Bloodhound: Capturing a Jet Car in 360º
November 14th by Spencer Marsden
For BBC Blue Room
Hi, I’m Spencer Marsden from the BBC Blue Room Salford, and this article is about one of the more interesting projects I’ve had the pleasure to be involved with recently.
In Design and Engineering we know that it’s all very well testing a piece of technology in the predictable and safe environment of an office, but to really know a piece of kit, to find out if it will either let you down or help tell a great story, you really can’t beat testing it out in a real-world situation.
Just such a situation presented itself when Sam Smith from BBC South West asked the Blue Room if we had any new cameras we would like to try on a 360º short documentary shoot, the subject being a 200mph test of Bloodhound SSC which will later attempt to break and extend the land speed record. I would be working with Andrew Brown from Defacto Films.
This report is by Spencer Marsden. The views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and should not be taken as the views or policies of the BBC.
In the Blue Room we’ve had a range of 360 cameras for quite a while now, but there’s been a gap between the small double lens consumer cameras, and high resolution multi- lens professional models. For example, the now discontinued 8x lens Nokia OZO was retailing for £36,000!
We were intrigued to look at the Insta360 Pro with 6x 200º cameras with a maximum total resolution of 8k, and that retails for around £3000. You can already see the maturity in the market with these price shifts.
Not only is it important to see the quality of the footage and stitching from a new 360 camera, but equally to get experience of the workflow and any implications for post. This knowledge we could then pass on to our colleagues, along with the thousand yard stare that you get from carrying the thing, and coping with any idiosyncrasies it may have.
The shoot was to consist of:
- A preliminary day on the 13th October 2017 to get used to the camera, with some static interviews and location shots.
- More interviews and footage 19th October.
- 20th October a 200MPH run on the runway- conditions permitting (it turned out Storm Brian was to make landfall at 4pm)
- The 360 stitch, edit, music and voice over all completed and uploaded for the first public run on 26th October… 6 days!
First, lets learn a bit more about the Bloodhound Project:
It is being developed and built with the intention of breaking the land speed record by 33%, the largest ever margin.
Insta360 Pro specs:
The official specs, as of November 2017:
- Number of Lenses: 6 x 200º angle
- 360 Photo Resolution: 60 Megapixels
- 360 Video Resolution: 8K@30fps with Post Processing Stitching 4K@30fps with Real Time Stitching
- Slow Motion Video: Yes. 100fps at 4K360 3D8K 3D images 6K 3D Video
- Aperture: f2.4
- File Outputs: RAW, JPG, MP4
- Sound: 4 Built in Microphones 1 AUX Spherical Sound
- Memory: External SD Card
- Battery: 5000mAh removable battery (75 mins) 12V 5A DC adapter
- Live Stream: Up to 3840 x 3840 (4K) at 25fps H264 video coding and 3840 x 1920 (4K) at 30fps H265/H264
- video coding: On any 360° platform which includes Facebook, YouTube, and Insta360 server via link
- Price: £2999 exVAT
My findings from the shoot:
- The camera takes a long time to boot up — 90 seconds.
- It takes a very specific SD card — the list on the official website was not wholly accurate…
- The 400mb/s SSD drive we tried to use would not be recognised, no matter what we tried (note this has been addressed in a subsequent firmware update)
- The wifi connectivity that is used to remotely start and stop the camera has a low range — approx 10m. You can use CAT5 cable to control via a laptop, but it will be in shot.
- The Battery lasted closer to 40 mins for us — we ended up getting a spare and getting a DC adaptor made by Eng- Ops in BBC Plymouth so that we could run the camera off a 12v leisure battery inside of a peli-case, OB style.
- If you want to record sound near the camera, you can turn the (very loud) inbuilt fan off, but for 15 minutes only. When the camera gets too hot, it shuts itself down without warning.
- If the camera does shut down, the files will lose data! This makes any clips unusable until you fix the loss of the moov atom data — specialist work, and so you want to avoid this scenario if possible!
- If the camera display does not show the main menu, the camera will will still drain the battery as if it is filming.
Other cameras used on the shoot included:
- A Samsung gear 360, attached to the fin and used to catch the afterburner.
- A Garmin Virb 360, for the in-cockpit footage as well as from the side of the front wheel.
- An Insta360 One, used for some time-lapse that didn’t make the edit, as well as being slung from a drone for a test.
- Stephen McNeilly’s self built 24 x GoPro rig, shown above. This took the shot of the car setting off from the side as well as the return.
Tips:
- If at all possible schedule a test shoot
- Dress like the crew so you blend in (and act like you belong…)
- Take clean recordings without anyone in shot so you can edit out anything (e.g. the interviewer) in post.
- Log the shoot as best as you can, it will save hours of stitching in post.
- Audio sync slate at the top and bottom of the take helps but it is better to get a constant sync, e.g have the display of the recorder in shot, or jam sync if possible.
- Try and show the talent/stakeholders the results of 360 filming on the day, it helps them understand and potentially opens up more access.
- Pick and stick with one lens as your origin — the lens on the Insta’s RHS of the menu is Origin #0.
- We did not use the Real Time Stitching option on the camera, as it would limit the resolution, and means you cannot turn off the fan.
- Take a few different 360 cameras on a shoot, you never know where you might get to place them!
- I noticed that people tend to be less stressed by a 360 camera, perhaps because it doesn’t look like a standard camera, or that there’s no obvious focus of attention from it.
Post Production & Outcomes
The director Andrew Brown sent a preliminary edit to Chris Harris of Top Gear, which helped secure his services as voice over for the piece.
The edit itself required using gamer-spec laptops to rough- stitch, select, cut and perform high-res stitching of the files. Each shot from the Insta360 Pro consisted of 6 individual files at 3840 × 2160, or 1.8GB per minute total. Andrew looked at his mac and muttered “we’re gonna need a bigger boat”.
The edit used a combination of Autopano and Mistika for stitching, edited on Premiere Pro using the Mettle Skybox, as well as using AfterEffects for tripod painting etc. A 4:42 minute full version and 1:20 shorter cut were uploaded.
42% of the final edit consisted of shots from the Insta360 Pro.
When the video went live, it proved to be very popular, going onto the trending dashboard as the second most shared video on YouTube in the UK. It generated over 300,000 hits on the day it was uploaded, with more than 5000 views per hour since that morning. To date it has had 638,889 views, and not all of them generated by my mum.
“What’s interesting is that dwell time, or how long people watch the film for, was three times standard for FB/YT videos — 360 storytelling is clearly a way to engage the audience at a deeper level.” — Andrew Brown, Director.
On the BBC Facebook page it has had 655,000+ views and 969 shares on BBC News’ Facebook account, though most of those probably were my mum.
Here’s the offical Bloodhound Media Report which is an interesting read — the 360 video had the highest viewing figures of all video content from the day.
Thanks for reading!
