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2nd beta test survey

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Thomas Sharpless

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Sep 1, 2011, 9:51:11 PM9/1/11
to Panini Support
Hi All Panini-Pro beta testers;

Not having heard from any of you in several weeks, I am worried.  This can only mean you are not testing Panini-Pro, because I _know_ it has plenty of bugs. 

I need your help, not so much to find bugs, as to find out how to sell Panini-Pro, which is entirely a matter of convincing people it solves a problem they care about.  So, honestly now...

Have you downloaded Panini-Pro beta4?

How often have you run it?

Do you feel at all mystified about what it is for?

Have you used it for any practical purposes...

  ...previewing panos?

  ...straightening fisheye photos?

  ...making thumbnails for panos?

  ...other?

What would you like to see Panini-Pro do better?
 
Which of the following possible extensions do you think would be more useful?

  ... generate video from pano by recording and animating the view controls

  ...convert actual video from fish-eye to perspective (with animated controls)

Thanks, Tom

Patrick Cheatham

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Sep 2, 2011, 1:00:14 AM9/2/11
to panini-...@googlegroups.com, Thomas Sharpless
Hey Tom:


I've been a bit busy with non-photo stuff recently; getting back to it… I hope my inline responses aren't too off the mark, or that I haven't missed the boat completely -- I've only played with Panini Pro just a bit.

Not having heard from any of you in several weeks, I am worried.  This can only mean you are not testing Panini-Pro, because I _know_ it has plenty of bugs.  

I need your help, not so much to find bugs, as to find out how to sell Panini-Pro, which is entirely a matter of convincing people it solves a problem they care about.  So, honestly now…

Have you downloaded Panini-Pro beta4?

How often have you run it?

Do you feel at all mystified about what it is for? 

I saw it immediately as a good tool to re-project panoramas (or parts of) into spaces I wouldn't be able to otherwise, or otherwise easily.


Have you used it for any practical purposes...

  ...previewing panos?

I work on a Mac, FWIW, and I use Adobe Photoshop primarily (along with the usual suspect pano tools).

I have Bracketeer's PanoPreviewer filter for Photoshop &/or PTGui in my workflow, with easy previewing at any stage of stitching or post. I also still use CubicConverter (!, I know) for quick conversions between spherical/cubic projections when I don't want a DeepZoom or similar tiling but rather a perfect switch without resizing between projections.

 ...straightening fisheye photos?

Yes. Although Photoshop CS5 has nice inbuilt lens correction filters now.

 ...making thumbnails for panos?

No. Hadn't delved that far. :-)

  ...other?

What would you like to see Panini-Pro do better?
  
Which of the following possible extensions do you think would be more useful? 

  ... generate video from pano by recording and animating the view controls

  ...convert actual video from fish-eye to perspective (with animated controls)

THIS could be pretty cool -- is this a blank spot? Are there other tools that do this?

HTH,

Patrick


Thomas Sharpless

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Sep 2, 2011, 10:58:48 PM9/2/11
to Sam Rohn, Panini Support
Hey Sam

Its the same all over.  busy busy busy.  Hope you are well.

Dropping a 2:1 eqr basically works now (for some reason I pop the source projection dialog in this case, but should not.  If the program guessed wrong you should know to clik the camera icon) Don't know how much in the way of layers, masks, and so on it can tolerate in a tiff, though.  I just use Qt's stock image reader.  Please test and report.

Of course cubic QTVR's and sets of cube face files are also drop-n-play -- you only need to drop 2 or 3 cube faces, if their names follow any of the popular conventions Panini will find them all.

Too many windows?  maybe. I wanted to make it possible to see the image sometimes.  Actually most of the view controls are connected to mouse gestures and hot keys (read the help screen), so you don't really need those windows open much. 

Keep the complaints coming!

Best, Tom

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Sam Rohn <s...@nylocations.com> wrote:
hey tom -

sorry, i've been actually quite busy these last few months, haven't really had the chance to play w it as much as i wanted to

a really useful feature would be to make it a REALLY easy to use drag and drop pano preview player, just drop an equi etc onto the app icon and get  full res display, layers, masks, tiff, etc should all play no prob -

i know this is not this tools main purpose, but it is a good feature to bring in users, simple cross platform pano previewer does not currently exist, and we all need one :)

otherwise, i think a simplified interface would be good, too many floating windows, maybe just one w all controls or tabs or ?

of course, i have not looked at the docs at all, i never read documentation beforehand, maybe some kind of annotated illustration explaining the different controls ?

maybe a screen movie of you demonstrating the different controls ?

sam


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