What when you might 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 digital camera, guarantees precisely that—an unprecedented leap past conventional filmmaking into actually spatial storytelling. We took an in depth take a look at this revolutionary workflow, from seize to paint grading, to see the way it might change the best way filmmakers craft tales for the display screen—and past.
Blackmagic’s URSA Cine Immersive has staggering specs. It has two 8k sensors working at 90 frames per second. A typical 4k digital camera working 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 grasp why such a digital camera exists, you first want to grasp 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 lets you do issues like watch films on a display screen as massive as your own home, work together with apps like they’re a bodily object in your room, or work on a airplane with out feeling like you’re 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 implausible platform for consuming leisure. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
The Imaginative and prescient Professional helps all kinds of media codecs. We’re particularly serious about Apple Immersive Video, a 180-degree stereoscopic video format designed particularly for the Imaginative and prescient Professional. It’s in contrast to some other format you may need skilled. Whereas conventional 2D media lets you really feel emotionally current, Immersive media lets you 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 potential.
First, all of it begins with the Imaginative and prescient Professional’s shows, which have the best pixel density of any OLED show. 54 Imaginative and prescient Professional pixels slot in a single iPhone 16 pixel. That pixel density is essential, 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 digital camera. 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 fee, after which lastly multiply all the pieces by 2 as a result of it’s stereoscopic. That’s over 30 occasions the info fee!
Apple Immersive Video seize is round 30x the info fee 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 digital camera produced its personal separate information that have to be synchronised and re-projected into a typical 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.
Then again, the workflow with the URSA Cine Immersive and DaVinci Resolve is far easier and requires fewer workflow steps.
Conventional stereo workflow vs the Apple Immersive Video Workflow utilizing the URSA Cine Immersive digital camera 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 consult 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 digital camera’s ‘Lens Area’ into a typical format like Equirectangular (also referred to as 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 area? A completed Apple Immersive Video comprises the unique fish-eye photographs captured by the digital camera’s two lenses and sensors. There are two most important 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, the vast majority of your time will probably be spent wanting straight forward the place least compression is utilized. However with 8k per eye, there may be nonetheless an unimaginable quantity of element even once you look straight on the fringe of the picture.
Changing the picture from one format to a different will 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, might broaden to occupy many pixels, particularly on the poles. Conversely, a element in the midst 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 rather more room the identical particulars devour when transformed to Equirectangular. Picture credit score: Crew 2 Movies
The aim of Apple Immersive Video is to current the best constancy expertise potential. That’s why photographs shot for Immersive are preserved of their native Lens Area right through 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 digital camera, every lens and sensor have to be profiled so minor discrepancies will be corrected when the picture is lastly reprojected. That is particularly essential when you find yourself making an attempt to ship high quality that mimics human imaginative and prescient.
Keep in mind that re-projection solely occurs as soon as, on the Imaginative and prescient Professional. When the digital camera information, it embeds its manufacturing unit calibration into that Blackmagic RAW file as metadata in order that it may be learn by DaVinci Resolve. Whenever you render out your Immersive video file from DaVinci Resolve, it embeds the digital camera’s calibration metadata into the video file that may get performed in your Imaginative and prescient Professional. As a result of a couple of digital camera may be used on a shoot, DaVinci Resolve really embeds separate metadata for each single clip within the Immersive timeline.
Whenever 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 biggest improvements within the immersive video workflow – all of this occurs routinely and with out consumer intervention, thus eradicating one of many greatest friction factors in legacy stereoscopic manufacturing workflows.
Metadata is routinely preserved by means of 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 you must 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 e-book a demo) and watch your manner by means of Apple’s rising library of Immersive content material.
Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional demonstrations will 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 know-how that we’ve seen for some time. Just like the invention of the minimize or the arrival 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 methods received’t work on this medium. However there are new methods which have already been found and there’s but extra to be found, possibly by your self.
Study extra
If you happen to’d wish to study extra concerning the URSA Cine Immersive and the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional, please watch our full video the place we…
Discuss concerning the inventive issues required when producing Immersive content material.
Tour the URSA Cine Immersive.
Go on a take a look at shoot with a crew and mannequin.
Reveal the enhancing and color grading workflow in DaVinci Resolve.
Present you the best way 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 digital camera and the workflow:
Immersive Filmmaker interviews: D-Day: The Digicam Soldier and Bono – Tales of Give up
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 Digicam 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 under!
