PanoMoments

One of the most requested features has been the ability to use PanoMoments as a background to create a parallax scrolling effect with video — something similar to how Apple designed the Mac Pro website.

PanoMoments aren’t just for 360 creators anymore. We’re opening the platform up to every video ever created :) We've always seen the original 360 PanoMoments as part of a larger vision of living photos (hence our company name "Moment Capture"), and today we're releasing the next step towards that vision.

Simply log in with a Google account, upload any video, and you’re done! PanoMoments play natively in 1000’s of sites supported by Embedly and can be embedded into your own sites just like a YouTube video.

What visual story will you tell? Get started here.

We’re building a new living photo format for the Web and VR called PanoMoments. Our goal is to one day see them everywhere, but that’s a big wish to fulfill with a new format. Today, we’re excited to announce a small step towards that future - we now support the oEmbed API which allows PanoMoments to be embedded across any of the 1000’s of sites that support Embedly. This includes sites like Medium, Reddit, the NY Times, and many more.

And while the Pro / Commercial accounts are required for more sophisticated iFrame / white label integrations, Embedly embeds are open and free for all PanoMoments users. To get started, all you have to do is copy the PanoMoment URL like:

https://my.panomoments.com/u/MomentCaptureStudio/m/composite-europe

And then simply paste it into any site that accepts Embedly. Here’s a quick demo on how to embed a PanoMoment on Medium:

To embed in sites that don’t directly support the Embedly API, you can just copy / paste the HTML code snippet found on https://my.panomoments.com/me (click the share icon under the PanoMoment you’d like to embed). The HTML snippet looks like this:

<blockquote class=”embedly-card”><h4><a href=”https://my.panomoments.com/u/MomentCaptureStudio/m/composite-europe">Cross-fade Composite</a></h4></blockquote><script async src=”//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js” charset=”UTF-8"></script>

In the next few months we hope to get PanoMoments integrated in even more sites (yes, even Facebook). Here are a few of the things we’re working on:

Partial rotations (< 360 degrees)

Commercial licensing and offline file hosting

Streaming support for other browsers (Safari is our priority)

Magic window gyro support in the web

Sound support

Improved iOS performance (arriving in the iOS 11.3 update in April)

Facebook integration

Since the beginning, our goal has been to provide a platform where people can discover, create, and share PanoMoments captured around the world. Feel free to reach out to us via email if you have any questions, feedback, or are interested in working together.

Animated PanoMoments

One of the most defining characteristics of PanoMoments is the way they feel more like a photo (or GIF) than video. That's why we are so excited to see what visual artists, animators, and illustrators can do with the format. Check out this link to see a few examples of what animated PanoMoments will feel like, but note that these are just conversions from existing 360 video and weren't originally envisioned as PanoMoments.

Last week we released a basic toolset in Unity 3D to help with the creation process. Whether you're working with 3D or 2D animations, you can use this demo project to record a "virtual camera rotation" compatible with the PanoMoments format. See here for more info on the process, and feel free to reach out to [email protected] you have any questions.

If you know of anyone specifically, or maybe a community, who might be interested in animating using the PanoMoments format, feel free to forward this email, or let us know and we can directly reach out.

Other updates

Performance improvements and new features:

Web viewer performance and stability has been greatly improved

Download streaming is enabled on Chrome - initial viewing times have been drastically cut

WebVR is officially supported on compatible devices

4k UHD resolution for high-end devices

New homepage with embedded banner PanoMoments (easy to do on any website)

Coming soon:

Commercial licensing and offline file hosting

Easier embeds using Embedly

Streaming support for other browsers (Safari is our priority)

Magic window gyro support in the web

Sound support

iOS Safari performance will be greatly improved in iOS 11.3 (arriving in April)