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M
MainFragger
Inspiring
August 6, 2020
Answered

Rectangular to circular video

  • August 6, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 633 views

How do I conform my 4:3 or 16:9 video to form a circle? I am not talking about cropping a circle in or out of my video. I am talking about changing the shape of my video so that the edges smoothe out to circular, the video distorts accordingly, and forms a cirlce in my sequence space. I have tried spherize, but it doesn't really do what I am looking to do.  I have a camera angle upshot from the middle of a football huddle.  I am trying to actually convert the video to a 360 degree video.  I figured out how to fake a 180 degree video, and I also figured out that I can take the video and put it in Action Director and it will automatically populate into a 360 degree space..BUT when it does os, it looks kind of like a stretched pringle chip with straight edges on the left and right and that has corners that pinch.  What I want is the video to drape down around me with the bottom edge being a 360 degree circle.  I can move the video to the top of my 360 degree space so that all of the players heads meet directly above me with a little sky showing in between.  But there are four corners around me, and the lines between the corners curve upward.   I want them to flatten back out to form a bottom edge that is circular. I don't mind that 20-30 percent of my video will be black at the bottom...But the bottom of their chests are at the bottom edges of the vidoe, and would like that to line up to about 10-20 degrees below my straigh angle of view.  I asked this question in the Premeire group, and they directed me here, thinking that this might be an After Effects thing..

 

    Correct answer MainFragger

    I kinda forgot about this.  In the end, the way I ended up doing this is using my 360 degree VR camera to film it off of my 4K TV screen at the right angle, and that gave me the look and depth that I wanted.  

    2 replies

    R
    Community Expert
    Rick GerardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 7, 2020

    If the 3 people in your shot have the top of their heads close to the top third of the comp you can try applying Polar Coordinates with Interpolation set to 100% and Type set to Rect to Polar

     

    I made 3 bodies with a shape layer - you can see the outlines, then applied the effect.

    You won't get the top of their heads, but you will get distorted bodies.

     

    The only other option I can think of would be to create a new C4D file from AE, add it to the timeline, open C4D lite and add a sphere, then add your video of the three people as a reflection map and monkey with the settings so the sphere would act as a mirror. I don't think the results will be much better, but that's the only other way, without 3rd party effects to get anything close to what you might need.

    M
    MainFraggerAuthorCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    August 26, 2025

    I kinda forgot about this.  In the end, the way I ended up doing this is using my 360 degree VR camera to film it off of my 4K TV screen at the right angle, and that gave me the look and depth that I wanted.  

    Martin_Ritter
    Martin_Ritter
    Legend
    August 6, 2020

    If your footage wasn't shot as 360, you will never get a good 360 result.

    Usual, 360 footage is shot in 2:1 and 4k for a minimun on image quality. If your footage is 4:3 or 16:9, it will always be disorted if converted to 360.

    Also, keep in mind, that you can technically wrap your footage to 360, but to create an actual 360, the content has to fit as well. If the left and right side of your footage don't fit, there will always a neat. And if the camera didn't covered 360 degress while shooting, the footage will always look streched, or will have a hughe black bar in it.

     

    Try to create a 2:1 comp and convert it to 360. Now place your footage in this comp, without streching or anything, but apply plane-to-sphere. Look at it in 360 mode: this is what you get from the footage.

    To complete the whole 360 space, you have to add more content. You could use several 4:3 videos, so it's like screens around you. Or you enlarge the video content with graphics, clonestamp, or CGI. Of course this can be an insane amount of work.

     

    *Martin

    M
    MainFraggerAuthor
    Inspiring
    August 7, 2020

    I don't expect perfection, but in this case, I think the stretching/distortion caused by the effect I am going for may actually help make what I am trying to do work because when I view it in a VR viewer, I think it will reverse distort it to look right.  I know in photoshop there is a way of mapping images to a polar coordinate system to make the images look round..is there a way to do that in Premiere or After Effects for video?

     

    I would try to recrop the image, but some of the things I want from the image already come right to the edge...and the over all image is already centered..so I can't see changing my 4:3 to a 2:1 crop...  Although, I THINK when I move the video to Cyberlink Action Director 2 (what came with my Samsung Gear360) it does that automatically.  I can move it to the top of my 360 degree space and the video DOES display normally around me..but instead of forming a half globe, it forms a giant pringle chip.  I want the half globe..I'm going to experiment a little.  I've had good luck converting 4:3 and 16:9 videos to display as 180 degree half globes (with some black space at the top and bottom) by changing the vertical resolution to the square of the vertical resolution divided by the horizontal resolution).  And in some cases, I can extend the horizontal sequence space to double its normal size and then use a linear wipe to sort of fake a 360 degree video.  I would post images to give examples, but most of what I am actually doing is kind of adult themed. What I am thinking is if I convert to 180, it might take care of the edge issue in Action Director by stretching enough that the black corners will be out of view and the video in the black bars will actually form my round edge...

     

     

     

    Martin_Ritter
    Martin_Ritter
    Legend
    August 7, 2020

    Check the VR effects of AE - there are tools to disort a 2d image in a way, it will look not disorted in VR view. Play around with these and see where it brings you.

     

    Good luck!

     

    *Martin

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