What should you may step inside your footage and really feel such as you’re really there? Apple’s Immersive Video workflow and format for the Imaginative and prescient Professional, paired with Blackmagic’s new URSA Cine Immersive digicam, guarantees precisely that—an unprecedented leap past conventional filmmaking into really spatial storytelling. We took an in depth take a look at this revolutionary workflow, from seize to paint grading, to see the way it may change the best way filmmakers craft tales for the display—and past.
Blackmagic’s URSA Cine Immersive has staggering specs. It has two 8k sensors operating at 90 frames per second. A typical 4k digicam operating at 24 frames per second processes 212 million pixels each second. The URSA Cine Immersive processes 10575 million pixels every second!
The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive processes 10575 pixels each single second. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
To know why such a digicam exists, you first want to know the platform which it’s designed to service.
The Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional
In Apple’s personal phrases, the Imaginative and prescient Professional is a spatial pc. It permits you to do issues like watch motion pictures on a display as large as your home, work together with apps like they’re a bodily object in your room, or work on a airplane with out feeling like you might be trapped in a cabinet. All very cool, however we’re specializing in the Imaginative and prescient Professional purely as a tool for consuming leisure.
The Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional is a incredible platform for consuming leisure. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
The Imaginative and prescient Professional helps all kinds of media codecs. We’re particularly keen on Apple Immersive Video, a 180-degree stereoscopic video format designed particularly for the Imaginative and prescient Professional. It’s in contrast to another format you may need skilled. Whereas conventional 2D media permits you to really feel emotionally current, Immersive media permits you to really feel bodily current.
To attain that degree of realism, the visible expertise is designed to match and in some circumstances exceed the capabilities of human imaginative and prescient. There are two key specs that make this doable.
First, all of it begins with the Imaginative and prescient Professional’s shows, which have the very best pixel density of any OLED show. 54 Imaginative and prescient Professional pixels slot in a single iPhone 16 pixel. That pixel density is necessary, as seen pixels would break the sensation of immersion.
Second, it’s generally accepted that human imaginative and prescient tops out at round 70 – 80 frames per second. Something past that’s imperceptible. Due to this fact, Immersive video runs at 90 frames per second.
The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive
Acquisition wants to fulfill the calls for of the show system. This brings us full circle again to the URSA Cine Immersive.
The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive digicam. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive with rigging and audio for documentary work. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
When in comparison with conventional 4K DCI DCI seize, Apple Immersive Video has roughly 5x extra pixels, 3x the body charge, after which lastly multiply all the pieces by 2 as a result of it’s stereoscopic. That’s over 30 instances the information charge!
Apple Immersive Video seize is round 30x the information charge of typical 4k DCI 24fps manufacturing. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
Many earlier stereo seize programs have been advanced. Some required two cameras and used massive, advanced rigs. That complication continued into post-production as every digicam produced its personal separate information that have to be synchronised and re-projected into a standard format.
This added complexity to the post-production course of but additionally degraded the picture. It’s just like the generational loss that occurs when re-encoding video information. Every time you contact the picture, artefacts are launched that compound till the ultimate picture is delivered.
Alternatively, the workflow with the URSA Cine Immersive and DaVinci Resolve is way less complicated and requires fewer workflow steps.
Conventional stereo workflow vs the Apple Immersive Video Workflow utilizing the URSA Cine Immersive digicam and DaVinci Resolve. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
How the immersive video capturing & workflow works
The URSA Cine Immersive captures a separate fisheye picture for every eye.
The URSA Cine Immersive captures a fish-eye picture. When on this format, the picture is known as ‘Lens Area’. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
The time period ‘Lens Area’ is used to discuss with a picture within the native format as captured by the lens. Most 180 or 360 cameras additionally use fish-eye lenses. Nonetheless, in some unspecified time in the future earlier than the picture is distributed, it’s transformed from the digicam’s ‘Lens Area’ into a standard format like Equirectangular (also called LatLong).
That’s not the case with Apple Immersive Video although! Wouldn’t it shock you to know that the completed picture is delivered to the Imaginative and prescient Professional in lens house? A completed Apple Immersive Video incorporates the unique fish-eye photographs captured by the digicam’s two lenses and sensors. There are two principal the reason why:
- Lens Area is extremely nicely suited to 180-degree photographs because it naturally preserves the best quantity of element within the centre of the picture and naturally compresses the picture in the direction of the sting. When watching Immersive, nearly all of your time might be spent trying immediately forward the place least compression is utilized. However with 8k per eye, there may be nonetheless an unbelievable quantity of element even while you look immediately on the fringe of the picture.
- Changing the picture from one format to a different might be inefficient. A small element on the fringe of the picture in Lens Area that occupies a couple of pixels, when re-projected to LatLong, may broaden to occupy many pixels, particularly on the poles. Conversely, a element in the course of a Lens Area picture when reprojected to LatLong would now not profit from the additional decision discovered within the centre of the picture.
Lens Area has the least optical compression in a very powerful a part of the picture, the centre. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
Changing photographs from Lens Area is inefficient. Notice how far more room the identical particulars eat when transformed to Equirectangular. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
The objective of Apple Immersive Video is to current the very best constancy expertise doable. That’s why photographs shot for Immersive are preserved of their native Lens Area all over to the Imaginative and prescient Professional, the place the pictures are re-projected for the primary and solely time.
The metadata revolution
To work collectively on a stereoscopic digicam, every lens and sensor have to be profiled so minor discrepancies might be corrected when the picture is lastly reprojected. That is particularly necessary if you find yourself trying to ship high quality that mimics human imaginative and prescient.
Do not forget that re-projection solely occurs as soon as, on the Imaginative and prescient Professional. When the digicam information, it embeds its manufacturing unit calibration into that Blackmagic RAW file as metadata in order that it may be learn by DaVinci Resolve. If you render out your Immersive video file from DaVinci Resolve, it embeds the digicam’s calibration metadata into the video file that can get performed in your Imaginative and prescient Professional. As a result of multiple digicam could be used on a shoot, DaVinci Resolve really embeds separate metadata for each single clip within the Immersive timeline.
If you play again that file in your Imaginative and prescient Professional, it’s dynamically unwrapping and re-projecting each single clip with its personal metadata.
Herein lies one among Blackmagic and Apple’s best improvements within the immersive video workflow – all of this occurs robotically and with out consumer intervention, thus eradicating one of many greatest friction factors in legacy stereoscopic manufacturing workflows.
Metadata is robotically preserved by each stage of manufacturing. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
Our impression of the immersive video workflow
It’s laborious to explain the Apple Immersive expertise. It’s one thing that it’s important to expertise your self. If you happen to’ve not tried a Imaginative and prescient Professional, ask a good friend, or go go to an Apple Retailer (click on right here to ebook a demo) and watch your approach by Apple’s rising library of Immersive content material.
Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional demonstrations might be booked freed from cost at an Apple Retailer. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
It’s not simply thrilling for customers, it’s additionally extremely thrilling for filmmakers as a result of it represents one of many greatest leaps in filmmaking expertise that we’ve seen for some time. Just like the invention of the reduce or the appearance of sync sound, technological improvements tend to form the best way tales are advised.
We’re on the cusp of one other revolution. A few of our 2D storytelling strategies gained’t work on this medium. However there are new strategies which have already been found and there’s but extra to be found, possibly by your self.
Study extra
If you happen to’d prefer to be taught extra concerning the URSA Cine Immersive and the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional, please watch our full video the place we…
- Speak concerning the inventive concerns required when producing Immersive content material.
- Tour the URSA Cine Immersive.
- Go on a take a look at shoot with a crew and mannequin.
- Exhibit the modifying and color grading workflow in DaVinci Resolve.
- Present you find out how to use the Apple Immersive Video Utility to load Immersive movies onto your Imaginative and prescient Professional.
Editors observe: Watch the CineD interview concerning the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive workflow
In case you missed it, we ran an interview with Blackmagic Design at NAB 2025 concerning the new digicam and the workflow:
Immersive Filmmaker interviews: D-Day: The Digital camera Soldier and Bono – Tales of Give up
Just lately, we revealed video interviews with the filmmakers behind the brand new Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional productions “Bono – Tales of Give up” (Elad Supply, hyperlink right here) and “D-Day: The Digital camera Soldier” (Victor Agulhon, hyperlink right here). These interviews present insights into the filmmaking course of on this rising immersive medium.
Have you ever tried immersive video but? We’re curious- do you assume that is the way forward for filmmaking, or simply one other passing tech development? Tell us what you assume within the feedback beneath!
