dimanche 1 octobre 2017

Save your Photosynths from your iPhone !

When Microsoft discontinued the Photosynth.net website earlier this year, they warned the users to export their photosynths before it's too late. But I knew about the closure of the service just days after it actually happened,... so no chance for me to export my Photosynths from there.

I might have found a partial solution : From an iPhone backup (created by iTunes), I could extract the application data (thanks to the free app JuicePhone) and obtain what seems to be all the data needed to generate the photosynth (at least, all the pictures and some metadata) :

The picture shows the arborescence inside the folder
Application Data\capture\Documents\panorama\0EF8E9A8-392D-4416-843B-C36456F542CF\
 (each Photosynth has its data stored in such a folder) 

Having read the best info available on the internet about .pano files (see below), I thought I could give a try at zipping my folders and rename them with a .pano extension.

I tried to open the resulting files with the Microsoft Offline Viewer (1.0.1) 
[info : it won't work under older macs, at it seems to be a 64 bit only app].

Three error messages gave me infos about what was expected and is missing :
Unable to load as Photosynth     0.json is required inside the Photosynth ZIP archive
Unable to load as panorama      /formats/cubemap/cubemap.json is required inside the panorama archive
Unable to load as Photosynth     path.bin is required inside the Photosynth ZIP archive

I also got the same messages when trying to open other files directly from the original uncompressed folders, for exemple Application Data\capture\Documents\panorama\0EF8E9A8-392D-4416-843B-C36456F542CF\deepzoom\panoramaWebTemplate.json , or \deepzoom\ZipFiles\front\front.zip (you never know).

I run out of options. My goal is to 
1) be able to preserve and view my immersive panoramas on the Mac. 
2) be able to share them, optimally in a web browser with just a link (thanks to OneDrive maybe ? but an open-source solution would be great), allowing other users, on different platforms, to see them.
3) if needed for long-term in mind, convert them to a more open and safe format.

Seeking help out there !

I hope the Photosynth file format experts Benedict Hurkett, James Mackenzie, Nate Lawrence, Henri Astre and Christoph Hausner will be able to assist in finding a solution for us Mac users !



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