[vlc-devel] function proposal for 360 degree video playback

[László Kara]

Hello,

I would like to contribute with an idea. Is this actually possible? I hope
so.

I am not a developer, therefore I propose my idea and leave it for the good
people to think it further, and maybe it gets done someday. I do not ask
for a feature, this is rather a proposal.

We all saw 360 degree videos, right? I myself really enjoy this rather new
technology, but still searching for the right way to use it. I don’t do
extreme sports, but family or travel videos.

How we watch 360 degree videos?

The Interactive way

        - on a smartphone we can use our phone gyroscope and look around
holding the display

        - on a VR headset the principle is the same, but we move our head
more. Also some sort of 3D view is achievable.

- in a video window we swipe our finger to move the camera around, or drag
with a mouse if there is no touch feature present

The traditional way

-          we edit our 360 degree video in a way only a directed, fixed
video output is available, that can be played in any video player, this is
called overcapture, or freecapture.



I really think the latter is a very good way to view a 360 degree
recording, but to do this the video should be directed, then re-encoded, or
in other words, the animation should be burned in the video. But I have
been thinking how we preserve both the ability to look around freely and
watch the directed video the author intended.

I believe this would be actually possible with scripting, like a caption or
subtitle script.

There should be some tags to let know the editor it is a direction data,
the timestamp, the mark of the next position in the coordinate system, and
the type of animation and duration. Basically that’s it? Yes, I think,
because VLC actually can play 360 degree videos, and even navigate it on
user interaction. There should be no degradation on performance, nor new
features to implement (maybe the animation) to move the viewport.

There could be different scripts to watch the same video file in many ways,
the possibilities are endless, literally, because, we also keep the ability
to watch freely.

That’s it, people, I hope it will be reality one time, and maybe VLC will
be the first to present such a feature.
I would be happy to help testing and give my thoughts on the 360 degree
video topic when needed.

Thank You,

László Kara
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