H4VAPP - Desktop software to convert H4V Images: H4VPRO to H4V (and H4V to H4VPRO).
I wanted to be able to bulk convert H4VPRO to H4V for sharing on Facebook and with friends and family who do not (yet) have Hydrogen One. Yes, I can already do this on the H1 - but I find it slow and laborious, and I’ve got hundreds of images already, and I expect to have hundreds more after Christmas!
I want to shoot primarily in H4VPRO - because it’s the only format that stores a full 4K left/right image (‘H4V and Quad4V formats store much lower resolution). But H4VPRO is not good for sharing. Also I want:
put Artist/Copyright meta data in the image
a watermark (text or image)
GPS co-ordinates
I couldn’t find anything that did this - particularly in bulk, so I wrote H4VAPP!
H4VAPP does all the above listed functions, and I’m using it daily. It’s not user-friendly: it’s all command line, but there are some instructions and a YouTube video.
In January I’ll update it with a Finder ‘right click’ menu and release it as ‘try for 30 days’ and a small price (under $50). The same thing but for Windows will come later in 2019. All feedback appreciated (the web site already lists a few of the additional features I’ve got planned)!
“2x1 ‘SBS’ Pro Mode” to H4V conversion currently only supports landscape, not portrait photos
no way to ‘stitch’ two (left+right) JPEG’s into one H4V or “2x1 ‘SBS’ Pro Mode”
I’ve used the term H4VPRO which is not used anywhere by LEIA or RED, so I’ll switch to “2x1 ‘SBS’ Pro Mode”
I’ll get these fixed in an update in the coming week.
But for now what I really need are beta testers to check that the core functions work and it is useful. If you can help - head straight to the web site and grab the software and watch the video demo. Thanks!
If I shoot in H4V and convert to SBS/H4VPro, will any changes I’ve made to 4V focus or depth be reflected in the SBS? How about Bokeh, crop, and contrast/brightness/saturation? Also, if I install it on a mac today, I understand there’s a 20 day beta period. Is that still in effect? Thanks!
The current beta is expired - I’m in the process of creating a new one with some additional features. It’ll be announced in all the usual places as soon as it’s ready.
The bokeh etc. are all stored in meta data, the actual image is not adjusted. So yes, when you convert formats using H4VAPP the meta data (and hence your edits) are retained. I’m hoping to add a feature so you can manually set this metadata using H4VAPP. Therefore you could experiment visually on the device to get the levels, then apply that to a whole photo shoot/roll.
The main drawback of editing on device at the moment is the drop in resolution. Both Quad4V and H4V+meta have much lower resolution than SBS ‘pro mode’. Yes H4VAPP can convert Quad4V and H4V+meta to pro mode, but it does it by scaling up. Better to edit the email pro mode photos directly - hence why the ability to apply edits to meta data directly is a useful feature.
My father in law passed away unexpectedly and so once again I’m away from work for a few weeks while I help the family. Unfortunately that’s not conducive to getting a new H4VAPP release done. My team can do some of the work but this is a project mostly driven by me, so it’s on hold until I’m back in the office.
You say H4VPRO is not good for sharing… But almost all 3D content of all human history is available on the internet in Full-SBS format. There are millions of images in SBS. There are tons of SBS videos (altough half of them are in Half-SBS, but you can find a lot in Full-SBS too).
So H4VPRO is not only good, is the format anybody with 3D screen expect. If you try to use another format you will not reach a lot of people (unless if you share in 2d, of course).
SBS images can store the copyright/watermark and GPS and other exif data just like another standard JPG image.
Err, no, I said H4VPRO (SBS) is not good for sharing on Facebook.
But yes - my point is sharing in 2D for those without access to any compatible 3D device. I really think my original post was pretty clear on that too.
If you want to shoot and share SBS, then you don’t need H4VAPP.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was shocked because there are a lot of 3D groups on facebook sharing SBS images, yes, facebook is not the best way to view SBS images, twitter is better for that.
Arthur - i’m finally set up on a MacOS virtual machine & looking forward to trying this out. i mainly shoot SBS & i’m most interested in converting my earlier H4V photos to SBS.
I managed to get MacOS working in VMWare, so I think I can do it again @Nima I did get to play with Lightfield Studio some - the latest link I had was 1.1.2
Thanks so much Arthur! What’s the command for Depth Maps? Can’t find it in the instructions that come with the installer or the PDF instructions downloaded from H4Vapp.com.
I also recommend renaming the --overwrite command, because it doesn’t seem to actually overwrite the original image, it extracts a Left Image, Right Image, and SBS into the same location of the original Leia Image Format image.
If you run it again, then nothing happens because the files already exist:
./h4vappcmd /Volumes/QNAPRAID/red_camera/hydrogen/IMG_20200703_14401795.jpg
file already exists, abort (use --overwrite to ignore):
And yes, the fact the output filenames are completely mangled is a bug - I’ll try and get that fixed in the next 24 hours.
The explanation of the files is:
IMG_20200703_1mpo.jpg (left)
IMG_20200703_2mpo.jpg (left depth map)
IMG_20200703_3mpo.jpg (right)
IMG_20200703_4mpo.jpg (right depth map)
The same command will also extract the ‘component parts’ of MPO files, JPEG’s from Google Camera etc.
One thing I wanted to add but didn’t get time to was to convert the left+depth into an ‘apple style’ portrait mode photo. But I’ll try and do that soon.
