In recent years, with the gradual rise of the VR industry, we have access to more and more VR products. With the maturity of technology, the previously unreachable VR video shooting equipment has gradually stepped down from the altar and become our new toy. Today, I had the honor to experience this TG full view VR panoramic camera, which is a very affordable product. At present, the crowdfunding price is only 699 yuan. What kind of product experience can this price bring? Let's discuss it together!

appearance

As the product is still in the stage of crowdfunding and has not yet been launched, what I got was an engineering machine without formal packaging and accessories. This product has five colors, namely blue, yellow, green, gray, and white. It is available for users with different personalities. The one I got is gray. The plastic material used for the shell is only 120g, which is very lightweight.

In order to achieve the 720 ° shooting effect, multiple lenses are required to cooperate. This product uses the solution of two 210 ° fish eye lenses. Through post-processing, the picture taken by the two lenses is expanded into a panorama, and then the 720 ° panoramic viewing effect is achieved through software.

There is a circle of metal structure around the lens for fixation. In order to achieve the 210 ° shooting effect, the fish eye lens is convex. Therefore, special attention should be paid in normal use to try not to damage the outer glass of the lens.

There is only one button on the front of the fuselage, which is the shutter key, and the other four patterns are indicator lights with different functions, showing very faint blue when using.

The other buttons are concentrated on the side of the fuselage. From left to right, there are switching keys for taking pictures and videos, WIFI switches, power switches and microphone pickups. There is also an indicator light on the power switch, which only lights up when charging.

The charging interface and TF card slot are at the bottom of the camera, and there is also a 1/4 universal screw port. The charging interface uses a Micro usb interface, and the built-in battery is 1400mAh. The official promotion is that the battery life is two hours. My two days of trial can really achieve the two-hour battery life.

The TF card supports a maximum of 128G expansion, and only 8G of free storage space is available for purchase. If you need storage space, you can purchase it yourself.

Since there is a universal threaded interface at the bottom, the camera can be connected to a tripod, a self timer rod supporting 1/4 screw port, a stabilizer and other products for use, which will be more convenient for outdoor use.

The holes in the top row are used as loudspeakers. Since it has no screen, it cannot preview videos. The function of loudspeakers is just to send out a prompt sound,

·There are two prompt tones when the machine is turned on and off,

·There is a single tone when switching shooting mode,

·Photographing is a single tone,

·When you start shooting a video, there is also a single sound. When you end the video shooting, there will be two prompt tones.

In actual outdoor use, this prompt tone is very important.

The indicator light on the camera body is very weak. In this season, it is difficult to identify the indicator light under strong outdoor light.

In addition, there is also a problem with the indicator light of the video mode of the engineering machine in my hand, which makes it more difficult to distinguish. Here are some examples of these indicators;

·The top circle will flash when the machine is turned on and off, and will flash continuously during video shooting.

·Below the door opening key is the wifi indicator light, which will flash when the wifi is turned on, and will stay on when the phone and camera are linked.

·The following two indicators are naturally the photo and video modes.

Because it is difficult to distinguish the indicator light under strong light, in this case, it must rely on the prompt tone to judge, but the prompt tone still needs to be modified. My suggestion is:

·Single startup sound and double shutdown sound

·Switch between photographing mode single tone and recording mode double tone

·The switch wifi should also have a prompt tone

"IDV720" APP trial experience

The app used by TG panoramic camera is called "IDV720", which can be used on both Apple platform and Android platform. There are not many platforms that can be downloaded on Android platform. Generally, you can find it by using App Treasure search. The home page of the app is very simple. There is nothing when I first open it. After use, videos and pictures downloaded from the camera will be displayed on the home page. You can select the link mode of the phone and device through settings. The default mode is wifi mode. I don't have accessories for other modes, so I can't use them. The camera firmware upgrade is troublesome. You need to connect the camera first, obtain the firmware version number, and then go back here to download the firmware. However, it seems that there is no firmware to download.

To link the mobile phone and the camera, you need to connect the mobile phone to the camera's wifi. The wifi signal starts with Pano720, and the password is 8 8. Of course, the official product may also be other passwords, and the password in the product manual shall prevail. For the first time, the APP needs to obtain recording permission, which is a bit strange, because I haven't found any place where the APP needs mobile phone recording. After successful connection, the camera can see the content in real time on the APP. The default viewing mode is fish eye mode.

In addition, there are three modes of asteroid, panorama and VR glasses, all of which can be viewed in real time. These four modes can be switched at will in the early or late stages of the app.

The camera can be adjusted in different modes to obtain different shooting effects. There are many parameters that can be adjusted. ISO, white balance and exposure value can be customized in terms of parameters. Unfortunately, there is no exposure time parameter at present. I don't know whether to wait for firmware update to improve this function in the future.

Shooting experience

First of all, let's recognize the shortcomings. From the above picture, someone has found that the hand holding the camera seems to be out of harmony. In fact, because the camera has a thickness, there are still blind corners that can't be photographed very close to both sides of the camera.

Usually, the camera is held high, and the shutter key is pressed to shoot. If possible, the stabilizer can be used. After all, this camera does not support optical anti shake.

The camera is composed of two fisheye lenses, so the original file shot is a picture of two fisheye lenses.

After being processed by APP, it will be expanded into a VR panorama/video. Although this product claims that the resolution of video capture is 1080P (1920 × 1080 pixels), the original video captured is 1920 × 960 pixels, and the image of this pixel is composed of two fisheye lenses, so the resolution of a single lens is only 960 × 960 pixels. The image generated by the fish eye lens itself has been severely distorted. After the algorithm is expanded, many pixels are actually generated by dragging directly, not actually shot, which also has a certain impact on the quality of the image. Of course, as an entry-level VR device, it can't keep up with tens of thousands of dollars, The professional VR shooting equipment composed of many high-definition cameras has better picture quality.

In terms of video capture, The TG panoramic camera can shoot all the time. I tried it. After shooting for more than 30 minutes, it still didn't stop automatically. But later I found that a video file will be generated every three minutes. I think the purpose of this is to facilitate sharing, and the second is that it will not cause too much pressure on the phone when it is launched later. In addition, I have heard that, In foreign countries, the tax rate on cameras is different from that on cameras. The tax rate on cameras is higher than that on cameras, but the judgment standard is that cameras cannot shoot videos higher than 5 minutes.

From the introduction above, we have seen the camera's ability to shoot in the daytime, but what about the ability to shoot at night? After trying, the night scene shooting effect is not ideal, and the noise is very serious. In shooting mode, adjusting ISO and exposure compensation can improve the image quality, but the exposure is insufficient. Therefore, I hope to add the function of controlling the exposure time. In this way, using ISO100, 2 seconds of exposure time, not only can we get a picture with lower noise, but also can shoot the streamer effect.

Joy sharing

Due to the particularity of VR video, social apps such as WeChat cannot directly support it, so the captured video needs to be processed through the app, and then needs a dedicated player to watch it. Fortunately, the "IDV720" app provides a full set of solutions.

All videos and photos taken with the camera are stored in the TF card. To share, you need to download the files to the phone's memory first. After the wifi link, you can view the files taken with the camera on the phone. The preview page is horizontal, and the downward arrow in the middle is the download button. The downloaded files are displayed on the APP's home page and viewed again, The location of the download icon becomes an upward arrow, and you can share it now.

Whether it is a picture or a video, you can choose the rotation angle and output quality before sharing it again. The purpose of the rotation angle is to correct the angle of the finished file when you shoot with the camera in a horizontal or inverted position; There are two options for output quality: medium and high. Different options will affect the final image quality and file size. For three minutes of video, high is selected. The finished video occupies nearly 400m of storage space, while in the quality selection, less than 200m of storage space, which is half of the space occupied (the finished product size is 1920 × 960 pixels). After the file is successfully generated, it can be shared. At present, there are only four options for sharing, two of which are foreign, and the other two are WeChat and WeChat friends circle. At this time, sharing still needs to wait for an upload process.

After expansion, a new picture/video file will be created, which will also be displayed on the home page of the APP. In order to distinguish, the expanded file will have a red star icon in the upper left corner. At this time, in order to save space on the phone, the original file can be deleted. If you want to keep it, you can copy the file in the TF card to the computer. Since WeChat does not support viewing VR videos directly, the shared videos are uploaded to the "IDV720" server and then provided a link for WeChat users to watch. There are also four viewing modes, the default smoothing mode.

In fact, the upload waiting box covers an important setting, which can be seen only after you select Cancel. That is, the title and description. If you don't enter the title yourself, the title shared will be the file name of the video. I don't think you should upload it directly, but you should first modify the title before uploading. After uploading successfully, the WeChat sharing page will pop up automatically, Because of the long waiting time for uploading, if the sharing is cancelled carelessly or the WeChat page does not pop up after the upload is successful, do not upload again at this time. Go back to the APP home page. There is my upload option in the app settings, where you can re share or delete the sharing.

Synthesis and playing of long videos

As mentioned above, the TG panoramic camera can continuously shoot video for a long time, but it is only divided into three minutes. Although three minutes is easy to share, it is troublesome for users who want to obtain a complete video. Users who have the basis of video post production can synthesize it by themselves. Before doing so, first learn about the "IDV720" APP The storage directory of the file. Under the Android phone, the file is saved in the IDV720 subdirectory of the DCIM directory. Photo and video are the original file directories of pictures and videos. The synthesized files are saved in the stitch directory.

I don't know how to expand a video file on a PC, so I first expand the video file on my phone, and then output the file to a PC, and then I can use the video synthesis software in the PC to synthesize multiple three minute small videos into a single video file. However, there is a slight sense of stutter of 0.1 seconds where the two files are spliced.

After the re rendered video file is returned to the mobile phone, if the file is returned to the stitch directory, the "IDV720" APP can recognize and play it, and even share it (I merged 9 minutes of video and compressed the video to more than 200 megabytes.). I was surprised to share it. In addition to using the "IDV720" app to play, other VR software can also be used for playing. For example, I tried 3D playing, which can be viewed using the 360 ° mode of the gyroscope or the 360 ° mode of the finger slide.

Summary and suggestions

As an entry-level VR shooting equipment, the TG panoramic camera is currently in JD crowdfunding, and its price is very user-friendly. Although its video imaging quality is not excellent, it is enough for network sharing. The advantage of panoramic video is that it can record more complete pictures. If you watch it with VR glasses, it seems to be back to the first scene, Bring people an immersive visual experience.

After several days of trial experience, I think there are still some areas that need to be improved in the APP and products, and I would like to make some suggestions:

1、 APP There is no account. Although it is convenient to use, there will be problems with the videos uploaded in the later management. Once the mobile phone is changed, what should be done with the previously shared videos?  

2、 The title and description of the shared video can be modified;

3、 hope APP Add editing functions such as video cutting and merging;

4、 I want to be able to customize the watermark icon.

5、 Add social function, and the shared video can be set as public APP You can watch videos published by others on the app The user stickiness of.

6、 Increase the channels that can be shared.

7、 Increase the shooting parameter of exposure time.

8、 Hopes that the fuselage can be increased led The brightness of the lamp, and more reasonable setting of the beep prompt tone.

9. It is recommended to move the charging interface to the side of the fuselage, so that when using the 1/4 screw port, the power can also be supplied by the power bank to enhance the endurance.