A free Final Cut Pro X plugin that sets the direction and tilt of a 360° clip using on-screen controls.

Part of Alex4D 360° Effects for Final Cut Pro 10.4: Essential VR video tools for 360° stories.

Orientation?

Although 360° spherical video viewers can look in any direction and any angle up or down, they will be most comfortable looking straight ahead. The centre of the 360° shot in the Final Cut Pro 10.4 viewer corresponds to what viewers will see if they look straight ahead.

360° video makers also might want to make consecutive shots line up.

For example, imagine a shot of a door opening in a room followed by a shot in the corridor beyond.

The camera rig in the room may have been set up so that the camera facing forward is facing a window. That would result in a sphere of video where the centre of the footage (what viewers will see if they look ahead) – is the window. It is useful to change the ‘direction’ of the sphere so that the centre of the shot is the door.

The camera rig that shot the corridor could also have been set up to point in any direction – the camera facing forwards could have been facing the corridor wall. The resulting footage from that setup will be centred on the wall, not centred looking further down the corridor. 360° Direction and Tilt 4D and 360° Reorient 4D can be used to change the orientation of the video sphere so that the centre of the shot is looking further down the corridor, so that when the door opens and we transition to the corridor shot, the shots feel like they align.

360° Direction and Tilt 4D

360° Direction and Tilt 4D is in the Basics category of Alex4D 360° Effects:

Here is what the Final Cut Pro 10.4 360° viewer and the viewer look like when the 360° Direction and Tilt 4D effect is applied to a full-screen 360° media (including a 360° compound clip):

Controls

Direction and Tilt repositions the centre of the clip so the sphere of video has a new direction and tilt.

A Direction (X) of -0.5 moves the centre of the clip 90° to the left, which makes the sphere of video turn so that if the viewer looks ahead, they are looking to what was to the right of the camera (right 90°).

A Direction (Y) of -0.5 moves the centre of the clip 90° down, which makes the sphere of video turn so that if the viewer looks ahead, they are looking to the zenith (up 90°).

Source Angle rotates the clip around the centre point before that centre is moved using Direction and Tilt parameters.

Direction and Tilt and Source Angle can also be set using the on-screen control.

Opposite reverses the actions of the effect. Sometimes it is useful to apply 360° Direction and Tilt 4D twice – to reorient a clip using Source Angle, Tilt and Direction, then apply another effect and then orient the clip back to where it started using a second instance of 360° Direction and Tilt 4D. In this case, to move the clip back, keep the values for Direction and Tilt and Source Angle the same and check Opposite.