.

Of course in same room in same quality as Ricohs live streaming plugin, my could stream for 24h and on 24FPS vs 12FPS on Ricohs.

I was able to make streaming run on Theta X in 4k, 30fps, but only using android.hardware.Camera class, I’m facing with some serious issues with camerax.jar like Ricoh did not implemetn it 100% all methods like in android.hardware.camera , some surface methods are missing. :frowning:

I was able to improve significantly heating issues at Theta X… it sohuld be able to record or stream for 20 minutes at least with my plugin.

@craig ,
in Theta X, when I use android.hardware.Camera class I’ve a preview, stream, all works, but I can’t select the camera preview with stitching, I guess that’s why Ricoh created another class abstract, but when I replace it with theta360.hardware.Camera or com.theta360.pluginlibrary.factory.Camera; I get next error when I run:
I/CameraControl: InitCamera 1
D/CameraControl: cameracontrol open():false
W/ow.hdrstreamin: CheckJNI: method to register “setPreviewSurfaceWithFlag” not in the given class. This is slow, consider changing your RegisterNatives calls.
E/ow.hdrstreamin: ----- class ‘Ltheta360/hardware/Camera;’ cl=0x159ca3e8 -----
objectSize=284 (224 from super)
access=0x8008.0001
super=‘java.lang.Class<java.lang.Object>’ (cl=0x0)
vtable (6 entries, 11 in super):
0: void theta360.hardware.Camera.F()
1: void theta360.hardware.Camera.G(android.graphics.SurfaceTexture)
2: void theta360.hardware.Camera.H()
3: void theta360.hardware.Camera.finalize()
4: void theta360.hardware.Camera.setPreviewSurface(android.view.Surface)
5: void theta360.hardware.Camera.startPreview()

Seems like methods setPreviewSurfaceWithFlag and setPreviewSurface are not in camera class

Thanks for this information. We will report back to RICOH.

BTW, when I played the recorded file from HDR Wireless Live streaming plug-in, I was not able to play the file in 360 view initially. I added meta data with this tool and can now play it in VLC.

Releases · google/spatial-media · GitHub

1 hour 8 minute video file

Windows Movies and TV player

2 Likes

thanks, Craig!

For now spatial metadata can’t be there at Z1…

In camera video at Theta X contains correct spatial metadata, so it can be uploaded right away to YouTube, right?

Thanks!

I didn’t try the HDR Wireless Live Streaming plug-in with the X.

If you’re referring to the video taken with the WebAPI, the metadata for 360 video is included in both the X and the Z1. I think it is fairly straightforward to add the metadata for ProjectionType: equirectangular to the files.

spatial-media/docs/spherical-video-rfc.md at master · google/spatial-media · GitHub

Hi,
my plugin doesn’t run yet on X. Im doing some changes on my machine, the version in store is for z1 only.

About spatial metadata, I wasreferring to videos recorded by Z1, when I upload to youtibe arent recognized as 360, so metadata injection is neeeded. Also you had to inject spatial for recorded video with my plugin…

Im not sure what is required by youtube, is it enough to set global metadata for an mp4 file prior uploading or local metadata is needed? This second takes lot of time as whole mp4 is processed and saved to another file.

Im not sure how webapi does this actually. Can i execute from my plugin directly a webapi command to set spatial metadata to a file I just recorded and saved with my plugin?

Do you know if global metadata is enough for youtube to detect video as 360?

Is it possible that now Theta desktop app adds correct metadata to recorded videos so once stitched it will be detected as 360 by YouTube?

Thanks!

@craig,
I checked most of mp4 and metadata specifications and there is a gap currently. I know it’s straight forward to use a tool or even by code a solution to add correct spatial metadata information to recorded videos in Z1. The problem is that it requires reencoding of complete file… This is quite time consuming, so I was searching for solution to avoid this. There is only 1 potential library that I could look at, but my initial tests were failing to make it work in Z1. I may need to customize whole library… Clearly my goal would be to get from Z1:

  1. video that we could upload directly to YouTube, by simply adding required metadata to video file
  2. add metadata that is required for Ricoh Theta desktop app to do video stitching for video files that are recorded by my own plugin. Here, I think will still miss sensor data, but I may be able to find that as will if I have infinite time available :slight_smile:

Can your plugin record the long 1 hour plus videos without a network connection? I think some people want to overcome the artificial 25 minute duration of the Z1 videos.

image

image

It seems like there is enough storage on the Z1 51GB to save it for 110 minutes, but the camera will stop the video at 25 minutes.

You may be able to get even longer videos by reducing the file size with a different compression or bitrate.

yes, @craig , it can record much longer. The version in store currently can record in h.264 and h.265, without stitching , in dual fisheye mode it can record much longer. But in a 23-24°C room should record for more than an hour in 24FPS and HDR quality. Stitching isn’t perfect in HDR mode, doing my best to improve that later. In regular non HDR mode, regular Ricoh’s stitching is used and in non HDR it can record even longer, less heat is generated.

That 5 minutes per recording is really in place currently?

The max is 25 minutes.

There are two settings, 5 minutes (default) and 25 minutes. A normal camera user cannot record longer than 25 minutes. It is a problem for some people.

How would an videographer (not developer) stitch the dual-fisheye video into equirectangular format so that they could upload to YouTube or Facebook?

For the videos taken with the camera using the WebAPI, the official desktop application from RICOH can stitch the video. However, this may not work with the video from your plug-in.

Is it possible to test the save-video-to-camera-storage function without a Wi-Fi connection?

I’m looking for best but there are tools like Mistika VR, that can do stitching. Ptgui pro vbersion may be importat to create a custom stitching parameter file and that can be reused after… so it sohuld be a one time task. Mistika can also do optical flow stabilization. I can imagine a HDR recorded h.265 encoded video and wondering how good it would look like? I think this would look great!
Do you know someone who could help with this workflow? :slight_smile:

For now not as I want to control usage of my plugin, so to start recording, for now Z1 has to be connected to a network. BUT to start in RECORDING mode its enough to have a very pure network, just to connect to flow.tours and pull configuration data…

Also in dual fisheye it can record 30FPS too,(or more, experimental although).

IMO, pulling configuration data from your system is a good feature as it may allow you to charge a reasonable amount for your hard work in development.

However, your user may want a couple of different scenarios:

  • may not have bandwidth onsite to have a good experience with the stream. If the resolution of the stream is lower, isn’t the resolution of the saved file also lower?
  • may have some issues configuring client mode network from the Z1 onsite at someplace like an live event hall

@biviel Based on the video views, it seems like this is interest in your plug-in. Are you getting analytics from the RICOH Plug-in Store on your plugin downloads?

image

Ive a solution for offline useg after an online activation by saving a uniquekey to local system storage of the plugin… like for 30 days or longer. This isn’t there yet in this version. I would love to see people starting to use this plugin and will do decisions accordingly.

Where can I see number of downloads of my plugin? I wasn’t aware of this…thanks!

Did you get an email about the analytics when you joined the partner program?

image

I just checked it today and it still works.

1 Like