Notes on photo sphere/panoramic EXIF metadata

• Google's EXIF/XMP metadata tag specification for panoramic images
• Panorama images with sky are to have a negative value for the CroppedAreaTopPixels tag. (The panoramic viewer of Facebook ignores the value altogether, though, and assumes the horizon in the middle of the picture.)
• If a camera or software normally produces panoramic images with cylindrical projection, then doing a vertical capture actually produces a transverse cylindrical image. There is no standardized value for the EXIF ProjectionType field to cover this. (One option is to reproject them to equirectangular — which, again, is not very well supported.)
• Facebook's document on what tags to set
• The Facebook web interface insists that FullPanoHeightPixels be half the size of FullPanoWidthPixels. Else you get “no new photos were uploaded”.

/ Tags: Photo.

The Ecodisc oblate

During the openSUSE Conference 2011, every participant got a bunch of free Linux-related magazines; among them: Linux User (2011/05 de_DE issue), Linux Magazin (2011/08 de_DE issue), Linux Magazine (2011/05 en_GB issue) and one other, which was probably easylinux, because they are all owned by Linux New Media.

Since such magazines way too often recycle topics, I almost never buy or even read them, so this is also the first time I noticed yet-unseen kinds of plastic discs that shipped in the magazines. An “EcoDisc” label was prominently placed on the disc, so there went today's Google search. Half the plastic, half thickness (good for slot-loading drives? I dare not try), supposedly half the CO₂ emission (CO₂ is so prominent that people seem to be forgetting about methane and CFCs), half the weight.

But, one of the Ecodiscs was already broken in more than two pieces, which might have occurred when the stack of magazines was hoisted to the conference, and later also to the homes of its participants. I had one more non-broken Ecodisc to try it out on against, whilst actually observing. Very easy to bend and likely to break akin to a round waffle wafer, known here as Oblate(-n). In order of increasing fragility: EcoDisc, CD-Rs, simple pressed discs, really stiff pressed discs.

Posted 2012-07-31 08:07 / Tags: Manufacturing,, Slice Of Life. / link