Converting Gyroscope/Accelerometer Data to AE Camera

[matte86314694]

I don't know how possible this is, so I wanted to see if anyone else has had a similar thought.

Back when the Blackmagic Ursa Mini 4k was a sales sheet and not a physical camera yet, it was boasted that the camera would have a 9-axis gyroscope/accelerometer that attaches camera movement/rotation information as either metadata in the footage or a sidecar file for use in post. This ultimately didn't happen, but ever since I've been hoping someone would recognize the need for some sort of camera motion recording module that would lessen the need for camera solves in post.

There are 9 axis accelerometer sensors that are incredibly inexpensive, and it wouldn't be difficult to rig a device to record a camera's position/rotation in space. The problem would be how to turn that recorded motion data into something that After Effects could actually read and use to generate a camera layer with that information.

Is this something anyone else has thought of? If I had to try and find someone who could build this as a plugin or converter, what information would I need to start that conversation? Or does a device like this already exist and I just don't know what it's called?

[Rick Gerard]

Camera movement is only part of the problem that needs to be solved. You also need to measure parallax shifts to calculate the angle of view (focal length) and some sense of where the horizon is. Accelerometer data is only about 1/2 of the data required to reproduce a camera move. If you also threw in the Focal Length of the camera you would still have to find some geometry in the scene to generate position data for surfaces. 

I'm not saying that this kind of data would not be helpful, but it is not at all an end-all solution to matching camera moves in AE.

[Dave Merchant]

Such devices have been on the market for a while - see https://steadxp.com/ - and of course GoPros from H5 onwards have internal gyros.