Otimal Fullscreen Settings ?

[visual360media]

Hi all, just starting to use the latest software and want to get my head around the settings for flash
output. I have an image that was taken a couple of days ago and am looking to use the best settings i can.
At the moment the image looks good (to me) in photoshop. I have stitched and sharpened and altered
the white balance a little but when on screen in a flash 9 movie it looks a little grainy. Can anyone advise me
on the settings i should be using to get the best out of this software. What image size should be used for a fullscreen
movie and any other advice welcome. Its not up yet but will be in a coulple of days. I know flash isnt near as good as Qt
but i would like to get it best i can, thanks,

John Goulding.

[360Texas]

Hi John, without seeing the image being displayed in Flash 9 its a little bit hard to assess "it looks a little grainy". I know what film grain is... with a digital camera its equivelent is called "noise".

Usually, I shoot 4 raw images, convert to 16bit TIF, stitch to a 16bit output TIF file. The stitched image is usually around 90mb give or take a few pixels. In Pano2vr, I open this 90mb 16bit TIFF in Pano2VR. Select FLASH. And here is something I learned last year, the TILE size controls the QUALITY. So I use around 1400 pixels tile size. If you use 500 pixels tile size your image gets real degraded. 1000 is better quality, you start seeing detail in grass, tree bark. 1400 image quality dispalys more image detail. 2400 yes, LOTS of detail.. but also your overall file size starts to grow too.

The FILE SIZE is also controlled by "compression". So I adjusted the 4 (Left, Back, Right, Front)tile face to around 80% and the top or "sky" I make 35% so it won't show the blue banding or pixelation and bottom tile face floor or ground I make about 30%. When I create the Flash.. I usually produce a Flash .swf that is around 1.5mb. If it is to big.. like 3mb... then adjust the 4 tile faces from 80% to say 75 or 70%. There is a break point where the file size will change from say 3mb to 1.5mb. It might even be 65%.

Just have to tweak the 4 tile face compression %'s. Idea is to NOT over compress. So try 85,80,75,70% gradually until the file size is around 1.5mb.

Another adjustment value that sometimes causes vertical striations (vertical lines) during rotation is the rotation speed. Rotation value is 0.0x where X is degrees per second. Value of 1.0 means draw the screen 1 time and rotate image 1 degree and draw the screen, rotate the image 1 degree refresh image and so on. This can be equated to onion skin flip pages in the paper world. The default is 0.40 or 4/10ths of 1 degree which is way to fast for my taste. Suggest slowing rotation down to say 0.20 or 2/10ths of 1 degree. Generally the slower the speed the smoother the rotation. Don't want it to go to slow your visitor goes to sleep.

Also I am not sure, but I think on older machines before Pentium 4's panorama image rotation was generally ok at 0.2. No head whip lash trying to watch the image rotate. However, with faster cpu's and cpu's on graphic cards, the refresh rate is faster.. so .2 will appear to fast.. and .1 will have to be used. I was looking back at some of my Flash 9 and 8 panorama work today on the Texas Trail of Fame pages. I created those with Pentium 4 machine. Using our new Intel Quad Core and .2 was actually too fast for me.

http://360texas.com/virtualtour/texas/s ... change.htm Red/white stars are panoramas.

[visual360media]

Cheers Dave,

Some good tips there that i will print and keep with all my other notes.
Yes my image seems noisy but was shot indoors in a white painted wall garage.
Its the white walls giving me probs (to me). I have followed your work for a year or so on panoguide
and you always give great advice. Your photo skills prob better than mine. I have played about with the settings
but maybe i should go back to photoshop and start over. Not sure if i have over sharpened. ISO was at around 400.The
Indoor white walls seem a little 'dirty' and the image seems worse when it moves. I can always upload the original for you if
you fancy takin a look, otherwise i will plod on, oh and those old pentium 4's, i am still on one now which is why it takes me hours
upon hours to edit and stitch etc, time for an upgrade me thinks,

thanks for the help,

John.

[visual360media]

Mmmm, got me thinkin maybe it is my old pc and graphics card not helpin, as my work always seems to
look better on clients monitors and equipment ! Will upload and see what ya think.

Cheers,

John.

[360Texas]

Takes hours to process ?

With a Quad core duo 6600.. a 5000 x 2000 16bit image stitches in PTgui in 57 seconds to a 90+mb 16bit tif . Have done so repeatably so I know the all 4 cpu's are working hard.

With regards to noise.... not sure what camera or lens you are using.. but 400 might be too high ISO. The Canon 5d full 35mm sensor can be ISO set to 50. Suggest setting yours back to ISO 100. If you can not reshoot the scene.. in photoshop you can use the blur or smudge tool to blend those noisy dots together. My Canon 20d is a bit noisy too and thats how I fix the noise.

Over sharpening can also cause white trace line halo's around high contrast black on white objects. Reduce the sharpening affect until the halo's are gone

[visual360media]

Well, not hours to stitch, just me playin around in and out of software takes hours, before the pc hangs!

Cant really go back, (can, but i wont look good! Client is impressed just seeing the image move around! )
forgot to alter iso from shooting other work
Thanks for the tip, will try the other tools in Photoshop,

cheers,

John G.