These tips were really useful back in the late 1990s when we were all shooting with film cameras, and stitching with Apple's Quicktime VR Authoring Studio. Since then, nearly everyone now shoots digital and uses different software. Most of these tips are outdated, and therer are now easier ways to achive the same end results. I leave them here for historical purposes.

Here are a few useful things I have learned on QTVR. Some of these have been covered in Susan Kitchen's book The QuickTime VR Book (Peachpit press, $39.95). Also check out Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook, First Edition (O'Reilly, $19.95), the Visual Quickstart Guide: QuickTime Pro 6 for Macintosh & Windows (Peachpit press, $21.99) and QuickTime for the Web: For Windows and Macintosh, Third Edition (Morgan Kaufmann, $59.95). Most of this information has been compiled from various discussions on the QTVR list, and is provided here for your convenience.

For under $20, you can buy something called a "gray card" at most pro camera shops. It's an 8 x 10 inch piece of cardboard, painted 18% reflectance neutral gray. Basically, this is the average color that light meters expect to see. Meter your scene off the gray card (for best results, the card should not be in focus), and you should get the correct exposure. Now, the real trick here is to shoot an extra shot with the gray card in the frame. After you scan all your images, use Photoshop's levels or curves command and pick the middle gray icon. Simply click on the gray card in your image. For the most part, you should have corrected any color casts your images picked up.

Before

After just one click on gray

NOTE: This tip has been edited to list the steps for QuickTime 7. Performing this tip with older versions of QuickTime is fundamentally the same, but menus and property windows are different. Also, there seems to be a problem (bug?) with the Windows version of QuickTime 7 (at least up until 7.1.5) that does not allow the pasting in of video tracks. So for now, this tip works only on Macintosh. The output file is still viewable on Windows.

Want to have a static logo displayed in the lower right-hand corner, just like on "VH1" cable T.V.? It's easy to do, but you need the Pro version of QuickTime Player, and an image editor to create the logo, obviously. This tutorial will assume a recent version of Adobe Photoshop as the image editor. There are two variations on this theme, the steps are basically the same. Start by creating your logo in the graphics program. If you want a semi-transparent one (like VH1) , create this image in grayscale, otherwise, create it in color.

I've added some additional tips for creating the logo "jaggy free" by using an 8-bit alpha mask. I recommend using Photoshops's "Save for Web..." export feature, and choose "PNG-24" with Transparency checked as the output format. This will give you the smallest possible data size in bytes. Otherwise the file size will be much larger when adding to your QTVR. If you do not need this feature, simply copy your image to the clipboard & skip this section. Perform these steps to create a PNG compressed logo:

• Create the logo in Photoshop, and "Save for Web..." as a PNG-24 file and have "Transparency" checked.
• Launch QuickTime Player Pro, and choose "Open File..." from the "File" menu, and locate the image file.
• If the image looked corrupt, then "Show Movie Properties" from the "Window" menu, click on the "Video Track" to select it, and on the "Visual Settings" tab, set "Transparency" to "Straight Alpha".
• Copy the image data into the clipboard memory, by choosing "Select All" and then "Copy", both from the "Edit" menu.

Now that this image in the clipboard, open QuickTime Player Pro and load the pano. Then follow these steps:

• Choose "Show Movie Properties" from the "Window" menu.
• The top area of the Movie Properties windows lists the whole movie, followed by it's individual tracks. While selecting the whole movie (the first item), on the "Presentation" tab, change the "Movie Controller Type" to "Movie Controller".
• Choose "Add to Selection and Scale" from the "Edit" menu.
• Select this newly added track in the "Movie Properties" window (it should be the last Video track listed).
• Select the "Visual Settings" tab, and use the "Offset" values to position the logo.
• You can also experiment with different Transparency modes here, if necessary.
• Lastly, you should select the whole movie (the first item) in the track list above, to bring up the "Presentation" tab again, and change the "Movie Controller Type" parameter back to "QTVR Controller".

That's all there is to it. No need for expensive third-party software! Try different effects, like an embossed logo on a gray background.

grayscale logo

logo layer added to movie

Ever wanted to change something in a QTVR panorama after you've trashed all the work files? Or really examine how someone else created one? Well, you can, with QuickTime Pro. Follow these steps:

• choose "Get Movie Properties" from the "Movie" menu.
• While adjusting "Movie" parameters, change the "Controller" to "Movie Controller".
• Select "Enable Tracks..." from the "Edit" menu.
• Turn the "Video Track" to "On", turn the other tracks to "Off" (note: in a multi-node pano, you'll have many video tracks. If you see an all white image in your player window, drag the time marker until an image appears).
• While adjusting the "Video Track" parameters, select the "Size" parameter. The size you see is the size per tile, example: 376 x 152. Multiply the second number (example: 152) by the number of tiles (example: 12). This gives you the source pict size, width x height, (example: 376 x 1824). If you don't know how many tiles are in the pano, drag the time marker forward and count the tiles.
• Open Photoshop, create a new image, using the width & height you've just calculated. Use 72 dpi & RGB color.
• Back to QuickTime Player Pro, starting on the first tile, select "Copy" from the "Edit" menu.
• In Photoshop, select "Paste" from the "Edit" menu. the tile will appear centered in it's own layer. Move the layer down to the bottom.
• Return back to QuickTime Player Pro, move the time marker forward, and repeat the copy/paste process for each tile.
• After all the tiles are pasted and aligned properly, in Photoshop select "Flatten Image" from the "Layers" menu.
• You can close the QTVR movie; obviously, do not save changes.

Note that this source pict will show some compression degradation compared to the true original. It depends on how heavily compressed the QTVR movie was, to determine how usable this image will be. If you know how to use Photoshop, setting up guides and grids make it a "snap" to line up tiles.

Believe it or not, but generally most people viewing QTVR panos do not zoom. Honestly, how often do you zoom? To keep your web based panos compact, resize the source pict so that it's width is no more than between 1.5 to 2.0 times the height of the movie window it will be viewed in.

For example, If your source pict is 740 x 2304, and you display it in a QTVR movie window of 320 x 240, then that means you have 740 pixels vertically displayed in a window only 240 pixels tall. That's more information than needed if you feel that users will not zoom.

A better sized source pict would be 372 x 1152, a file 25% the size of the original. However, there are rules for the size of source pict. The width of the source pict must be divisible by 4. The height of the source pict must be divisible by (4 * number of vertical tiles * number of horizontal tiles). The number of horizontal tiles will usually be 1. If you let QTVRAS automatically create the tiles for you, there will generally be 12 or 24 tiles. Assuming that there will be 24 tiles, 4 * 24 = 96, so the height of the source pict should be divisible by 96. Follow these steps to properly resize your source pict:

• Determine the final QTVR movie window size (example: 320 x 240).
• Determine the target file size vertically, by multiplying the QTVR window height by a number between 1.5 to 2.0 (example: 240 * 2.0 = 480).
• Open your source pict in Photoshop (example image size: 740 x 2304).
• Select "Image Size" from the "Image" menu.
• Make sure that "Constrain Proportions" is checked.
• Change the "Width" in the "Pixel Dimensions" box to the calculated vertical target size (example: 480).
• The "Height" will change to reflect a new number (example: 1494).
• Determine if the height is evenly divisible by 96 (example: 1494 / 96 = 15.5625).
• If necessary, change the height to the nearest multiple of 96 (example: 96 * 16 = 1536).
• Now determine if the width is evenly divisible by 4 (example: 493 / 4 = 123.25).
• Turn off "Constrain Proportions" at this time.
• If necessary, change the width to the nearest multiple of 4 (example: 123 * 4 = 492).
• The image size should now be correct, click "OK" to resize the image (example final image size: 492 x 1536).

Now just use QTVRAS's "Panorama Maker" feature to generate the QTVR movie from this more compact source pict. You'll be able to compress the QTVR movie to a usable file size without having to drop the quality so low that the compression artifacts seriously degrade the image quality. Note that you can open up your favorite calculator application and switch to it while the "Image Size" window of Photoshop is open.

An easier method for determining the proper image size is to use the following calculator:

With QuickTime Player Pro, you have 3 animating effects available: fire, clouds, & ripple. You'll need a free program from Apple called "MakeEffectMovie". This program was intended to make transitionals between two linear movies, but with a little know-how, it can work with QTVR. This trick only works on VR 1.0 movies, so you may need to convert your 2.0 files down. Warning, the ripple effect can really slow down a movie in a large window, especially on slower computers.

• Open MakeEffectMovie, it will then prompt you to pick the first movie of the transitional, but since that's not what we have in mind, select cancel.
• You'll get a effect-only movie, select the one you want. Adjust the settings, if applicable.
• Save this file.
• Launch QuickTime Player Pro, and open the effect-only movie you created.
• From the "Edit" menu, choose "Select All", and then choose "Copy".
• Close the effect-only movie, you don't need it anymore.
• Open QTVR 1.0 movie you want to add the effect to.
• choose "Get Info" from the "Movie" menu.
• While adjusting "Movie" parameters, change the "Controller" to "Movie Controller".
• While Holding the Shift & Option keys, select "Add Scaled" under the "Edit" menu (it was "Paste").
• Select this newly added track in the "Info" window (it should be the last track listed).
• Select the "Size" parameter, and click "Adjust". Drag it & Size it how ever you like.
• Select the "Graphic Mode" parameter, and select "Straight Alpha".
• Select the "Movie", and change the "Controller" parameter back to "QTVR 1.0 Controller".
• Be sure to do a "Save As", and make this new movie "Self Contained".

You can get better results with some of the professional software packages out there, but this helps get your $29.95 out of the Pro version of QuickTime Player.

In Photoshop, utilizing the "Save" & "Load" feature of the levels or curves, and the gray card tip above, create an action and perform a batch correction on all the images of the pano, before stitching. Since the stitching software looks for similarities between images, the more accurate the images are when you begin, the better the stitch will be later.

If your shooting at night and with daylight corrected film, which includes all negative film, use an 80A filter when possible. It's a dark blue filter which will counter the yellow cast from tungsten lights & mercury vapor street lights. If you didn't use a filter, you can still correct this in Photoshop. Create a new layer above your pano, and fill it with a medium blue. Set the mode of this layer to "overlay", and adjust the opacity as needed, try between 50-75%. This is the digital equivalence of using a camera filter.

Whenever possible, don't sharpen the source image in the stitching software. Instead, go into Photoshop, and convert the RBG image to LAB, which has the largest color space of all the modes. Now, perform an "unsharpen mask" only on the Lightness channel. I usually leave the Amount at 100% and Threshold levels at 0, and adjust the Radius. A setting of 1.5 - 2.5 brings out all the detail. Convert the image back to RGB when your done.

If you use Apple's QuickTime VR Authoring Studio and find it locking up frequently during stitching, this might help. In the application's Preferences window, in the "Make" tab, turn off the "Display Images In Progress Window". Also, while you're there, make sure "Use Temporary Memory When Necessary" is on. Before the 1.01 update came out and provided some needed bug-fixes, this was very helpful.

Digital cameras continue to improve in quality, and Photo CDs produce excellent results for relatively little money, but I believe neither can compete with a good film scanner. This is the best way to produce ultra hi-res panos. For an investment of $500-$2000, you can get results like the one below. Note that this example was an extreme test of quality. The original scans were 2453 x 3679 each, and due to time constraints, I only scanned 4 images for a partial 120° pano (source pict size was 3600 x 6720). The finished pano was 5.6 Meg (2 rows of 24 tiles). The full 360° pano would have been of a source pict sized 3600 x 20160 (208 Meg). The QTVR movie would have been around 17 Meg.

	Notice the big tall tree just off center? That little red speck to the right of the tree is the car! Shown fully zoomed out.
	Shown at near maximum zoom.

Be sure that you have the most recent version (at least 1.1d1), because you can use the new "Disallow saving from plugin" feature, which will prevent anyone from modifying your files. There is some confusion as to what this feature does. This does not prevent the movie from being saved locally to the user's cache folder. A cached copy of the file will be on their computer. This file will be protected from modification, any editing done to the file in QuickTime Player Pro will not be saved. Make sure to keep a copy for yourself that is editable, otherwise you'll be locked out as well.

Also, be careful when adding data via pluginhelper. The correct window to add data to is the "Plugin Settings ('plug')" window. Do not type any spaces in the tags. Click the "Ok" button after each tag, do not press the Enter or Return key.