360EAVP: An Edition-Aware 360-degree Video Player
360-degree videos, video processing, streaming, virtual reality
Compared to traditional videos (2D), which have been studied for over a century, 360-degree videos (omnidirectional videos) represent a relatively new type of media. The exploration of creating more complex videos with storytelling in the 360-degree format is still ongoing. However, due to the fact that 360-degree videos have their own unique characteristics, filmmakers are still establishing their own identity and methods for telling complex narratives. In such cases, they face the challenge of guiding users' attention towards key scenes and ensuring that the intended message is not missed, without the ability to rely on traditional editing techniques due to their lack of control over the camera.
To address this problem, this work introduces 360EAVP, an open-source Web browser-based application for streaming and visualization of 360-degree edited videos on head-mounted displays (HMD). The platform enables guiding users' attention to the main key scenes, being aware of these scenes before the video starts. This work explains the main features introduced by 360EAVP, which are: 1) operation on HMDs based on real-time user's viewport; 2) dynamic editing via ``snap-change'' or ``fade-rotation'' combined with ``blinking''; 3) visibility evaluation of user's Field of View with respect to the player's cubic projection (for purposes of tile requests); 4) incorporation of editing timing information into the operation of the ABR algorithm; 5) viewport prediction module based on either linear regression or ridge regression algorithms; and 6) data collection and log module during video playback. The introduced application can be freely used to support research on many topics such as optimization of tile-based 360-degree edited video streaming, psycho-physical experiments, dataset generation, and ABR algorithm development, to name a few. To evaluate the platform capabilities, some proof of concept experiments were made to show how editing techniques can impact the user's experience and the video streaming.