PanoVi: panoramic movie system for real-time network transmission

This paper introduces a new panoramic movie system that is applicable for real-time transmission of circle view movies over networks. The system consists of a capturing and a viewing system. The capturing system collects 4 video streams from different directions. After correcting geometric distortion caused by spherical aberration of the lens, these streams are combined into an intermediate video stream. The PanoVi panoramic video format is designed to be compatible with the NTSC and MPEG2 standards. It can be sent to a client system via network and video recording media. At the viewing system, the video stream is decomposed into the original 4 streams and mapped onto walls in 3-space. By indicating viewing direction, the application generates a movie output that appears as if a camera were observing the direction. We developed a prototype of the PanoVi panorama movie system using Pentium III-based PC and confirmed its performance