Ken's dashboard

Ken replied on September 01, 2008 00:42 to the question "What cameras are supported? Could not find ccd width for..." in Microsoft Live Labs:

We have a database with sensor sizes for about 600 cameras in the product now. We combine the sensor size with the focal length in the EXIF to compute the Field of View (FOV). Why do we need this? Imaging taking two photos of the same scene that look identical, one taken very near with wide angle and one taken further away with telephoto. By computing the FOV from the lens/camera combination we have a more accurate estimate of distance which improves the overall output of the synth. If we don't know the FOV we use a default starting point and the synther actually figures out what the FOV was as it pieces things together. This usually works fine but loosely connected synths do benefit from having this knowledge ahead of time.

Right now the sensor sizes are baked into the synther. There may be a way to override for your camera, I'll do some investigation and share my findings here.

Ken set one of Ken's replies as an official response to "photosynth is free right?" in Microsoft Live Labs

Ken replied on August 31, 2008 01:41 to the question "photosynth is free right?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

yes, it's 100% free!

Ken replied on August 29, 2008 16:29 to the question "Don’t crop images." in Microsoft Live Labs:

If you want to crop but find that the resulting image isn't getting included in the synth try including both the original and the cropped image. The original should fit very well since we normally can compute the Field of View (FOV) from the EXIF. And the cropped photo should match closely to the original. It's not perfect but often works.

There's one time when cropping is a good idea - if you're trying to match a wide angle shot to a zoomed shot and the synther isn't fitting them. The synther doesn't use the full size image for matching (it's way too slow) so the trick is to crop the wide angle view so it will match to both the wide angle and telephoto shot. I'll post a more detailed description of how to do this on another thread.

Ken set one of Ken's replies as an official response to "Photosynth service offline?" in Microsoft Live Labs

Ken replied on August 26, 2008 21:49 to the question "Photosynth service offline?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

We're back up. Our database server had a disk issue and we failed over to our backup machine. No data was lost and the site seems to be running fine now.

Ken set one of Ken's replies as an official response to "Photosynth service offline?" in Microsoft Live Labs

Ken replied on August 26, 2008 20:55 to the question "Photosynth service offline?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Clearly we didn't resolve the issue, we are actively investigating. Stay tuned on this thread for updates.

Ken set one of Ken's replies as an official response to "Photosynth service offline?" in Microsoft Live Labs

Ken replied on August 26, 2008 20:39 to the question "Photosynth service offline?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

The site is back up. We're investigating to find out the cause.

Ken replied on August 26, 2008 18:49 to the problem "Pictures are grainy." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Yes, we use a hash of the image. The easiest way to make sure they get re-uploaded is to tweak the metadata. I usually use Windows Live Photo Gallery to add a tag but there are lots of metadata programs out there.

Ken set one of Ken's replies as an official response to "Embedded synth automatically begin in slideshow mode?" in Microsoft Live Labs

Ken replied on August 26, 2008 16:07 to the question "Embedded synth automatically begin in slideshow mode?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

The default for embedding is slideshow off. Straight out of your browser it looks like this:

<iframe src="http://photosynth.net/embed.aspx?cid=fbc94bb5-5ee2-44d2-9986-345064a0b2ab" height="300" width="400"></iframe>

To turn on the automatic slideshow just add &slideShowPlaying=TRUE to the site URL which will make it look like this:

<iframe src="http://photosynth.net/embed.aspx?cid=fbc94bb5-5ee2-44d2-9986-345064a0b2ab&slideShowPlaying=TRUE" height="300" width="400"></iframe>

Ken replied on August 26, 2008 15:56 to the problem "Pictures are grainy." in Microsoft Live Labs:

What's happening is that for some reason Photosynth can't find your high resolution photos and it's just displaying the thumbnails. Since they're low resolution they look grainy. I haven't seen this specific issue, I'll see what I can find out.

When did you first upload these images? The only thing that I can think of is that a previous attempt left the images in a strange state.

Ken set one of Ken's replies as an official response to "Where's the log file in Vista?" in Microsoft Live Labs

Ken replied on August 26, 2008 05:47 to the question "Where's the log file in Vista?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

it's more easy to remember %temp%\Photosynther which you can type into Explorer or the run dialog (Winkey+R).

Ken replied on August 25, 2008 23:53 to the discussion "What features should we add to Photosynth?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

stealthtech, look for the two dropdowns that look like the ones below.

A comment on the discussion "What features should we add to Photosynth?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

stealthtech see my reply below with image – Ken, on August 25, 2008 23:52

A comment on the discussion "What features should we add to Photosynth?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

stealthtech look for an existing idea post here: http://getsatisfaction.com/livelabs/p.... if you see something that's close to what you want just add a "me too". it's the me too feature that makes the idea page so powerful because it allows an easy way to see what people are asking for.

to answer more directly, yes we'll check this post but if you really want to give people a chance to agree with and support your ideas then make sure they're posted as ideas. – Ken, on August 25, 2008 23:20

Ken replied on August 25, 2008 22:47 to the problem "How can I get my 360 panorama to connect?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

It often matches with less than 50% but if you want to go 360 degrees you'll need more overlap.

Here's a way of thinking about it that might help:

Imagine that you have a pile of twenty 4x6 photos in front of you and that you start taping them together by adding them one at a time in a chain. Each two photos will look pretty good but after 19 photos the small alignment errors will add up and there's a pretty good chance the last one won't match up. In a way that's what Photosynth does.

If you know ahead of time that it's a 360 degree panorama you could take one of several approaches to make sure the last two photos align. This is what panorama software does. In our case the problem is that we don't know we're dealing with a panorama until the synth is done. It could be fixed but it would require another pass and more time. If you'd like to see this feature feel free to suggest it in the "ideas" section of this site.