Pano not stitching

[Feather Ridge]

I tried several times to do the 360 pano. It’s suppose to stitch but doesn’t. Not sure what I’m fouling wrong. On one, I show all the files in a pano file but don’t know how to stitch them. Am I doing something wrong?

 

[BingErr]

If you have a PC you could try Microsoft ICE. Free program to stitch photos and I actually prefer it to any other program. Really easy to drag and drop pics and manipulate the pano when you're done.

Here's a very old video I made when I was making tiny planets with the Spark 360 pano function. Should still be the same concept no matter what drone you're using.

 

[THE CYBORG]

I had a go at the Sphere the other day.

If I look at it on my tablet when the Mavic is connected I can move around the picture, its like interactive.
I look at the file on the SD card as mentioned above and everything is great.
When I copy everything from the SD card to my PC I lose the interactive file.
I then used DJI Media Maker and stitched it all together, I now have the interactive movement back but now it only works if I view it on the internet.

Is there a way to save this to a PC so I can move around in the image ?

 

[lilewis]

Look in your media folder on the memory card (set the file view to large icon). You should see a pano file (kind of scrunched) up with a strange perspective. That IS your pano all ready for you to upload to FB or Kuula or to open on your windows desktop with the app LizardQ.

 

[lilewis]

I had a go at the Sphere the other day.

If I look at it on my tablet when the Mavic is connected I can move around the picture, its like interactive.
I look at the file on the SD card as mentioned above and everything is great.
When I copy everything from the SD card to my PC I lose the interactive file.
I then used DJI Media Maker and stitched it all together, I now have the interactive movement back but now it only works if I view it on the internet.

Is there a way to save this to a PC so I can move around in the image ?

Yes. Someone here recently recommended the app "LizardQ". I downloaded it and Norton said it was safe so I tried it on my Win10 desktop. It's a small executable file - doesn't need to be installed and works great on 360 panos. Right click for screen save or to open a new image. It even has auto-rotate. One caveat - it seems to be great for the full 360 deg pano but I don't see the planet view option.

 

[THE CYBORG]

So I gave that a go lilewis
I don't get any options apart from open so I highlight all 26 images in the folder and no stitching only the first picture is shown.
Don't know what I can be doing wrong as the only option is open.

 

[lilewis]

So I gave that a go lilewis
I don't get any options apart from open so I highlight all 26 images in the folder and no stitching only the first picture is shown.
Don't know what I can be doing wrong as the only option is open.

Cy, you don't need to stitch at all. The finished pano is the photo with the distorted perspective - - like the globe laid out on a flat sheet of paper. See my pano below. The drone created this version all by itself. When you find it (it's in the "media" folder) just open it with the Lizard app or upload it to FB or Kuula and you'll have the pano on your screen to move around. When you want to view another pano on Lizard, right click on your open pano and the option will appear to open another or to go full screen or take a screenshot, etc.

There's no need for stitching when you do it this way. It's deceptively simple. I had the same issues as you are having now until I discovered the drone itself does all the work. I was a bit worried about the safety of the Lizard app initially because of it's name but I think it's ok and see no ill effects on my pc.

One issue I discovered on the finished pano that comes out of the drone: it's easy to screw up if you post process it with cropping etc on photoshop. However making simple color/brightnes/contrast adjustments work fine.

 

[Feather Ridge]

Look in your media folder on the memory card (set the file view to large icon). You should see a pano file (kind of scrunched) up with a strange perspective. That IS your pano all ready for you to upload to FB or Kuula or to open on your windows desktop with the app LizardQ.

So helpful, thank you very much! Is there a way to email the interactive file?

 

[lilewis]

So helpful, thank you very much! Is there a way to email the interactive file?

I haven't done that but I don't see why not. As long as the file size isn't larger than your email provider allows (I think gmail is 20mb). Of course the recipient would then have to download it to their pc then upload it to FB or Kuula to see it as a 360. I just took the file that I had downsized for this thread above and it opened fine in the lizard app but of course the resolution was much worse than the original because I downsized it so much. Maybe if you upload your original to FB and make the post private except for the recipient, they could then download it from your FB page, if you have one.

 

[THE CYBORG]

Got it now lilewis
It's a shame you cant view it as interactive unless its uploaded or you use a special viewer.?

 

[lilewis]

Got it now lilewis
It's a shame you cant view it as interactive unless its uploaded or you use a special viewer.?

I agree, but also "think" I understand: the original distorted file is really a bunch of flat images stitched together by the drone (which really does save us a lot of post processing stitching). Also because the images taken closest to the camera appear larger than those on the horizon, they need a unique coding to wrap them into the final product to get the 360 perspective. I just assume this is the case because most of the current image viewers built into the Windows and Apple operating systems were only programmed to display flat images. Kuula, FB and some of the 3rd party apps are filling in that coding now. Maybe Win 11 or 12 or 13 someday will have a built in 360 viewer. If so, I probably won't be here to see it. :-(

All of the above is nothing more than a bunch of my assumptions but I think they make sense.

 

[Johnmcl7]

I found 360 photos frustrating as I found it difficult to share them and sites like FB didn't seem to pick up on them automatically as they did with those shot from a phone. I've settled on 180 degree panoramas which Lightroom handles them really well which I hadn't realised, it can take all the raw files, produce a single large raw image you can work on as normal. I have a 21.9 monitor at work so I've been cropping them to 21:9 which I find a good ratio as it's still very wide but not too wide the image looks too much to take in.

 

[wco81]

I use Lightroom Classic CC. It fails to merge to Panorama for many of the spherical panos. I save the DNGs I’m the memory card rather than JPGs.

But Lightroom does succeed with some of the 360 (from 26 DNG files) and most of the horizontal 180 panos (from 21 DNG files).

DJI Go will also stitch them and save JPG files, which are 10-15 MBs.

In LR the 360 panos are like a 800 MB DNG file while the 180 panos are like 200 MB.

I can’t upload DNG or JPGs out of LR onto Google Photos. I have been able to convert them to. 360 movie and upload to youtube.

So I tried other 360 hosting sites. Kuala won’t accept them because the resolution is too high.

So I tried 360cities which will allow uploads of JPGs from LR export from the DNG so they’re about 180 MB.

When you compare the big file exported from LR after stitching there vs. the JPG pano output by the M2P, the big JPG panos have much more vivid colors, looks much sharper.

So to me, it’s definitely worth the effort to save panos in DJI Go as DNG files and then try to stitch them in LR, then export as high quality JPG and upload to 360 cities on their free accounts.

Thing to worry is if a smaller site like 360 Cities will be around long term.

Now that I have a work flow, I’m going to try this but LR will fail to stitch so I tried stitching some of the panos in Photoshop and the results are different so I have to study the options a bit more.