Director-360: Introducing camera handling to 360 cameras

This work introduces the concept of camera handling for a 360 camera and proposes Director-360, a 360 camera enhanced with two novel handling techniques. Pointer and field-of-view (FoV) are designed to explicitly and implicitly capture the 360 photographer's subject of interest within the 360 media at capture time. Pointer lets users specify a subject of interest about the scene by directly pointing the 360 camera as if using the camera as a flashlight, while FoV captures the user's subject of interest within the 360 scene by mapping the user's face direction to the 360 media. We described an implementation using deep-learning algorithms. We also presented the Director-360 Editor, which incorporates the handling data to streamline the post-editing process. To understand how Director-360 helps to compose 360 media, a pilot study was carried out to create video storytelling in three target scenarios. The results and user feedback from a pilot study were reported.