NEWS UPDATE – Re-mastered Library, Discounts, New Footage
We haven’t written to you in a long time and we hope that you are all well and healthy in this most unusual time of our lives. We here at Atmosphaeres have been blessed that we are healthy and that the only real restrictions for us have been in terms of international travel. It is because of these travel restrictions that we had to re-think our plans and we are happy to say that we have used the past nearly 2 years very effectively to do two highly valuable things – On the one hand side, you will be pleased to hear that we have assessed and re-mastered our entire catalogue from the ground up and secondly, we took the opportunity to explore more of our own backyard here in Germany as well as in Southern Europe.
Re-mastering
The re-mastering of our 360 stock video library was a much more time-intensive effort than we originally thought, however, we believe that the results show that it was an effort that was worth pursuing. In this process, we looked at each and every one of the clips in our more than 300 clips strong library of 360 stock videos and thought about how we could improve the quality of each individual clip as well as its place within our library.
New Colour
The most obvious improvement that you will notice is the new colour-grading of our clips. Where the first version of our clips were graded on different laptop and PC screens that changed with the growth and changing demands of our business, we now use a single, high-quality colour-grading reference monitor to grade all clips. In the colour-grading process, we aim for a colour that is both pleasing as well as balanced so that each clip looks good by itself and also in unison with all of the other clips. At the same time we aimed to not oversaturate or exaggerate the colour-grading so customers who want to do their own grading have enough room and dynamic range to do so. And customers who want to use the videos as they get them will get a very good grade that they can copy straight onto their display devices. Below are a few screenshots that show you a representative comparison between the first version (Before) and the re-mastered versions (After). We are sure that you will notice the marked improvement of the new grading.
De-noise
Apart from the colour, we also took a close look at the general quality of each clip and the most common issue was digital noise that originates from the relatively small sensors of the 360 camera systems that we use and that every 360 videographer experiences in their footage. We explored a number of options to reduce this noise and ended up de-noising all clips with the industry-leading software NeatVideo. This step alone took about 4-5 hours of render time per video. However, the results are clearly worth the effort and we will continue to use this process with future footage.
Sound
If you’ve been with us for a while, you will know that another important element for us is the sound in our videos, so we looked (and listened) to each audio source that we use in our videos. Again, because of different systems that we edited on in the past – sometimes while on a year-long filming trip – the volume levels sometimes differed greatly between clips. Our clips also had some repetitive sounds, because in some cases when we were on location there were just a handful of sounds that we could record so we had to reuse the ones that we got for multiple clips. During the re-mastering process, we have dug a bit deeper into our sound archive and rescued many audio recordings that we previously did not have time to work on in such depth. So you will now find that the audio of our clips is much more balanced as well as more varied than it was before.
Stabilisation
Some of our clips suffered from a subtle camera shake, which is due to gentle swaying of the monopod caused by wind that blows against the camera. Previously, we didn’t have the software to fix this shake/sway, however, since then the software solutions have improved dramatically so we have been able to stabilise a great number of the shots that suffered from camera shake. There might still be a little shake left in one or the other video, which is due to the stabilisation software being optimised for large movements instead of subtle wind-caused swaying of the monopod, however, the overall stability of all clips is greatly improved, thus achieving a much higher level of comfort for your viewers.
Jitter removal
Lastly, we spent many hours on quality-control by checking every direction in every video to make sure that we catch every occurrence of jitter. You know, that little flickering bundle of pixels that jumps forth and back and throws the viewer out of the immersion. You will not find that in our videos or, if despite all our efforts you do, please let us know and we will fix it.
Free Replacements!
Now you may be asking yourself how any of this is relevant to you since you licensed the first version of the videos. The answer is that we want you to have the best possible 360 videos for your product and service. So we will replace all videos that you previously licensed from us with new versions, for free. Regardless of whether you licensed 1 clip or all 300 clips, just send us an email with the clip ID’s that you want to replace with the re-mastered versions and we will send you a link where you can download your freshly re-mastered 360 videos.
Sphaeres VR Experiences
Our Sphaeres VR Experiences (VRX) have helped many people around the globe to find peace and quiet in nature and travel to amazing places virtually, so after re-mastering all of the individual clips, it was mandatory that we also completely re-mastered all of the Sphaeres VRX. Apart from the new and better video and sound quality, we also fixed a few things that we noticed along the way, while aiming to keep to the original versions as close as possible. We are sure that your viewers will appreciate the new video and sound quality, so just like with the individual clips, if you have previously licensed or are currently licensing our Sphaeres VRX, we are happy to send you the new versions, free of charge.
Cumulative Discounts
If after you have updated your Atmosphaeres 360 stock footage and Sphaeres VR Experiences to the newly re-mastered versions, you still need more great 360 videos, we have even more good news for you – Your previous license purchases will count towards your future purchases. Something we call ‘Cumulative Discounts‘. So if you purchased 20 videos previously and now want to buy another 10, you will get the discount for 30+ clips for your new purchase and not just for the 10 new clips. And if next year, you need another 10 clips, you will get the discount for 40+ clips on the 10 new clips that you license then.
New Footage – Coming Soon
As mentioned, we also have new footage in store for you and now that we have finished the re-mastering process of our previously shot footage, we will dedicate the next couple of months to bring you more exciting 360 videos from new places. Amongst others, this includes exciting highlights from Venice, Croatia, Slovenia, Galicia/Spain, Saxon-Switzerland and the Eifel National Park. We can’t share much more at the moment, however, we can already promise you some stunning new footage from these amazing places that we travelled to for you.
We hope you like the news update and will be replacing your previously licensed videos with the re-mastered versions. Just get in touch with the clip ID’s and we will prepare the download link for you. If you have any questions about these or other topics, just let us know 🙂
Best regards,
Eric & Susanne
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