Background

Our theme for the semester end project is named “The Sounds of Long Mei Beach”. Similar to our previous project, “The Difference Sounds of the Hiking Trail to the Plover Cove Country Park ”, we would be recording sounds in ambisonic format, as well as pairing them up in 360 video formats in various locations within Long Mei Beach. The audience will be able to rotate around the video to see different things like how a 360 video would.
The main reason why we decided to go to the beach instead of picking other weather suited locations is because we can pick up more natural sounds, as people rarely go to the beach in cooler weather. With the beach being less crowded, the audience can listen to sounds such as water waves in full detail when they could not in normal circumstances due to crowdedness and just enjoy the scenery with minimal interruptions along with an immersive experience. As we wanted minimal interruptions for the best experience, all of our recorded audios and videos are mostly natural and it is mostly non-controlled. The audios are recorded in Ambisonic-A format for easier conversation and convenience.
Within the recordings, we recorded materials of sea waves, the car park, the snack bar, as well as the seaside that is on a higher surface. Most of these audios have strong winds, which is clearly more noticeable at audios that are near the sea.

Equipment and Software

Zoom H3 VR Audio Recorder
Ricoh Theta Z1 360 Camera
Zoom H5 accessories
Closed back headphones
SD card reader
Reaper (For audio editing, format conversation)
Adobe Premiere Pro (For 360 video export)

Editing and Technical Difficulties

First, we convert all the audio taken from the Zoom H3 VR Audio Recorder from Ambisonics A format to AmbiX using Reaper so Adobe Premiere Pro can export 360, spatial audio. Then, we sync up the claps from the audio taken from the Ricoh Theta Z1 360 Camera and the audio taken from the H3 so that the audio will be synced, the audio from the 360 camera is not used in this work. Using the accessories, the 360 camera and the Zoom H3 recorder is put together using a tripod, this is seen with all of our recordings. Afterwards, we do some editing of the videos and put them all together. Finally, we exported the 360 video and checked using VLC, as VLC supports 360 videos.
In this assignment, we have faced a few minor problems during the recording session, but most notably is how we screwed the tripod with the given screwdriver too hard so that one part of the tripod was stuck to the screwdriver. We looked up different tutorials, but to no avail, in the end it was fixed by using a pair of pliers.
For technical issues for post-production, the audio was not tracking with the movement for our first attempt, for the second attempt, due to resolution issues, the sky and the ground were black and had no footage. After carefully fixing each problem, we finally rendered the 360 video with spatial audio that aligns with the camera.

Conclusion
In conclusion, we believe we have learnt a lot from this assignment. For one, we never had a lot of experiences from Adobe Premiere Pro as we are used to using Final Cut Pro, seen from our past assignments. On the other hand, we also learnt that learning the set up from each equipment is important, learnt from experiencing this kind of technical issue first hand. We believe this assignment was meaningful and it has been a good experience, and if we have to do something similar in the future, we are convinced that we can make an even more high quality work than what we currently did.