Jim Geduldick is the Professional Marketing Manager at GoPro, which includes all of the ways GoPro cameras are used within cinema, virtual reality, broadcast television & photography. Jim talks about how the history of spherical video at GoPro goes back to 2011, and how virtual reality provided a platform to actually watch these immersive videos. He also talks about GoPro’s Odyssey camera, which is created in collaboration with Google’s Jump camera platform. He alludes that Google is doing some highly advanced post-processing with the information from the 16 cameras, but wasn’t able to provide many more official details yet.
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[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:12.155] Jim Geduldick: So, Jim Godaldick, I head up professional marketing at GoPro, so that's cinema, VR, photography, broadcast, TV. We're here at the VR conference, VRX, actually speaking later today about cinematic VR. We've been actually speaking on a couple panels within the past week alone, but, you know, obviously a lot of interest into VR in the past two years, and especially for what GoPro is doing in kind of immersive content and hardware and software. So a lot of people know earlier this year we announced that we were kind of fully getting into it. You know, we've known a lot of people have been using our cameras for immersive capture, spherical capture, for a number of years. We kind of got into the game just after NAB at Recode. Our CEO, Nick Woodman, announced that we'd be coming out with a six-camera solution. as well as at Google IDO, partnering with Google on the Jump platform, we have the first Jump-ready camera, which is called Odyssey. So those are our two first hardware offerings that are going to be coming. Odyssey is coming to a limited access program by the end of this year. The first half of next year is when our 6 camera sync solution is going to come. We also acquired Color earlier this year, which a lot of people know. It's one of the most popular stitching delivery platforms out there. It was an amazing mobile and desktop player for Color Eyes. And the reason why we acquired them and why we've been making rigs that are going to be coming out is that we saw that there was a gap in end-to-end solutions in terms of immersive capture. We've had technology that's allowed us to sync our cameras for a number of years. A lot of people kind of have seen our linear arrays before, which is a lot of people know those from bullet time, very Matrix styles that kind of the godfather of that Tim McMillan started working for GoPro a number of years ago and he built the first synced GoPro array. So that same sync technology that Tim had developed is where the new generations of syncable GoPros are coming from. So these are like multiple iterations and a lot of a lot of people don't know that GoPro is actually, we've been shooting spherical content for a number of years and just like a lot of people there haven't been any platforms. There were no HMDs, there was no YouTube 360 at the time. So unless you were creating and writing your own player, or your own spherical viewer, or you were doing dome projection, or anything like that, there was no way to share that content with the masses. Now that we have YouTube supporting, we have Facebook supporting, and we have a lot of different players that are out there from a lot of different manufacturers, and software companies, and gaming companies, we're seeing this proliferation of just mass adoption of VR from, obviously, Hollywood is really interested about it, gaming. news, journalism is huge, education is huge, so you have all these different vertical genres of what had been traditional media delivery. Everybody was always used to, okay, you have one camera or you have multiple cameras and it's cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, whether it be music videos or it be feature films. You know nowadays with the progression and how fast the technology is, you know, every week we see there's a new HMD or there's something new on Kickstarter, you know, there's a new piece of software. So it's a pretty At times it's pretty daunting for, I think, people getting into VR for their first go around. They're like, what camera do I use? What rig do I buy? What software do I use? Because, you know, even though the stuff is still really new, there's a lot of options for everybody out there, which is really cool. And a lot of people know GoPro as, like, that barrier breaker into the world of immersive capture. And I think that's what really pushed us to seeing that over the years, we've had people come up to us at trade shows, like NEB and all that, or just contact us and say, hey, I'm doing this with your camera. So we've seen everything from people hacking our camera, taking our dual hero sync cable back in the day, and just taking two GoPros, aligning them back to back, using different software at that time, whether it be Autodesk or Colors. Colors has actually been around for a couple years with AVP and AVG. You know, these solutions are, I don't think have been given the publicity that they have now. So you've seen a lot of people be very excited about specifically GoPro getting into the VR game, but just VR in general because the way that I think we're consuming content nowadays is changing so fast. from how my kids will watch things on their mobile devices, iPad, iPhone, Android devices. And I think immersive content and the way that we're getting into immersive content is really going to be that next level in terms of media consumption. We're not there yet. A lot of people have a certain limit of how long they can view an immersive experience. It's also different too because you have so many different genres of immersive. So you could be in a dome projection and be at a planetarium, and that's immersive. You could be in a headset, you know, you could be with Google Cardboard, you could be, you know, kind of windowing it through a mobile device. And I think that because there's so much interest and there's so many big companies backing it, that this whole movement of these new platforms won't go the way that Stereoscopic did back in 2009, 2010, where it felt pushed on us, versus we see that if we, the end user, discover something, we're more likely to get enveloped with it, purchase things that are related to that. because it's giving us a different type of experience. And I think that's why I think VR is here to stay. It's going to change very quickly. But, you know, from our standpoint at GoPro is, you know, we make lifestyle capture devices that enable people to get up and get out there. And whether that is capturing an immersive experience at somebody's birthday so they can relive that with all their family when they're 27 down the road or however old they are they can go back that's a big thing with a kind of memory keeping is that how would you have liked to have your fourth or fifth birthday captured spherically and an immersive thing so you can turn around and see everybody was there versus looking at a flat picture or a video that kind of just pans around. We're so used to seeing that windowed world in a 2D view that we have to relearn right now. I think all the companies from GoPro to Google to Sony with PlayStation, all the gaming companies and all the media companies, we have to re-teach people how to watch our content all over again. And it's a big task. You know, we have a very big duty to re-educate the end user just how to view things. How many people do you see would go on YouTube or even Colorize or anything, and they load a 360 video, but they're like, I don't get it. There's a disconnect because they haven't been taught yet the basics of that. And we've got to tell them, oh, this is a click and drag experience, or, oh, this uses the gyroscope in your mobile phone, or put the headset on and look around, you know? I think what's cool about it is none of this has been defined yet. And I think every day, all of us involved in this VR movement, we're setting the rules. Because there's no rules. There's guidelines, and there's technical hurdles right now, but those are all going to change so fast. And the book and the dictionaries on this stuff, the definitions of things, in terms of traditional filmmaking, yeah, there's some things in storytelling and scripts and things like that. Well, they'll always live through, whether it's 2D or full immersive, but it's cool because we all get to write this. No one says there's no 180 rule in camera positioning in 360. because it's basically you need to clear it. You know, it's directors and cinematographers need to become choreographers now. You know, editors can't quick cut. Music videos need to be long takes. You know, you have to let someone live in a scene, in an experience, let them figure things out. And you've got different aspects with this. And I think that's what's really cool is that you've got all these big companies and all these big directors and studios that they are seeing that this is something that they want to venture into. Ridley Scott just did a CG experience for The Martian that's coming out and they did that with some really smart people from the VR company that's associated with the third floor, the Previz company, which is backed by Steven Spielberg. So you have people that are somebody that is a very well-respected filmmaker for a very long time who is seeing that this is a cool way to let people experience stories. That's really what it is. You know, I think you've got everybody from Chris Milk and the team at Verse. You've got Google with their stories. You've got people that are very interested. I think one of the biggest ones that is really cool is you see what the guys and the girls at Riot are doing in terms of journalism in VR. Going to Syria, going to this. And just how we normally are, the turnaround time isn't as quick as traditional 2D. But I mean, they're turning around VR content really quick as it's related to journalism. So I think for our standpoint with GoPro, you know, we get to work with a lot of cool partners in our media and entertainment division as well as we do with our hardware because there are a lot of GoPro users out there from kind of the high level all the way down to the independent or, you know, the everyday user. And that's really what we're setting out to do in VR, is basically we enable people today with our cameras and our software and our accessories. That's the same thing we want to do for virtual reality, is just enable people to go off and tell amazing stories.
[00:10:07.305] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I just remember in the last year or so looking and seeing, like, there was these 3D printed solutions to create an array of GoPros, and, you know, you mentioned that GoPros actually have been doing spherical video for a while with your different cameras. And so I'm curious about kind of the history of like if there was a turning point when you've seen over the last couple of years or within the company of GoPro that there was this recognition that like, oh, we got to actually kind of re-engineer the camera specifically to do it differently or that VR is going to be a thing here and that we have a part to play. So I'm just curious some of the milestones that you see over the last couple of years as VR has started to come and have this latest renaissance.
[00:10:48.770] Jim Geduldick: Yeah so the fun thing is I've been at GoPro two years now and that's kind of where the turning point had hit. You know I'd been friends with a lot of the guys previous to joining GoPro so I knew a lot of stuff that was being worked on that had been shown at like NAB so I knew about I've obviously been a big fan of Tim McMillan's work before he ever joined GoPro and his work at Time Slice Films, his company previous to joining GoPro, but I had used GoPros as a filmmaker and having a background in visual effects and filmmaking, the cost of getting multiple GoPros versus Canon 5Ds or RED or Alexa or other cameras, it made the experimentation as a filmmaker much easier to explore what was possible. And yeah, like, you know, this was maybe four or five years ago, and a much lower resolution, different quality GoPros that I was using before I joined the company to do multicam capture. And at that time, you know, the syncing solution, you would have to hack a GoPro, you would have to hack the SDK to, you know, a Canon 5D and all that. And I think Internally, when Tim first built the first array, kind of like 2011 timeframe, it was used for a Billabong commercial, because everybody knows GoPro was kind of born out of action sports, surf, and motorsports, is that there was a surf shoot, and Tim had come up to Nick, our CEO, and Brad, who's our original filmmaker for GoPro, and shown them an idea and said, I could build this. Can you guys help me out? Give me a couple of GoPros. I can do this. And a few months later, lo and behold, he built the array. And Tim had been working on multi-cam capture for a long time. And it evolved differently, I think, from the work that Tim had done, the work that Paul DeBevec has been doing. A lot of people that have been kind of shooting panoramic and multi-cam capture systems, specifically with GoPros. You've seen a lot of different people hacking away at that and kind of bringing that attention to GoPro to say, hey guys, are you aware that this community exists and would you guys ever do something in this space? And I think for the most part, GoPro's known as a consumer electronics company in not so many words. It's like that has been our core, is that a very high quality, small form factor, high resolution camera system and accessories. The cool thing about it is that pros did see that the small form factor, the very wide angle but sharp lens paired together did really well for multicam captures, specifically for spherical. And I think as the years progressed from like what was worked on internally in terms of like the array and the original kind of prototypes for the spherical arrays that Tim had built, had definitely involved to, there was really no VR movement back in 2011, 2012. It started to really pick up in 2013, 2014. And we've seen everybody, and I think every one of the big players has a GoPro array that they've either built or just kind of put off the shelf. And you have, like you had mentioned, you've seen third party companies pop up out of nowhere that make basically plastic holders or 3D printing. You can go on Shapeways. And you can find so many different people's different orientation holders for rigs for GoPros for spherical capture. A lot of people, because of the availability of 3D printing, are printing their own GoPro holders for multicam capture at home. And I think that The availability and the kind of accessibility of GoPro, the availability of these technologies like stitching software, you know, mobile apps, development of mobile apps, and 3D printers is really, I think, what's been giving VR that big push is that a lot of this technology is not just for the Spielbergs and the Ridley Scotts and, you know, the Chris Milks. I think it's really gaining attraction because a student can 3D print their own. They can probably borrow one from their school. A budding filmmaker or game developer can say, oh, you know, we're already developing in 3D spaces, and gaming knows storytelling in an immersive environment better than anyone. So I think that our progression of it has been we've seen that what we've worked on initially was really cool and there was no way to share those stories at first. So you've seen that we've kind of evolved just like everybody else has and saying that we've recognized that this budding platform system and this budding way of consuming content and people being really excited about what VR and immersive storytelling could be is I think why you've seen us kind of put a little bit more of the fast track on it from us is that It was inevitable that we would come out with our own solutions. We did hear a lot of feedback from the community saying that we've seen your stuff at NEB, we've seen it at Photokina. We'd love to have accessibility to that software, to that hardware. And obviously, the jury's still out as to where VR as a whole is going to wind up. But I think we're just one of the many companies that believes in the future of these platforms and the future of immersive capture and immersive storytelling, I think that it's going to change very fast. You're going to see iterations of software, hardware, players, viewers, headsets change very quickly. And the cool thing about us at GoPro is like as more technology becomes available to us to develop, that just trickles down to the end user, whether they be a professional or a kid that goes to Best Buy to buy a GoPro for filming him skateboarding or whatever it is.
[00:16:49.197] Kent Bye: Yeah, and it seems like that one of the things that Google is bringing with the Jump and the Odyssey camera is that it seems like they might potentially have some sort of special post-processing in the cloud to be able to, I don't know if they're using digital light fields or reconstructing 3D scenes out of that, or maybe you could talk a bit about, like, what are they doing on the back end to be able to process and stitch it? Is it just a straight stitch, or are they doing some extra fancy stuff as well?
[00:17:11.963] Jim Geduldick: Well, for most of that stuff, I mean, you know, Aaron and Scott and the guys and girls on the Jump team can obviously talk better to that. It's still, the information isn't still fully out there yet as to what exactly Jump is doing in the cloud. That's going to be revealed pretty soon. What I can say is that between the Odyssey camera, which we worked with Google on developing, they saw the same thing that a lot of people have been seeing, that GoPros were the best solution currently to develop for their platform. And it is a partnership. They have said that they're going to let the designs be out there for jump-ready cameras. Obviously, us working closely with Google, Odyssey is the first approved and the first jump-ready camera that will be out there. That's mainly because we have the capability, obviously, to sync our cameras together. And that's, everybody knows, within spherical capture or multicam capture, having sync is a must and it is a necessity. Could you do it today? Yes, people do it manually all the time. They're syncing GoPros and other cameras manually with a bunch of different post-production tricks as well as production tricks of using everything from a dog clicker to a clapper board to just clapping your hands or using some type of audio cue so you can sync things up in post as you're stitching them. So the secret sauce, if you will, that's going on with Jump is still under wraps, but it basically is using some very advanced computational photography technology, and if you've seen the examples that they showed at the garage of being able to generate stereo depth, Out of it, it was really amazing because everybody knows usually in VR and current 360 video, non-CG but live action, a lot of time when you tilt your head and you've got parallax, it automatically can break the experience for a lot of people. That is the cool thing about the marriage of also CG and live-action. You saw big time with Justin Lin's work with Help for Google. That was a very big production, but it showed you a lot of potential of how live-action can be married with CG. And, you know, we do have monoscopic capture, we do have stereoscopic capture, in terms of you've got a choice of what people are shooting. So Odyssey, you know, is stereo pairs, but Jump allows for the output of the stereo information. And there are much smarter people than I am at Google that have been writing that and working on that who are better to answer for that. So I kind of default a lot of the secret stuff that Jump is doing to the Google team and to the Cardboard team to better do that. But from the GoPro side is Odyssey is a 16-camera panoramic capture rig in stereo pairs. It will be launching by the end of this year to the limited access program that will be going. You know, we've announced what the price would be, you know, it's not an inexpensive rig, but when you look at the cost compared to if you were even to build that your own without sync, it could be more. So we felt that the price was very fair in terms of technology that's not even out there yet. So we're really excited to get that out and get that in the hands of some really talented artists, studios, content creators, you know, and we've definitely been seeing a lot of interest for Odyssey alone, as well as people keep asking, when's your sixth camera solution coming out, too? It's like, in due time, you know, it's coming out. We know we can't get this stuff out fast enough because of the pure interest, and working with, you know, Alexander and Rami and the team that came over from Color when we acquired them, the great thing about that is we've got that talented team of software developers and really smart PhD mathematicians that are really amazing at stitching software and basically delivering a very user-friendly experience. Because if you've ever used color for AVP, it's not a very daunting UI, and it's pretty straightforward once you start doing your work into getting your stitch and getting a stitch out for whatever it would be, YouTube 360, Facebook, you know, Gear VR, all of that. That's the big thing I think today is like figuring out what is your destination. As a content creator, as a filmmaker, you've got so many little mom-and-pop boutique places that are just starting up and all they're concentrating on is VR. You know, Thomas and the guys at 360 Labs up in Portland, they've been doing amazing stuff and those guys have been doing that for, you know, well, close over a decade. So you've got the people that have been in this for a while and have kind of been waiting for almost the second coming of where this stuff would be where it's at because You know, VR somewhat had a little bit of a try in the 80s with, you know, Nintendo had a couple of little consumer things. You had stuff that they said VR was gonna come in the 80s, and it never came. The technology just wasn't there, the excitement wasn't there for it. I think now we have the excitement, we've got the technology. I think it's going to go pretty quick. I think people are in for a ride for sure. It's kind of a little bit of weathering the storm. I think 2016 is going to be a big year to figure out things like distribution, monetization on the content creator and studio end. People are going to start figuring out. How do you make money off of VR? How do you do all this stuff? Other than, you know, doing really cool games and coming out with really cool headsets and just like quick, short experiences. It's like, how do we develop it? And there's still a lot of research that needs to be done of what are the long lasting effects? How long can you really be in an immersive environment that it has an effect on you? And there's a lot of stories coming out. You know, I think as a whole, everybody in the VR community has a responsibility to the end user, because people get affected differently about these experiences, especially if you look at the genres. A horror immersive experience could really freak somebody out and have a longer lasting effect on someone than somebody who's just a few years younger to them are different. There's health concerns, there's, you know, there's differences between a man and a woman in terms of just your IPD, of how far your eyes are apart, that all of these little things are little key factors that I think people really have to educate themselves on too, and that's the big thing. Big kind of tip, advice I can give one is like, before you ever get a rig on a tripod, on a monopod and hit record on any camera system is like, do your research. Get educated, come to events. Look, there's tons of YouTube videos out there. There's tons of demos you can try out and get as educated as you can, but definitely get out there. Shoot bad stuff, because you'll learn. And then the more bad stuff you shoot, the better you get, the better your experiences are going to be that you're creating for people. And that's really, I think, what every one of us want here is to create really meaningful, immersive experiences for VR. Because I think we all definitely want it to succeed, no matter any company here today at the conference could tell you is like, oh yeah, we're in this. We want VR to succeed. A lot of people are investing quite a bit of money into this stuff. And I don't think it's a flash in the pan either. I think it's going to change, but it's here to stay for sure.
[00:24:39.546] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you see as kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what that might be able to enable?
[00:24:45.533] Jim Geduldick: Wow, I mean it's a tough one because you're like, I think it's a Pandora's box. We've opened it and I think there's so much capability and potential in things like science and education for VR. Movies, we're not there yet for movies or whatever you really want to call an experience. You don't do films or movies in VR. It's different. You can't label it as that. It's a totally different thing. Cinema has been doing a lot of the traditional stuff for the past hundred years. And I think this is a totally different, this is different. Cinema is one thing. These experiences and this platform is a totally different aspect to it. And I think people have to recognize that. You can't go by the same rulebook. You can't go by the same pricing. You can't go by the same budgets and all of that. Even though we're trying to currently, a lot of people are trying to lump it all in together. I think what's really cool about the future of VR is that you've got VR, you've got AR, and they have some similarities. I think they're going to meld together in the future. I think the technology is going to allow that meld to happen to where everything from how you shop, to how you watch content, to how you interact with people, like if you've ever seen the HoloLens stuff, that's really really cool. That's more AR than it is VR. And all the stuff that I think we've watched as kids, like, you know, the holodeck is going to exist someday. We're not that far off from it. As more fun stuff from the military and the private sector gets declassified, we get to use that stuff. You've always seen it get used into consumer devices down in the future of everything that's been in the MIT, Stanford labs, and all these research facilities, things that GE works on. I don't think people really realize just how big of the future that VR and AR is all going to play into our daily lives. you know, a lot of people kind of tied it back to like Back to the Future and the scene in Martin McFly's house in the future. The parallel 1985 was that the dehydrated pizza, you know, like him wearing the VR HMDs or the VR goggles, like he was experiencing something and he's like, your house was fully alive, basically. And it's like, you can kind of wax poetic on all the sci-fi stuff, but Like all that tech, sci-fi stuff that we're thinking is still far away, it's not as far away as people think. And I think we're at that stepping point with VR now that it's going to evolve into something much different than what it is today. But, you know, I think the way that it can be used is limitless. And I think as these new technologies become available to us, as we develop on that GoPro, For you know capture and delivery and stitching it's gonna enable people because we look at technology now It's like look at what a GoPro does look at what your iPhone does You know how amazing are those devices that you even look back 10 years ago and a device like GoPro would have probably cost you over 100 grand because it probably would have been a custom solution to be that small and and there were no 4k cameras that could fit in your pocket 10 years ago there were no gyroscopic based mobile phones mobile phones were still big clunky and there was no haptic really you had a keypad 10 years ago with your phones so You know, I think we're in an interesting time in terms of VR, and like I said, we're at the baby stage of what this stuff is. So I think it's kind of like, start educating yourself in it, start learning a lot of different aspects of it, because there's a lot. I say gaming. If you're a filmmaker, learn more about gaming. If you're a gamer, learn more about filmmaking. And you know, you've got these parallels. Or be that filmmaker and go partner with a gaming studio. Or go, if your buddy is like really into gaming, have him be the guinea pig for you and test out your stuff because gamers get it. And that's the funny thing about it is that you've got Xbox, you've got Microsoft, you've got PlayStation that are going to lead the charge with their immersive experiences and that. And we all know how big the gaming industry is. The fact that gaming studios in the past couple of years have been buying movie studios and visual effects studios, that's got a lot to say about the impact of gaming on a whole. Because when you're a gamer, you buy a console. You don't buy just one game. You're buying multiple games. You're buying multiple controllers. You're buying all these add-ons to it, too. So there's all these different aspects, I think, to VR and how it's going to morph in just the next five years along. And I think it's really exciting. Me, as like, I don't know if I'm going to say geek, gamer, filmmaker, all that, is really excited to see where their stuff goes and how it changes, I think, everybody's life, because it will. Even somebody who's just like, it's kind of like, yeah, VR, I'm not going to put that stuff on my head. Like, they're going to see it in the future affect their daily life in terms of the technology coming down the road.
[00:29:57.460] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
[00:29:58.750] Jim Geduldick: Yeah, thank you.
[00:30:00.111] Kent Bye: And thank you for listening. If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash Voices of VR.
