ScottF's dashboard

ScottF started a conversation in Microsoft Live Labs on September 08, 2008 23:20:

Photosynth Maintenance Window: Tonight, 11pm PST

Hello Synthers!

We’re making some improvements to Photosynth this evening. You’ll see our static Web site for about 30 minutes, starting at 11:00 pm PST (7:00 am GMT.) You won’t be able to start new synths during maintenance, but synths already in progress will automatically retry - and they'll complete once we restore service.

-Scott

ScottF replied on September 02, 2008 17:55 to the question "Can I get more than 20 GB of storage?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

We've provisioned the extra storage. Go for it!

ScottF replied on September 02, 2008 03:58 to the question "This should not be allowed on Photosynth" in Microsoft Live Labs:

We've recently made a change to the Web site which makes the abuse reporting link much more prominent.

ScottF replied on September 02, 2008 03:55 to the question "How do i remove a synth that i've created?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Make sure you've clicked the link (badboymino's synths) in the upper right corner. *Not* the link of your name beside a synth.

ScottF replied on September 02, 2008 03:53 to the problem "can't see photosynth but I've minimum requipment :(" in Microsoft Live Labs:

lupos, I'm glad this has solved your problem

A comment on the problem "can't see photosynth but I've minimum requipment :(" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Based on lupos' success, updating your video driver might enable Photosynth to work! – ScottF, on September 02, 2008 03:52

ScottF set one of ScottF's replies as an official response to "required number of texture blend stages (4) not supported" in Microsoft Live Labs

ScottF replied on August 28, 2008 00:46 to the question "required number of texture blend stages (4) not supported" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Although we've tested with many flavors of Intel integrated graphics chips, Dan (the expert in this area) has indicated that the Via/S3 integrated chipsets are not supported at this time.

jwish's reply to "Install, Install, Install. I keep trying, and it keeps asking me to do it again!" was just promoted to the most useful! ScottF and 2 other people think it's one of the best replies.

Ok, I fixed my problem. I uninstalled Photosynth then I deleted any reference to Photosynth from the following registry keys:
HKLM/Software/MozillaPlugins and HKCU/Software/MozillaPlugins
I reinstalled Photosynth and it's working now.

ScottF set one of ScottF's replies as an official response to "can't see photosynth but I've minimum requipment :(" in Microsoft Live Labs

ScottF replied on August 28, 2008 00:25 to the problem "can't see photosynth but I've minimum requipment :(" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Hi Lupos, I think I've found the problem. Your laptop only has 8MB of video RAM, and our recommendation is at least 64MB. I'm still checking to see if there's anything that can be done, but it's likely you will not be able to use Photosynth on this particular laptop.

A comment on the problem "can't see photosynth but I've minimum requipment :(" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Ha ha, no offense meant. Varying vintages = the range from brand new to quite elderly... :-) – ScottF, on August 28, 2008 00:14

ScottF set one of ScottF's replies as an official response to "What is the best Image resolution in MEGAPIXELS to use while cliking pictures for a photosynth ?" in Microsoft Live Labs

ScottF replied on August 27, 2008 07:07 to the question "What is the best Image resolution in MEGAPIXELS to use while cliking pictures for a photosynth ?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

With respect to image size, large images are always best, so you can zoom in and see the smallest details. Photosynth is a rare case where the more megapixels, the better! That said, we actually downsample the image to do the actual synthing. Photosynth only uses a 1.5 megapixel version of the image during matching and reconstruction. However, we still have to convert the image into the Deep Zoom format, and upload the images to our server, so larger images do take longer to synth.

Hi, I'm sorry you're having problems - we're investigating the A000008 error, but in the meantime you might be able to work around the problem by adding some tags to your images using the image properties dialog in Windows. This will modify the photos enough that Photosynth will upload fresh copies of them.

ScottF replied on August 27, 2008 06:50 to the question "Exporting XYZ coordinates" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Jason: Photosynth has a lot of promise in that area, but right now the algorithms aren't tuned to be accurate from an engineering point of view - they're tuned to include as many photos as possible. A lot of people on the team are excited about the possibilities in this area, however.

Bitplane, you pose some really great questions. We provide the option to apply a Creative Commons license to your own photos, but the point cloud isn't a derivative work. Let me explain: Part of the dream of Photosynth is to eventually build up a huge, massively interconnected web of photos (and their point clouds.) This will allow us to do some wicked cool stuff. The thing is, it's really difficult to run with that ball if Microsoft doesn't own the underlying data. (Imagine if a photographer withdrew their license, and we had to snip out pieces of the graph?) So in the terms of use for Photosynth, we ask you to grant us ownership of the mathematical outcome of the synthing process - the point cloud.

You're absolutely right that creating a fantastic synth is an art.. :-) That's not why we don't offer synthing controls though. Simplicity is really the goal for our first release. There are literally dozens of knobs and switches that could be added, but we want to make sure the software easy to use, and tuned well for the general case, before we start adding controls.

ScottF replied on August 27, 2008 06:12 to the problem "Pictures are grainy." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Hi alan, yes - the photos do resolve after a time - and if there is some network hiccup or latency it might take several extra seconds. If an image never resolves, it might be that the high resolution tiles might be missing entirely on our servers - which we've seen once or twice. Follow Ken's advice and "tweak" the metadata, then re-upload to ensure the image gets all the way there.

ScottF replied on August 27, 2008 06:05 to the problem "can't see photosynth but I've minimum requipment :(" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Although we have done testing on rows of PCs of varying vintages, there are an awful lot of video chipset / driver combinations out there we haven't tried yet. We're aware of this problem, and hope to expand our testing to support more cards.

ScottF replied on August 27, 2008 06:00 to the problem "Firefox users get a blank screen instead of random synth when the site is down" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Thanks for letting us know. This seems to be a problem when the ActiveX control can't initialize on the static site. I've seen it in both IE7 and Firefox3. (It makes the page do bad things.)

ScottF replied on August 27, 2008 05:57 to the problem "cant login, authentication server issue 80048862," in Microsoft Live Labs:

We use Windows Live ID (Passport) for authentication. You may have had problems connecting to Live ID for a short time. I can't reproduce this particular authentication error. Do you get this problem consistently from Photosynth?

ScottF replied on August 27, 2008 05:54 to the problem "Rotation Woes" in Microsoft Live Labs:

That's a strange one, Lynn. If you can point us at the URL of your wrong-way-up synth, maybe we can help.

We use the image orientation, EXIF "orientation" data supplied by some cameras, and even some computer vision algorithms to determine which way "up" is. One way to tell if we got it wrong is to press the "y" button on the viewer. Does it flip up the right way?