The team of Kolor is proud to release today a first beta version of Autopano Video, the new 360° video stitching software!

Autopano Video lets you assemble several videos into a single one covering up to 360 x 180 degrees. The user interface is designed to ease your workflow: drag and drop your source videos, choose a stitching template (including GoPro template) or launch a detection from scratch, use Autopano Pro or Giga to adjust your reference panoramas and click on Render.

Autopano Pro or Autopano Giga are required to use Autopano Video properly.

Watch the video: My first 360° video with Autopano Video

The change log

Main changes

This changelog is the first introduction of Autopano Video, a video stitcher that helps you create amazing 360° videos ( or partial ).

Autopano Video / Autopano Video Pro is the easiest way to stitch and create 360-degree immersive videos

Offer an incredible new experience to your clients or friends. Autopano Video is the new video-stitching software application developed by Kolor. It lets you assemble several videos into a single one covering up to 360 x 180 degrees. The user interface is designed to ease your workflow: drag and drop your source videos, choose a stitching template (including GoPro template) or launch a detection from scratch, use Autopano Pro or Giga to adjust your reference panoramas and click on Render.

We had 3 main goals when making these products

Quality first : The world’s best image-stitching technology is behind Autopano Video. Quality workflow, quality results.

No limitation : We were always determined to bring you cross-platform support as well as cross-hardware support. And that, without any limit in the number of video stream sources nor in the output size.

Affordable, accessible : Both in terms of usage and price, Autopano Video gives nearly everyone the chance to create amazing 360° videos.

Using Autopano Video during the beta stage

We want you to test it, fully, without any limit, even without watermark, for free. So we decided to let you use the full software for free until the end of June 2013. Get a temporary license for free and remove to remove the watermark: http://www.kolor.com/360-video/autopano-video-360-video-stitcher.html.

We believe in our community and in our customers that have been supporting us since a long time now. The quality of a software application doesn’t only come from the quality of the developer ( come on, still a bit ), but from the quality of the communication between you and us.

For this piece of software too, we’ve opened a dedicated forum to let you discuss with us about the product. It is always at the same location: http://www.kolor.com/forum/. Go there to find support, report bugs, post results, etc.

Roadmap to the release

We expect that you’ll find bugs, for sure. And we already have some bugs opened in our database. Here’s a short list of what is still under work here.

• QuickTime codec support with Mac version in 64bits. We support QuickTime Codec in 32bits but not yet in 64bits.
• Mac version can be really slow when having source viewers activated. We advise you to enable them only if needed (untick the boxes "Seek on timeline update").
• Render dialog box UI. We are not totally satisfied with the current layout. If you don’t understand how to use it, we’ll make some changes there.
• Autopano Video Pro only: GPU rendering is working great and super fast on Windows but not on Mac where graphics drivers are complicated to handle well.

Changelog since the latest private beta :

- 0001815: [UI] KAVA icons – resolved

- 0001948: [UI] Main slider drag – resolved

- 0001821: [I/O] 48 fps support – resolved

- 0001906: [UI] add quick pano edition – resolved

- 0001929: [UI] Resizable zone in the UI – resolved

- 0001894: [Benchmark] kic allocation too small for big frame – resolved

- 0001944: [I/O] H264 4k support – resolved

As a reminder: anyone can try Autopano 3.0 in the demo mode, and users having a legitimate registration key of version 2 can use it in this RC version of Autopano 3.0, that expires at the end of December.

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 3.0 RC 1

Change log

Main changes

This is release candidate version of Autopano Engine v3 and hopefully the only one. So one version before final release.

Memory optimization

Since beta 3, we are using the newly created crash report to fix and improve memory use for the application. We found some memory leak and some issues that will improve globally the engine.

Using during beta stage

We believe in our community and in our customers that have been supporting us for a long year on this version. The quality of a software application doesn’t come only from the quality of the developer ( come on, still a bit ), but from the quality of the communication between you and us. So for the v3, we decided to do the following:

• You can try all alpha, beta of Autopano Pro/Giga for free during the pre-release stage of the products. You can even remove the watermark as soon as you have a legitimate v2 key.
• All betas are limited in time. This Release Candidate version will expire end of December.

With this approach, you can already start to use v3 in production work ( at your own risk, of course ). I hope that you will enjoy the v3 and report a lot of feedback on our forum about it.

Roadmap to the release

We are now in RC stage, so this mean bug only correction. We are still aiming a final version for end November.

Fixes :

- 0001582: [Image I/O] Rendering in .psd with incremental suffix doesn’t work

- 0001579: [Image I/O] Bridge 2.6 and 3.0 compatibility

- 0001553: [Cortex ( rendu )] Linux crash at render startup

- 0001563: [Import plugins] Aperture, Lightroom, Bridge plugins to call autopano v3

- 0001414: [Shell Integration] Sign application for mountain lion

- 0001578: [Editor] Crash on close – MacOSX

- 0001576: [Editor] Local geometry analysis is not local anymore

- 0001570: [Editor] Quick preview is done in 2 steps : reverted because not compatible with move mode

As a reminder: anyone can try Autopano 3.0 in the demo mode, and users having a legitimate registration key of version 2 can use it in the beta versions of Autopano 3.0.

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 3.0 Beta 3

Change log

Main changes

This is the third beta version of Autopano Engine v3. We are in the stage where we don’t add new features, we only corrects bugs.

Crash report system

To help us to stabilize more this software ( it is stable enough ok, don’t make me say what I didn’ ). So, to help us in some strange bug report, we introduce in this version a real crash report engine that is cross-platform. So if you have reproductible crashes, this report can be send to us for analysis. It will allow us to find the real reason behind the crash. In the next few month, this report system will be introduced in all our softwares.

Several fixes

• We spent a lot of time on one complicated linux bug : it has been found and will improve PSB file support on that platform ( needed only for gigapixel ).
• Camera and lens database has been upgrade to support all latest cameras : Nikon D600, Canon 6D, etc.
• Windows : this version is the first version that is signed, so you won’t get anymore warning issue when installing under Windows 8. The work will be done on Mac too, but not finished.
• Integration of all our communication channels under ‘F1′, help shortcut. So please, hit F1, just once to see it. Nice, no ?
• After optimization, the layout of the panorama could switch back to default one scrambling the adjustement you did to make it straight. It should now be better in this area.
• Support of image offsets were added in file format that supports it. This is cool but really only for image geek. What does that means ? If you export the panorama and reprojected images in rendering, the size of images which are part of the panorama is not the same as the panorama. In the individual images, you now have an exif tag that says the offsets X, Y of this image to the zero of the panorama. This is quite nice to post-process individual images after autopano.
• GPU support cleaning. We are quite happy now with the latest shader code as it supports several hardware and driver versions.
• Some other minor fixes.

Using during beta stage

We believe in our community and in our customers that have been supporting us for a long year on this version. The quality of a software application doesn’t come only from the quality of the developer ( come on, still a bit ), but from the quality of the communication between you and us. So for the v3, we decided to do the following:

• You can try all alpha, beta of Autopano Pro/Giga for free during the pre-release stage of the products. You can even remove the watermark as soon as you have a legitimate v2 key.
• All betas are limited in time. This beta 3 version will expire end of November.

With this approach, you can already start to use v3 in production work ( at your own risk, of course ). I hope that you will enjoy the v3 and report a lot of feedback on our forum about it.

Roadmap to the release

We are still in beta stage, so this mean bug only correction. We are aiming a final version for end November.

Fixes :

- 0001570: [Editor] Quick preview is done in 2 steps

- 0001527: [Shell Integration] Sign under Windows 8

- 0001569: [UI behavior] unregistered drag and drop

- 0001566: [Editor] External stack processing does not work well with Enfuse

- 0001499: [Image I/O] [Linux] Photoshop PSB files not compatible to PS

- 0001532: [Cortex ( rendu )] linux rendering rgb channel issue

- 0001560: [UI behavior] Antighost error message to change

- 0001539: [UI behavior] Clean UIHelp / social network integration

- 0001556: [Unclassified] Integration cameras.txt / lensid

- 0001559: [Editor] Editor settings : focal truncated from lower integer value

- 0001538: [Qt] Qt 4.8.3 (ygilquin)

- 0001497: [Image I/O] VRDrive 2 focal source

- 0001548: [Cortex ( rendu )] GPU test failed on latest nvidia driver

- 0001552: [Editor] Add a progress bar when dropping image in an existing group

- 0001550: [Editor] After optimization, the layout of the panorama is not the same

- 0001547: [Editor] Render to embedded layers issues

- 0001549: [Cortex ( rendu )] wrong antighost capabilities

- 0001535: [Cortex ( rendu )] Offsets supports everywhere

As a reminder: anyone can try Autopano 3.0 in the demo mode, and users having a legitimate registration key of version 2 can use it in the alpha and beta versions of Autopano 3.0.

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 3.0 Beta 2

Change log

Main changes

This is the second beta version of Autopano Engine v3. We are in the
stage where we don’t add new features, we only corrects bugs.

Translation support

We started this huge job with the new engine. You should have a quite
up to date English language as well as French with this release.

Fixes

• Gigapan import plugin was broken. It works again.
• APG integration into Adobe Bridge CS6 under mac is fixed.
• Under some configurations, exifs metadata were not transfered from
  input file to output panorama.
• etc

Using during beta stage

We believe in our community and in our customers that have been
supporting us for a long year on this version. The quality of a software
application doesn’t come only from the quality of the developer ( come on,
still a bit ), but from the quality of the communication between you
and us. So for the v3, we decided to do the following:

• You can try all alpha, beta of Autopano Pro/Giga for free during the
  pre-release stage of the products. You can even remove the watermark as
  soon as you have a legitimate v2 key.
• All betas are limited in time. This beta 2 version will expire end of
  November.

With this approach, you can already start to use v3 in production work (
at your own risk, of course ). I hope that you will enjoy the v3 and
report a lot of feedback on our forum about it.

Roadmap to the release

We are still in beta stage, so this mean bug only correction. With the
feedback from the forum, we still have some issues that seems important
for us: GPU support on latest NVidia drivers ( issue 1531 ), big panorama
rendering under linux ( issue 1499 ).

We are still aiming a final version for mid/end November.

Fixes :

- 0001370: [translation] French translation pass – resolved.
– 0001277: [Synapse ( detection )] Geometric Analyse doesn’t work on
long focal – resolved.
– 0001526: [Unclassified] Email for imagedef log, change or not -
resolved.
– 0001525: [Import plugins] Numbering on input plugin – resolved.
– 0001521: [translation] Translation pass English to clean wording -
resolved.
– 0001522: [Shell Integration] Unable to export pictures from Adobe
Bridge CS6 to APG 3 – resolved.
– 0000897: [Performance] Gigapan test case 1056 : SIFT detection isn’t
running in parallel – resolved.
– 0001523: [Import plugins] Gigapan plugin, estimated focale is wrong -
resolved.
– 0001520: [Image I/O] Exif are not written into the pano when EXIF are
partially available – resolved.
– 0001505: [Image I/O] Raw decoding of overexposed image are pink -
resolved.
– 0001514: [Editor] Auto adaptation of the grid steps according to
panorama size – resolved.
– 0001309: [Image I/O] GPS coordinates changing – resolved.
– 0001378: [UI behavior] Move layer to new panorama do not keep camera
positions – resolved.
– 0001313: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Color correction not working after
image reload – resolved.
– 0001281: [Performance] Zero length image files cause autopano to crash
– resolved.
– 0001379: [Image I/O] can’t open .pano when folder name contains exotic
characters – resolved.
– 0001510: [Image I/O] PSB : wrong canevas size if panorama is not
embedded – resolved.
– 0001513: [UI behavior] wrong dirty status on level validation -
resolved.
– 0001512: [Editor] “Custom” rendering profile in dialog box should not
be clickable – resolved.
– 0001511: [Editor] canceling detection can crash – resolved.
– 0001506: [UI behavior] update size on dpi change – resolved.

The following issues were closed as they are not relevant anymore with
new engine:
– 0001438: [Synapse ( detection )] Number of picture read vs number of
CPU/THREAD in 32 bit (detection crashes) – closed.
– 0001355: [Image I/O] Qt compilation under linux when integrating new
KGFL – closed.
– 0000959: [UI behavior] Slow display during Image Mode – closed.
– 0001010: [Shell Integration] Layer mode broken on linux – closed.
– 0001515: [Editor] Group by stack doesn’t work anymore – closed.
– 0001335: [Shell Integration] Crash at .pano opening – closed.
– 0000044: [UI behavior] Selection in layer editor doesn’t always follow
the editor Selection and reversed – closed.
– 0000040: [Image I/O] EXIF Speed / Aperture edition doesn’t stay in the
editor – closed.
– 0001280: [GPU] GPU check crash in remote desktop connexion – closed.
– 0001449: [Editor] Restart needed when compatibility with old graphic
card checked? – closed.
– 0001508: [Editor] levels issue – closed.
– 0000920: [Cortex ( rendu )] Crash on render (Linux) when no space on
disk is available – closed.
– 0001507: [Editor] crop interface precision – closed.
– 0001494: [Editor] removing images causes random crash – closed.

As a reminder: anyone can try Autopano 3.0 in the demo mode, and users having a legitimate registration key of version 2 can use it in the alpha and beta versions of Autopano 3.0.

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 3.0 Beta 1

Change log

Main changes

This version is an improved version of Autopano engine v3. This is the first beta version and we are now in the stage where we don’t add new features, we only corrects bugs.

GPU support

We solved the complicated issue related to the support of some graphics cards and some OS that don’t allow to update GPU drivers easily. We hope that for most hardware, the solution found will give a nice real time interface in the editor.

Linux support

There were some issues with Linux support. To be able to solve them, we raised the minimal version of the kernel to a new value so that we can guarantee that everything is working smoothly. For Ubuntu, version 10.04 LTS is now needed as a minimal OS requirement.

Using during beta stage

We believe in our community and in our customers that have been supporting us for a long year on this version. The quality of a software application doesn’t come only from the quality of the developer ( come on, still a bit ), but from the quality of the communication between you and us. So for the v3, we decided to do the following:

• You can try all alpha, beta of Autopano Pro/Giga for free during the pre-release stage of the products. You can even remove the watermark as soon as you have a legitimate v2 key.
• All betas are limited in time. This beta 1 version will expire end of October.

With this approach, you can already start to use v3 in production work ( at your own risk, of course ). I hope that you will enjoy the v3 and report a lot of feedback on our forum about it.

Roadmap to the release

We are in beta stage, so this mean bug only correction. We are not far from the final version.

Fixes :

- 0001451: [Shell Integration] Linux build on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

- 0001474: [Shell Integration] Settings are not saved under linux

- 0001501: [Editor] When selecting a link, the CP-List does not refer to this selected link

- 0001492: [UI behavior] rename crop button 360×180

- 0001496: [Import plugins] VRDrive 2 plugins HDR mode

- 0001276: [Shell Integration] Extended save as with multiple folder source

- 0001493: [Editor] Unchecking remove control point in optimizer doesn’t disabled underlying controls

- 0001461: [Shell Integration] Autopano doesn’t work in remote desktop context

- 0001491: [Editor] prefered projection does not work

- 0001488: [Editor] Move pano is reseted when mouse is outside projection space

- 0001396: [GPU] Editor doesn’t show anything

- 0001486: [UI behavior] Cancel during folder pano detection only close dialog box

As a reminder: anyone can try Autopano 3.0 in the demo mode, and users having a legitimate registration key of version 2 can use it in the alpha and beta versions of Autopano 3.0.

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 3.0 Alpha 3

Change log

Main changes

This version is an improved version of Autopano engine v3. It will be the latest Alpha version for this engine, meaning, we are now only in bugs correction mode, no new feature will be added before v3.0 release.

There were several improvements in different part of the code. Here’s a quick list of them.

Editor improvements

Again, the editor has been really taken care of, because we really want an easy workflow:

• For many tools, we added a new mecanism for validation. For example, you are adjusting values in panini projection, if you change tools without hitting the check button, then the latest changes are lost. You expect that these changes are always applied but not always.Now, it will warn you about these unsaved changes and you can apply them or cancel them. This behavior can be changed in editor setting ( always apply, ask, never apply ).This behavior is now applied on projection, crop, vertical line, mask, level, exposure fusion and quick preview tools.
• Right click does always select when beeing in anchor edition mode.
• Line tool can only be used in spherical and planar mode. In fact, in any other projection, maths behind were an approximation and didn’t work well. So, we left that tool active only in projections where it has a real solution. We’ll probably rework this code in a future version to bring you line tool in any projection.

Optimization improvements

• It appeared that in some cases where the focal length is know, the convergence was going too far from the real focal length. The optimization engine has been improved to prevent focal length to go too far from initial value. It still can when it has too, but not as often as before.With fisheye lenses, it could happen and you could see that in layer editor, the calculated focal length there was having the value 220°. It doesn’t happen anymore now.

Using during beta stage

We believe in our community and in our customers that support us since a long year. The quality of a software application doesn’t come only by the quality of the developer ( come on, still a bit ), but from the quality of the communication between you and us. So for the v3, we decided to do the following:

• You can try all alpha, beta of Autopano Pro/Giga for free during the pre-release stage of the products. You can even remove the watermark as soon as you have a legitimate v2 key.
• All betas are limited in time. This Alpha 3 version will expire end of October.

With this approach, you can already start to use v3 in production work ( at your own risk, of course ). I hope that you will enjoy the v3 and report a lot of feedback on our forum about it.

Roadmap to the release

There are still some bugs opened in our database and the only big one is a GPU related bug ( issue 1396 ). The linux version has also a crash at exit that prevent every settings to be saved ( meaning you have to enter the registration again … ). Nevertheless, this kind of issue is easy to solve.

So next release will be beta 1 and I hope a lot of people will use it a lot to raise any issue that are still there before going to RC mode.

Fixes :

- 0001485: [Editor] crash on APP start – resolved.

- 0001453: [Editor] CPE editor and control points – resolved.

- 0001482: [Editor] After adding control point to some image pair, the selection is changed and images are switched – resolved.

- 0001427: [Neurone ( optimisation )] is auto color and auto histo working ? – resolved.

- 0001457: [UI behavior] Why validation on some tools – resolved.

- 0001463: [Neurone ( optimisation )] CP optimization is not stable! – resolved.

- 0001336: [Image I/O] tiff reading issue – resolved.

- 0001458: [Unclassified] Wrong metadata in .pano – resolved.

- 0001455: [Editor] Horizon issue – resolved.

- 0001462: [Image I/O] saving project file – automatically stacks images – resolved.

- 0001469: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Multiples entries in RANSAC model – resolved.

- 0001473: [Editor] wrong pictures index in mask editor – resolved.

- 0001475: [Editor] Selection manager is global to all panos – resolved.

- 0001476: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Color correction not always working – resolved.

- 0001477: [Editor] Mask points still displayed when images are unselected – resolved.

- 0001479: [Editor] Mask tool: add a button to delete all current mask points – resolved.

- 0001480: [Editor] ‘Lines tool’ is accessible in some unsupported projection – resolved.

- 0001484: [Qt] Object::connect: No such slot WHMovePicture::verifyCurrentIndex() – resolved.

- 0001468: [Import plugins] Neutralhazer slow to give hands back – closed.

- 0001467: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Auto color doesn’t stay if changed in setting – closed.

Please read the change log below as it gives interesting details on this update and the application evolution.

As a reminder: anyone can try Autopano 3.0 in the demo mode, and users having a legitimate registration key of version 2 can use it in the alpha and beta versions of Autopano 3.0.

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 3.0 Alpha 2

Change log

Main changes

This version is an improved version of Autopano engine v3. It also takes into account customer requests for an easier UI in Autopano.

Editor improvements

A lot of small changes have been made to ease the work in the editor. Here’s a quick list of them:

• The layer editor is synchronized with the panorama editor. This is quite nice because now, you have a direct synchronization between the layer editor selection and the editor itself in both ways. Select an image in the editor, it selects the line in layer editor. Easy. It is really an improvement over the old behavior and allows new actions, like deleting an image directly from the control points editor.We also added some new features in the layer editor like the ability to copy, paste location of one image to another image, or to move the current selection to a new layer in a single click.
• If you hold the shift key when selecting an image, you select the whole stack composed with this image, it is easier for moving stacks as a whole instead of moving the images one by one.
• In the Info window, you now have an accurate evaluation of the overlapping percentage of the panorama. This is often a good-to-know information about the panorama.How to read this value? Imagine a 2-image panorama : 0% means no overlapping at all. 100% means both images are overlapping in full. 50% would be something like the edge of one image is at the center of the second.Note: the value can go over 100% if you do bracketing. With a 3-bracket panorama, you should have a value around 340%, 300 coming from bracket et 40% of real overlapping between different location.
• Improved Panini projection. You now have access to the horizontal field of view that was hidden before. This allows to get a larger view. We didn’t allow to get the maximal theoretical value because there is really too much distortion in that case, nevertheless, now, you can go beyond the first version.Note: You have to be aware that maximal horizontal field of view depends on the distance parameter. If you change the distance, the max changes. It is often a good way to get a larger field of view.
• Constraint-based masking and stack: we added another way to put a constraint on each image composing a stack with two new button dedicated to this action.
• When using move mode for image or full panorama, you can also hold the shift key to force motion only in one direction ( horizontal or vertical ). For panorama centering, that’s nice.

Seitz VR Drive II support

Seitz VR Drive II has a build-in mode that drives directly cameras, it is called the HDR mode. It setups for you the number of brackets, exposure, etc. Moreover, the VR Drive II also creates a Papywizard XML file. So, it seems adequate for us to create a super easy wizard that does everything out of VR Drive II. Now, in the Import module, you have a new plugin designed for VR Drive II HDR mode. Compared to the standard Papywizard plugin, it introduces in the main page an option to let you select from within the plugin the kind of output you want: tonemapped or true HDR. Behind the scene, it has been optimized to follow the way the head organized the shoots for an easy wizard.

RAW decoding

We changed how RAW decoding is done in this version of Autopano: be aware that decoded RAWs will be a little darker now than before. Here’s the explanation:

If you used to decode manually-exposed RAW files within Autopano, there were an automatic level done over the images during the RAW decoding. Then, the output images didn’t have the same exposure anymore, which could be an issue for the stitching. We removed this option from DCRAW engine and now you have a stable exposure. The drawback is that decoded RAWs look darker than before. Our previous design was to be able to have a decoded RAW exposed like the JPEG if produced by the camera, but it is not really possible anymore.

The good point with that change is that bracketing of RAW to produce HDR is now better. If you do bracketing with a large amount of eV between the shots, you end up with really dark images. With that changes, they stay dark and also don’t introduce anymore noise because of this RAW decoding auto level.

Miscellaneous

Other changes in this version:

• We support all new RAW formats from new cameras available in the market ( Nikon D800, Canon 5DMark3, etc ).
• When doing a Gigapan or Papywizard panorama, as the number of images can be fairly large, it could happen that the name of the produced images was wrongly numbered because it reached a 9999 value (the camera starts again the filename with 0000 ). In this case, you needed to rename the images before importing them because we used alphabetical order. Now, we use timestamps instead of alphabetical order when it is possible. It solves this issue.
• Is an image missing in a panorama? Just drag’n'drop it from a group to the panorama. Easy way to add an image to the panorama.

Using during beta stage

We believe in our community and in our customers that support us since a long year. The quality of a software application doesn’t come only by the quality of the developer ( come on, still a bit ), but from the quality of the communication between you and us. So for the v3, we decided to do the following:

• You can try all alpha, beta of Autopano Pro/Giga for free during the pre-release stage of the products. You can even remove the watermark as soon as you have a legitimate v2 key.
• All betas are limited in time. This Alpha 2 version will expire end of October.

With this approach, you can already start to use v3 in production work ( at your own risk, of course ). I hope that you will enjoy the v3 and report a lot of feedback on our forum about it.

Roadmap to the release

We are now concentrating only on reported bugs (no new feature will be introduced until the release version). There are 2 open bugs that still need some attention. First one is about GPU use on some computers. As we are using it a lot now for the real-time editor, it stresses a bit some old computers and in some cases, it doesn’t display anything on the screen ( issue 1396 ). Another topic is that some tools have a validation action that doesn’t seem to do anything but if you don’t use it, the panorama switches to its previous state. This is a design issue we need to adjust for the next version (issue 1457).

Fixes :

- 0001250: [Neurone ( optimisation )] distorsion model settings not kept – resolved.

- 0001347: [Editor] Display average overlaping percentage in help window – resolved.

- 0001380: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Optimization with orphan images – resolved.

- 0001420: [Cortex ( rendu )] Pannini projection cropping the zone – resolved.

- 0001403: [Import plugins] VRDrive 2 import plugin – resolved.

- 0001388: [Import plugins] Parsing error in Papywizard plugin – resolved.

- 0000454: [Import plugins] Using timestamp for sorting gigapan input images – resolved.

- 0001450: [Unclassified] Theta min/max inversed – resolved.

- 0001439: [Editor] Horizontal squeeze on rectilinear projection – resolved.

- 0001444: [Image I/O] KGFL 4.0.0 integration – resolved.

- 0001446: [Import plugins] Neutralhazer protection is on – resolved.

- 0001419: [Editor] Too approximated crop in pannini – resolved.

- 0001385: [Cortex ( rendu )] Single row detection template – resolved.

- 0001237: [UI behavior] move help text of each tools – resolved.

- 0001319: [UI behavior] create new graphics resources – resolved.

- 0001428: [Cortex ( rendu )] %f does not work in rendering name – resolved.

- 0001425: [UI behavior] same picture can be dropped several times in same group – resolved.

- 0001390: [Unclassified] first start seems not stable (Import, GPU…) – resolved.

- 0001245: [Editor] Drag’n'drop images from a group to a panorama => add images to that panorama – resolved.

- 0001224: [Editor] Delete picture in CP mode – resolved.

- 0001374: [UI behavior] “Hide” system menu is not translated on Mac – resolved.

- 0001200: [Editor] Expose move horizontal / vertical only in panorama mode – resolved.

- 0001387: [Cortex ( rendu )] graphcut constraints – resolved.

- 0001397: [Editor] Pannini squeeze range – resolved.

- 0001287: [Cortex ( rendu )] Mode mask and stac – resolved.

- 0001069: [Editor] In move mode, move a stack in a whole instead of moving individual images – resolved.

- 0001409: [Editor] Can save a pano with only picture – resolved.

- 0000084: [Editor] Selection des images via l’editeur de layer aussi ( refleté dans l’editeur au-dessus ) – resolved.

- 0000865: [Editor] Copy / Paste Image location in contextual menu of layer editor – resolved.

- 0001345: [Editor] Select some image in the layer, right click, move to new layer – resolved.

- 0001350: [Editor] Layer editor : right click on image, copy /paste image name – resolved.

- 0001398: [Cortex ( rendu )] Editor visual jump when changing projection mode – resolved.

- 0001394: [Synapse ( detection )] Crash on close all group when a group is detecting – resolved.

- 0001391: [Editor] settings not saved – resolved.

- 0001389: [Unclassified] Plugin apply on only 3 images – resolved.

New York, June 14, 2012. During the annual IVRPA conference held in New York, Kolor announced version 3.0 of panorama software Autopano Pro and Autopano Giga, and released a first alpha version for testing purposes.

Alexandre Jenny, founder and CEO of Kolor, presented the new features available in Autopano 3.0:

> Revamped panorama editor based on the power of the GPU (graphics card)
> Real-time preview of the rendering: get an idea of the final rendering before even launching it
> Selective anti-ghost mode: easily choose what you want to keep or discard in the overlapping areas (Autopano Giga)
> Multiple projections: choose your favorite projection, including Panini and Little Planet and tune it as you want
> Plus many user-submitted features to come in the next alpha and beta versions

Video: watch what’s new in Autopano 3.0

Download: try Autopano Pro 3.0 and Autopano Giga 3.0

Anyone can try the alpha version of Autopano Pro 3.0 and Autopano Giga 3.0. If you already own a registration key of version 2.x, you can use it on this first alpha to remove the watermark.

Download Autopano Pro 3.0 alpha 1 and Autopano Giga 3.0 alpha 1

About future upgrades

All clients purchasing Autopano Pro and Autopano Giga from June 14, 2012 onwards will get version 3 for free when it is officially released.

Clients owning a license of Autopano Pro or Autopano Giga purchased before June 14, 2012 will be proposed a special price to upgrade to version 3.

Read the full upgrade policy

The Change Log

By Alexandre Jenny

Main changes

This version introduces the v3 of Kolor Engine. As a first release of a new engine, we expect to have a lot of feedback ( positive feedback ) and not too many bugs. But there will be bugs of course. Nevertheless, I’m sure you will appreciate the direction we are aiming to take: easier to use and more powerful.

Let’s describe the changes in 4 categories.

Revamped Panorama Editor

We worked a lot on the editor to be able to offer you a better experience while editing panoramas. The first aspect of this work is a better design of all the tools, a new GPU rendering in the editor for a better and more accurate rendering and a beautiful and useful grid.

• Tools layout: the tools used to appear sometimes on the left panel and sometimes in a separate dialog box. Everything is now integrated on the left panel ( even the color levels ). I think it’s an improvement.
• New GPU rendering: this is really nice because the GPU mode is now as accurate as the CPU mode. Even on the zenith and nadir in spherical mode, you have a nice and accurate preview. Moreover, this change still allows to have the real-time full panorama move mode which raise the edition of panorama layout to a new level. It is fast, visual and easy.
• The grid ( over the panorama ). You have 2 flags on the right of the editor which allow you to switch on or off the axis or the grid. By default, the grid is labeled in output space dimension, meaning in pixel. As soon as you open the editor, you know how large the rendering will be. But you can also switch to angular mode and in this mode, you can draw meridians and parallels over the panorama. It can be really useful for some measurement over the panorama.
• A lot of small fixes have also been achieved to get a more uniform experience in the editor.

New projection modes

This feature has been asked for several times. It is now done. It took a while because we needed to rewrite some parts of the code that were not compatible with some projections. That’s why it was only introduced in a major release and not a minor one; we had to rewrite the projection pipeline of our engine.

Nevertheless, it is worth the wait, because when it is combined with the GPU rendering in the editor, you have the perfect experience for the choice of the right projection. This can be critical if you have an exact idea of what you want but don’t know what to do to get to it.

One note: it took us a while to design a nice projection UI, especially how to create and design good icons for the projection modes. I’m waiting for your feedback on these icons. I find them cool because it is a combination of cube faces and mapping, giving a good understanding in both lectures.

Integrated Quick Rendering

You may have noticed a small green icon near the percentage of the rendering in the editor. This is a small icon for a big feature: it is an integrated rendering directly in the editor. It does what it says: it renders the displayed zone with the final render engine as if you had launched the redering at the size of the screen with the render dialog box ( assuming you crop and adjust the percentage of the rendering ).

Why is this feature great?

Because it displays what the rendered panorama will look like in this zone without the need of doing it in full. It allows you to finetune accurately the exposure fusion panel. This is really cool ( it has been introduced in v2.6, but it is really better integrated now ).

As you have a quick rendering, you can see what decision the anti-ghost will make for this panorama. Now, the obvious question is: can I influence the anti-ghost? And this leads me to the last point.

Constrained-Based Masking

This is the new editor mode available in Autopano Giga only. You can see it near the control point editor icon. It allows to decide for an individual image what you want to keep or remove. You just need to place green or red spots on the right image and with the Integrated Quick Rendering, you can have a direct preview of what the panorama will look like when rendered.

To create a chrono-panorama, it is now super easy with this tool. It helps also to patch the nadir in only 3 clicks. In the video, you can see that.

Other improvements

As we revamped a lot of the code, we used that time to improve some other parts:

• Photoshop Mode F: you can hide all the tools of the editor with a simple keyboard shortcut
• In the Move mode, you can now apply a numerical transformation: that’s nice to move or rotate a multiple selection of images very precisely
• In the Move mode again, you can now adjust the full panorama even in CPU mode ( this was not possible in previous versions )
• The underlying image reader/writer engine has been ported to UTF8 which means you can open any image with any type of charset in the application. It is funny to see Chinese image names in the editor.
• The control points editor has now two new icons, next / preview, which allow to quickly review all the links of the current selection
• Automatic stack creation was only possible through the Browse Folder icon. Now, it is also active when you drag & drop images over the application or if you select individual images

Using during beta stage

We believe in our community and in our customers that support us since a long year. The quality of a software doesn’t come only by the quality of the developer ( come on, still a bit ), but from the quality of the communication between you and us. So for the v3, we decided to do the following:

• You can try all alpha, beta of Autopano Pro/Giga for free during the pre-release stage of the products. You can even remove the watermark as soon as you have a legitimate v2 key.
• All betas are limited in time. This version for example expires end of August.

With this approach, you can already start to use v3 in production work ( at your own risk, of course ). Of course, I hope that you will enjoy the v3 and report a lot of feedback on our forum about it.

In the presentation, we also talked about user-suggested features. They have been well categorized here and we’ll implement the ones that are the most demanded. It will happen in Autopano Engine Alpha 2 for end July

Fixes :

- 0001367: [GPU] shader compilation on stable on all graphic cards – resolved.
- 0001381: [Editor] AutoTheta is broken – resolved.
- 0001372: [translation] Apple menu, translation in japanesse – resolved.
- 0001356: [Qt] QT 4.8.2 sur main – resolved.
- 0001175: [Editor] Multiple selection and move mode, change zoom broken – resolved.
- 0001234: [Editor] UI layer broken – resolved.
- 0001364: [Editor] Crash when using stop all detection – resolved.
- 0001362: [Editor] Quick Preview, 100% size should not display square pixel – resolved.
- 0001358: [Cortex ( rendu )] add a parameter to edit rendering marging – resolved.
- 0000987: [UI behavior] crash when too much groups opened – resolved
- 0000433: [Editor] Linear projection on a 360∞ HDR + Crop = strange display – resolved.
- 0001320: [Cortex ( rendu )] Panini projection clean – resolved.
- 0001023: [Cortex ( rendu )] TruncatePiece clean revamp – resolved.
- 0000087: [Editor] Engine revamp for new projection integration – resolved.
- 0001306: [UI behavior] Numerical transform in Move mode too – resolved.
- 0001334: [UI behavior] UI improvements – resolved.
- 0001318: [translation] create translation file for kernel – resolved.
- 0001325: [Neurone ( optimisation )] vertical tool not adpated to all projections – resolved.
- 0001196: [Cortex ( rendu )] panorama size not stable – resolved.
- 0001322: [Cortex ( rendu )] compute piece approximation – resolved.
- 0001210: [UI behavior] use lib KUI – resolved.
- 0001068: [Image I/O] Cannot load images if the directoy has an accent – resolved.
- 0001316: [Editor] Check editor open flag in APG – resolved.
- 0001209: [UI behavior] resources cleaning – resolved.
- 0001270: [Cortex ( rendu )] shader check – resolved.
- 0001285: [Editor] default GPU mode – resolved.
- 0001307: [Neurone ( optimisation )] autofit must be done in XYn space – resolved.
- 0001141: [Editor] Crop not as accurate as 2.6 or 2.5 – resolved.
- 0001308: [Neurone ( optimisation )] reduce autocrop marging – resolved.
- 0001271: [Unclassified] Code uniformization – resolved.
- 0000929: [Image I/O] Cameras.Txt behavior – resolved.
- 0001286: [Cortex ( rendu )] panini thetaPhiToXY – resolved.
- 0001262: [Cortex ( rendu )] stereographic projection behaviours – resolved.
- 0000310: [Shell Integration] No stack creation when using ’select images’ instead of browse folder – resolved.
- 0001272: [UI behavior] Resize viewport depending on content – resolved.
- 0001249: [Neurone ( optimisation )] clean camera – resolved.
- 0001255: [Neurone ( optimisation )] clean old opengl mesh – resolved.
- 0001274: [Cortex ( rendu )] mask point position not reliable – resolved.
- 0001275: [Editor] layer selection can be done outside the extended world – resolved.
- 0001135: [Neurone ( optimisation )] New projection modes – resolved.
- 0001242: [UI behavior] placement of control point editor tool – resolved.
- 0001259: [Cortex ( rendu )] optimize cpu rendering – resolved.
- 0001261: [UI behavior] uinformize UI selection between GPU and CPU – resolved.
- 0001214: [UI behavior] Dock tools of pano editor diplay – resolved.
- 0001235: [UI behavior] redesign docked tools – resolved.
- 0001236: [UI behavior] move projection and color settings in docked tool – resolved.
- 0001238: [UI behavior] consistent tool bar access – resolved.
- 0001239: [UI behavior] quick acces of grid and vanishing point display – resolved.
- 0001240: [UI behavior] hide and display all tools – resolved.
- 0001247: [Editor] Photoshop Mode F – resolved.
- 0001243: [Cortex ( rendu )] render mipmaping not reliable – resolved.
- 0001256: [UI behavior] better ogl scale and render mipmap – resolved.
- 0000635: [UI behavior] GPU enabled setting not stored properly – resolved.
- 0000080: [Performance] CPU mode in editor could benefit of MT if we clean up the renderPreview2 – closed.
- 0000935: [Cortex ( rendu )] merge multiband fix from 2.6 – closed.
- 0000862: [UI behavior] merge quick renderer from 2.6 – closed.

Here is version 2.6.2 RC4 of Autopano Pro and Autopano Giga image-stitching software (mainly a fix release).

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 2.6.2 RC4 .

Change log

Main changes

Mainly a fix release

In addition to fixing some RC3 issues, multiband rendering has been improved in HDR mode. Multiband algorithm is a sensible part of engine and these modifications need to be tested before final realease. We are still attentive to Windows 64 bits crash issues which seem to be solved since RC2 version.

Fixes :

- 0001186: [Image I/O] EXIF speed, aperture modified should influence HDR activation – resolved.
- 0001150: [Editor] Image move to new panorama and then extended save as hang – resolved.
- 0001193: [Editor] Extended Save As — “move picture” lost textures in the editor – resolved.
- 0001190: [UI behavior] Crash when adding pictures into the editor – resolved.
- 0001191: [Cortex ( rendu )] 1 pixel wide artefacts – resolved.
- 0001176: [Cortex ( rendu )] Multiband on HDR output – resolved.
- 0001163: [Shell Integration] Wrong permission on Resource folder – resolved.
- 0001189: [Image I/O] Reload Image in layer editor brokes Fisheye radius – resolved.

Here is version 2.6.2 RC3 of Autopano Pro and Autopano Giga image-stitching software.

This new RC version should be the last step before the release of version 2.6.2 (see change log below).

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 2.6.2 RC3 .

Change log