CubicConverter 2.2.1

CubicConverter converts various types of panoramic images into and out of cubic format QuickTime VR movies. It allows simple conversion of VR media with a drop and a click.

The movies and images it creates can then be placed on web pages, incorporated into larger QuickTime projects such as multinode movies, or transferred to authoring environments such as Macromedia Director for complete interactive tours.

CubicConverter offers the ability to convert equirectangular, cylindrical, cubic and mirrorball images to cubic format QuickTime VR movies, or convert "back from" existing movies to source equirectangular images and cube faces for use in PTViewer Java applets or Shockwave 3D panoramas.

Straightforward, Visual Conversion

A basic conversion can be done simply by dropping in the media to be converted, then clicking the "Convert" button.

At each stage of the conversion, you are kept visually up to date with its progress and can see each part of the new panorama taking shape.

Direct Access to Cube Faces

To give you more control over how the movie appears, CubicConverter lets you access each of the cube faces that will make up the movie, and each face can be edited or resized before creating the final QuickTime VR movie.

As an example, if you create your VR media using a tool which produces an equirectangular image, you may frequently have shadows or tripod residue at the very bottom of the image.

Such images are often difficult to edit in the original format. However, once CubicConverter has converted it to a set of cube faces, you can simply drag out the bottom face and edit the artifacts away in Photoshop.

Making Things Cubic

Panoramas exist in a number of different forms, including: equirectangular images produced by programs that create a full 360° sphere, cylindrical panoramas - less encompassing views produced by older style programs such as the QuickTime VR Authoring Studio, and six cube faces - often rendered by 3D programs.

CubicConverter allows each of these to be converted to cubic format QuickTime VR movies.

Converting cylindrical images or movies to cubic format will of course leave black gaps at the tops and bottoms of the panorama (these can be removed by creative editing or just by setting tilt constraints) but converting to cubic may be useful for bringing older style QuickTime VR movies into the cubic format for one of two reasons:

1)  to take advantage of the more efficient storage for images with a large field of view, or

2)  to include them with newer movies which use the cubic format, eg, in authoring tools such as CubicConnector which only works with cubic format movies.

Going the Other Way

If you're starting out with cube faces, CubicConverter can help get them into the other main panorama format - equirectangular - required for optimum viewing using alternative playback technologies, such as PTViewer Java applets.

You can drop an existing cubic format QuickTime VR movie or a folder of cube faces into CubicConverter, then adjust the conversion popup to "Equirectangular Image" and soon you will have the new panorama format ready to use in Java applets.

Extracting Media

CubicConverter also makes it easy to retrieve media embedded in existing QuickTime VR movies, both the older cylindrical type or the newer cubic format. Such extraction may be useful if you no longer have the original image files which created the movie but now want to compress the movie to a different size or codec.

Extracting images from QuickTime VR movies is as easy as dropping the movie in and dragging the cylindrical image out. For cubic movies, you can even do six images at once, by dragging the "folder of cube faces" out of the Conversion area.

Mirrorball Conversions

For single-shot panorama making, CubicConverter 2.2 offers the ability to convert "mirrorball" images - photographs taken of a sphere with a mirrored surface which reflects the scene around it.

Mirrorballs have the interesting optical property of reflecting almost all of a 360° scene apart from a hole directly opposite the camera. For the purposes of QuickTime VR, this means that "quick & dirty" panoramas can be created with just a single shot.

Adjustment Controls

During the creation of a cubic movie, you have full control over both the size of the cube faces used for the images stored in the movie and the codec used to compress them. These two factors determine how large the final movie will be, an important consideration for making QuickTime VR movies available to bandwidth constrained web users.

The cube face size can be set before starting a conversion, or after viewing the preview movie to reduce its size, allowing you to judge the trade off in file size and image quality. Similarly, the codec used can be adjusted at any stage.

You can also set viewing constraints such as mininum and maximum pan, tilt and zoom as well as defaults for these values. If your source panorama has become rotated during creation, you can adjust its rotation before it is converted into cube faces.

Saving the Results

Once converted, you can save your VR movie or image to disk in a number of formats depending on the type of conversion you have performed.

Where the result is a QuickTime VR movie, you have the option of saving the movie by itself, or including an HTML template which contains correct syntax for the QuickTime plugin. You can also save just the cube faces, or save the images with one of several templates, including a basic HTML viewer, VRML world, or Shockwave 3D Director project.

Where the result is an equirectangular image, you have the option of saving the image by itself, or as a PTViewer Java template to give you a headstart if intending to deploy your panorama in a Java-based web page. Helmut Dersch's increasingly popular PTViewer Java applet is distributed under the GPL license and can be freely included on any web page you choose to place your panoramas on.

Batch Mode

If you have a large amount of media to convert, and the movies all have similar requirements (cube face size, codec, tilt constraints, etc), you can set up a batch list which will convert all of the movies unattended.

CubicConverter is optimized for the Velocity Engine on PowerMac G4s and G5s and can produce cubic movies quite quickly even from fairly large panoramas (eg, 6000x3000 equirects).

But it may still be convenient to set up the settings to use for each movie, start it going and walk away. Batch mode can be used to create both cubic format QuickTime VR movies from a variety of formats, and equirectangular images from source cube faces or movies.

Batch mode is also useful for quickly creating optimized movies (eg, with 512x512 cube faces) suitable for using with Kinoma Player 3 EX, which allows QuickTime VR movies to be played on Palm-based PDAs.

Requirements

• Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar or later
• QuickTime 6.1 or later

Price

• Single-user license:   $49 USD
 
To purchase:  Go to the pricelist

Downloads

Download:  CubicConverter 2.2.1.dmg  [1.4 MB]

Online Tutorials:  View Tutorial and Video Index

(Return to Product List)