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Hold and Shoot – No pointing required. 360 overcapture video.


Ultra Mobile video production was never easy but over the last year I’ve been experimenting with a 360-degree camera and I’m now 100% sure that you’ll find journalists, social media and YouTubers bringing this into mainstream use in 2018. Its too simple to fail. Record everything, hands-off, and edit later.

Take a look at the video below. In March this year I had the opportunity to join a Land Rover Discovery 90 cross-country dash in Germany and, as any decent video producer would do, had to decide which equipment to take. I needed to be extremely mobile so rather than a standard video camera I reached for a 360 camera, the Ricoh Theta S and a tall monopod. I shot over an hour of video, but didn’t really take much notice of where I was looking because when you shoot in 360-degrees, you’ve got everything covered. I estimate that over 95% of the data I recorded  didn’t make it into the video below.

I didn’t want to produce a 360-degree video. Why? Because they can be hard work for the viewer and we know by now that viewers will lose interest if a video requires any sort of waiting, or effort. What I did is called overcapture which is the process of extracting standard video from a 360-degree video.

Overcapture describes the process of selecting scenes from a 360 video and converting them, flattening the view, to a ‘classic’ video format.

 

Cyberlink have supported me with free versions of PowerDirector for the last 3 years after my requests for test software. Cyberlink have no editorial control over this post and have never requested a promotional post from me. [Search for PowerDirector because there’s no link to find here.] Read on

Cyberlink introduced their View Designer feature into PowerDirector 15 in late 2016 and I’ve played with it ever since. This process is the future of social video and MoJo video. Mobile Journalism take-up of 360 source is going to be huge. New compression techniques and faster, bonded upload speeds are going to give the editing rooms huge amounts of data to play with and they’ll release the local reporter from camera production duties. No pointing required – this is hold-and-shoot.

Here’s a video I recorded with a simple Ricoh Theta S back in March 2017. I recently produced it into this version. Other versions might follow but feel free to ask questions and to contribute to a discussion below. Is 360-degree video important?

Welcome to the new studio.


If you’ve followed me, Chippy, on Twitter you might not have noticed many changes. If you’ve followed here on UMPCPortal you’re probably wondering what happened. It’s over one month since I last posted. Fortunately I can report good news because I’m about to ramp-up again here on UMPCPortal…but it won’t be my main gig anymore.

Since October I’ve worked in my new role as Head of Video over at Notebookcheck. My aim: To make detailed review videos of as many products as possible.

If you don’t know Notebookcheck then here’s a little background. Notebookcheck operates in Germany, Austria and USA, in English and German languages, and runs two very successful websites. Their review process is extremely detailed and having worked as a reviewer for them for over a year I can tell you that a lot of hard work goes into every review. There are around 15 editors reviewing devices from smart-watches to gaming laptops and many of those devices now end up with me. Our first three months were a success and on the back of that and a new coworking project I’ve decided to build-out a new studio so that we can make even better videos. It took a lot of money and a lot of time and UMPCPortal just had to be put on ice for that period. I missed CES and I’ve even lost ground on new developments in the ultra-mobile space but there’s been a huge plus-side to this.

First, here’s an example of the video’s I’m making in the new studio.

And some photo’s of the new studio…

 

I’ve created over 30 videos for Notebookcheck since October and because the range of equipment has been so diverse I’ve really learnt a lot. In front of me now is a Sony Xperia Z5 Premium with 4K screen. Last week I tested two amazing Dell XPS 15 laptops.. I’ve had the ASUS T100HA and a bunch of other 2-in-1s. Tomorrow I’ll be unboxing the Lenovo Miix 700 and a Lumia 950 XL. I’ll finally get to test Continuum. You could say that I’m very well positioned for hands-on testing of some of the top computing products in the market.

Now that the studio build is nearly finished and the review process is getting more efficient there’ll be time to get back to writing here. But that’s not all.

The new studio was set up for live streams and I’ll be doing that as a free service to my readers and followers. I’ll be starting with Periscope streams next week and if the finances hold out I’ll be finalizing the purchase of some full-HD streaming equipment that I’ll be using for more detailed sessions. I’ve also been speaking to my old mate Sascha and we’ll be getting together, in the same studio, to bring you something fun and informative that should lead into a regular slot on a show hosted by Sascha in Taiwan.

Before I sign-off I wanted to go back to where I mentioned Periscope. I’m a Windows Phone user, but that changes too.

Tomorrow I’ll be buying a Sony Xperia Z5 (not the Compact, not the Premium) and returning the Lumia 830 to Microsoft. It was, and still is, a great cameraphone and it does most social media and web-based jobs well but as I completely refresh my apps and activities for my new business I have to say good-bye to Windows mobile phones for the time being. I’ll still be keeping a lookout for the first Windows 10 Mobile convertible laptop / tablet…but won’t be holding my breath for it.

From online-only to bricks-and-mortar. Smartwatches, gaming laptops and Apple products.  Buying an Android smartphone. Offering my services to local businesses. This is the biggest change I’ve had since I started Carrypad.com 10 years ago and it’s a reflection of what happened not only in the mobile computing business but in the business of blogging too.

Please stay with me here and on my other channels. I’m focusing on these five:

 

Intel Chromebook push focuses on ARM. 15 reports now available.


A few weeks ago Intel posted 2 videos featuring Chromebooks and they appear to be part of a bigger campaign to push ARM out of the market. Clearly Intel thinks that there’s something big worth fighting for here. The videos lead to a set of 15 Intel-commissioned reports from Principled Technologies that are all available to the public and listed below.

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Dell XPS 11 w/ 2k Display Hands-on—A Beautiful Ultrabook Foiled By Its Keyboard?


dell xps 11 hands on ces 2014 touch keyboard videoAt first glance, the Dell XPS 11 has it all. It’s sleek, convertible, and has a 2k screen! It’s one of the thinnest and, dare I say, sexiest, Ultrabooks ever released. But will a novel keyboard design be its Achilles’ heel?

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Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus. Overview Video.


WP_20131121_11_05_43_ProThe Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus is here and I’ve been using it for four days. It’s a fantastic little machine with a few things that you’ll have to watch for; Micro ports being one of them, the screen being another. Yes, that 3200×1800 screen has not one, but two down-sides.


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Vodcast – ASUS Fonepad discussion with Mobile Geek Nicole


fonepad hangoutNicole Scott of Mobilegeeks.com also has an Asus Fonepad so we got together in a live Google Hangout this morning to discuss it. We talk about the features, make a lot of comparisons to the Nexus 7 and give you an idea of who this tablet is designed for, what it’s key features are and issues to take note of.

For more details, links images and videos, see the Asus Fonepad information page.

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Intel’s Next-gen Haswell Graphics to Enable Rendering Techniques That Other GPUs Can’t Handle


Haswell reference design shown at GDC 2013

Haswell reference design shown at GDC 2013

At GDC 2013, Intel announced that their next-gen Haswell graphics will support a new bit of tech called PixelSync as well as DirectX 11.1. PixelSync on Hawell graphics enables two rendering techniques called ASVM and AOIT which can cost a standard GPU up to 80% of it’s performance but runs smoothly with Haswell’s integrated graphics. The developers behind Grid 2 are using Haswell’s new tech to bring graphically rich games to the masses.

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Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 Hybrid Ultrabook Unboxing and Overview


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Fancy 70WH of battery in your Ultrabook? For those that don’t know how significant this is, it’s the best battery capacity we’ve seen so far in the 11.6” segment and it beats nearly all other Ultrabooks. Only the Fujisu U772 has more, but not by much. The Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 doesn’t stop there. I’ve unboxed and I’m impressed at the specs, ports and capability. There’s another first here too. Matt capacative touchscreen with digitizer!

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