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Every recent 360 Pano has failed to stitch the horizon correctly, M2P

scubaddictions

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All,

Last week I was out capturing 360 Panos of a few local dive sites with the M2P. Generally my luck with them has been a bit hit-or-miss. Usually have success with land shots without a hard line horizon, such as where the ocean meets the sky. That day though, all misses. Not a single well stitched horizon. All were stitched in-drone. I believe some were screwed up by taking the shots at low altitude near the shore line, the changing position of the surf line threw off the stitch of the horizon. Cropped shot below:

DJI_0764 (2).jpg


It'd be nice if the built-in software would try to stitch the horizon first and blend outwards from there, but here we are.

However, even at a higher altitude where the surf line is insignificant the horizon still got butchered:

DJI_0067 (2).jpg


On my Spark, I noticed that I'd usually end up with badly stitched horizons if my gimbal wasn't perfectly calibrated. I'm make a manual correction (usually just a degree or two of roll) and it would be much improved. On the M2P though that didn't seem to make a difference, at least not on this day. Set it perfectly to the horizon and the 360s still managed to screw up.

I even checked the raw images saved while capturing the 360. The shots that were primarily shot of the ocean/sky horizon were noticeably skewed. After trying to manually straighten the individual shots with a hard-line horizon and applying a camera lens correction, I didn't have any luck stitching using Microsoft ICE.

Other pictures taken that day don't appear skewed, only those 360 shots.

Any ideas why? Too much wind and the gimbal wasn't given enough time to settle down amidst the pre-programmed 360 capture? Some other gimbal calibration beyond a manual visual correction?

I'm going to try to see if I can salvage the final shots, try to manually correct the horizon and blend things a bit.

Thoughts?
 
I have taken quite a few panos and I get this same issue about 1 out of 20 times. I usually attribute it to wind but I am not completely sure. I do know that moving objects will make the stitching very difficult especially when the motion is near one of the picture boundaries.
 
All,

Last week I was out capturing 360 Panos of a few local dive sites with the M2P. Generally my luck with them has been a bit hit-or-miss. Usually have success with land shots without a hard line horizon, such as where the ocean meets the sky. That day though, all misses. Not a single well stitched horizon. All were stitched in-drone. I believe some were screwed up by taking the shots at low altitude near the shore line, the changing position of the surf line threw off the stitch of the horizon. Cropped shot below:

View attachment 103528


It'd be nice if the built-in software would try to stitch the horizon first and blend outwards from there, but here we are.

However, even at a higher altitude where the surf line is insignificant the horizon still got butchered:

View attachment 103530


On my Spark, I noticed that I'd usually end up with badly stitched horizons if my gimbal wasn't perfectly calibrated. I'm make a manual correction (usually just a degree or two of roll) and it would be much improved. On the M2P though that didn't seem to make a difference, at least not on this day. Set it perfectly to the horizon and the 360s still managed to screw up.

I even checked the raw images saved while capturing the 360. The shots that were primarily shot of the ocean/sky horizon were noticeably skewed. After trying to manually straighten the individual shots with a hard-line horizon and applying a camera lens correction, I didn't have any luck stitching using Microsoft ICE.

Other pictures taken that day don't appear skewed, only those 360 shots.

Any ideas why? Too much wind and the gimbal wasn't given enough time to settle down amidst the pre-programmed 360 capture? Some other gimbal calibration beyond a manual visual correction?

I'm going to try to see if I can salvage the final shots, try to manually correct the horizon and blend things a bit.

Thoughts?

Any chance that your computer is not fast enough how does it handle 4K footage , smooth or choppy when editing it
 
Usually when this happens to me I manually straighten the problem images in PTGui. It is often the result of wind moving the drone around and the software not being able to create and match control points. Panos over water are difficult especially if there is water motion.

Chris
 
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Usually when this happens to me I manually straighten the problem images in PTGui. It is often the result of wind moving the drone around and the software not being able to create and match control points. Panos over water are difficult especially if there is water motion.

Chris

I'm going to give it a try, I haven't yet used PTGui but I've just downloaded a trial version. Paid version is a little spendy, especially for the version that handles AEB shots directly. Any idea if it ever goes on sale?
 
I got bad stitching in the pano straight out of my M2P occasionally. Microsoft ICE is better and is FREE. Left is the crop of pano produced by the drone, right is that by ICE :

DJI vs ICE stitching.jpg
 
Last edited:
Any suggestions for a good stitching app that will work on an iPad?
 
I'm going to give it a try, I haven't yet used PTGui but I've just downloaded a trial version. Paid version is a little spendy, especially for the version that handles AEB shots directly. Any idea if it ever goes on sale?
I have never seen it go on sale. I find it pricey too. I have the regular version but have been trying out the Pro version. Since I already have the regular version, it would cost almost $200CAN for me to upgrade. I do like the 360 HDR pano function and since I only have two low end drones (Spark and P3S), the automatic tone mapping appeals to me. I’m going to do some more testing to see if I like the results. Was out earlier today and shot two 360 HDR panos.- just have assemble them.

Chris
 
I have a mavic pro 1 and have had the same issues. I use lightroom to stitch the photos, and get good results.
 
I wouldn't bother using an ipad for this type of work, better to use a laptop or computer.

An ipad is great as a type of 'digital magazine' for browsing, but its not a productivity device.
An interesting comment because my iPad is more powerful than the majority of laptops and many desktops and can render 4K video seamlessly. A decent stitching program would easily run on it. Your comment is not based on facts but thanks for your opinion.
 
I found the easiest way to do it was on the PC by downloading the files and using a different editor. Microsoft's Image Composite Editor works very well, it's free but that's Windows only. Photoshop of course works well too.
 
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