The other day I said I was setting up this website to get ideas out of my head and make room for new ones. I guess that’s only part of it. The rest of it is to document in the hope that it’s useful or at least interesting to more than just me. I already do this with but I can’t put everything in there. Smaller, more discreet things can go here. I think this sits adjacent to my journal. This is the conversation I’m having with myself that results in and eventually into artworks (actually I consider one of my artworks). Anyway, there are things that I put in my journal that aren’t ready to be public and there are things that I can put here that never make it into my journal. 

I think I first started blogging in 2002. I ditched that blog and started over in 2004 when I started video blogging. That lasted until maybe 2009. Somewhere between waning interest, reliance on unmaintained WordPress plugins, and the demise of Blip.tv (video hosting) I called it a day and wiped everything. I became fond of collecting domains and stared things in various places: greymattergravy.com (now hosting another zine I make), x627.com, talkbot.tv, verdi.space, verdi.mov, and zine.party. Meanwhile, I have at least a half-dozen YouTube accounts and various social media accounts that I start and delete. It’s too much and too confusing. And the thing is, I already have a great place for everything — michaelverdi.com (it’s my fucking name). Thank you other Michael Verdi who let the domain expire in 2003. So this weekend I’ve been putting it all together. There’s still lots I want to do but this is in a workable state.

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• Convert MV-HEVC into Left & Right videos.
  • Drag video files out of Photos. Put them in a folder with “Left” and “Right” subfolders. CD to the directory and use this terminal command to make L & R files to edit.
    • Requires the Spatial command line tool by Mike Swanson (I installed this using Homebrew so the spatial commands below are not prefixed with ./
    • for f in *.MOV; do spatial export -i "$f" --vcodec proRes422 -o "Left/${f%}" -o "Right/${f%}";done
• Edit your video in DaVinci Resolve Studio (need the paid version)
  • Project settings – 1920 x 1080, 30fps
  • Create a “Left” and “Right” bin and drag the corresponding clips into each one.
  • Right-click the master bin and choose 3D stereo sync. Pick the left and right eye folder. Set the output folder to the master bin. You should end up with a bunch of clips with 3D labels on them.
    • There is a bug in DR. My clips get paired with the wrong clip unless I sync one clip at a time. Super annoying.
  • Now you can edit as usual.
  • When you are done color grading – use the 3D tab on the Color page to adjust the alignment and 3D depth.
    • Use the stereo alignment tools if you have vertical mismatch.
    • You can use the convergence setting to make things farther out or farther in.
  • Finally – export a left eye video and a right eye video.
• Convert Left & Right videos to MV-HEVC
  • Run this terminal command on the L & R videos you exported from DaVinci Resolve:
    • spatial make -i LEFT.mov -i RIGHT.mov --bitrate 20M --cdist 19.24 --hfov 63.4 --hadjust 0.02 --primary right --projection rect -o VIDEO-spatial.mov
  • When finished, drag the video to the Photos app where you can access it in AVP.

I got an Apple Vision Pro a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been enjoying viewing the spatial videos I shot with my iPhone. This weekend I finally got around to learning how to edit them. It basically involves splitting the video into left and right files; combining & editing those in DaVinci Resolve; and then transforming the edited file back into Apple’s spatial video format.

If you’ve got an Apple Vision Pro, download these and open them in the Files app. If you’re not using an Apple Vision Pro, these will play as regular videos.

Cats

Three, 3D Cats. 95 MB

cats-spatialDownload

Snow in
Dallas

We got some snow in January.
53 MB

snow-spatialDownload

Rowing

Rowing practice on White Rock Lake.
153 MB

rowing-spatialDownload