WBUR: Real Estate videos on YouTube

Mike
You've been reading the paper a lot lately, not enough VR work? ;)

As someone who does Real Estate virtual tours, I have to admit the VR photographers who work in this segment usually produce the lowest quality VR product. That's why they get the lowest pay for their work. iPIX was guilty of marketing a "point & shoot" approach to Virtual Photography, convincing a lot of RE VT photographers that they could make money snapping a few picture with their software and camera rigs. (The 2 fisheye capture method is essential to this approach) So the author has a point about "fuzzy" virtual tours.

Video can do things we can't do with 360° Images. That's why I do both technologies. For a "virtual tour" of SkiApache I used iPIX Images to show the view from significant locations like the top of the mountain and inside their restaurant and Windows Media Video to show a skiers on 10 different ski runs. Some of the video is from a "helmet cam." You can see both from their website, www.SkiApache.com (its a really badly designed site where they converted the video to Flash movies) or on my link. www.VirtualSkiAreaTour.com

I also used both video (18 clips) and 360° Images (just 3) for the Virtual Golf Course Tour of the resort owned by the same tribe here in New Mexico, www.InnoftheMountainGods.com. The tour of the hotel is all 360° Virtual Imaging.

More and more I'm coming to think we virtual tour photographers need to look at the two technologies as complimentary, where a "still" view is the subject, the higher resolution & quality of good virtual images is a better choice. When "motion" is essential to the scene, like skiing, then video is probably the media to use. Sound being native to the file format is an advantage for video too

I've alway looked at the videos used on hotel websites as basicly being "online TV commercials." That phrase being a "put-down." Then TripAdvisor.com started accepting video uploads (just a week ago) from both amateurs and professional producers. It dawned on me that an "online TV commercial" was perfect for this web venue.

If they keep accepting video from "marketers", my approach may be to sell a hotel a virtual tour for use in their website and a video for use on various websites, like the #2 busiest Travel site TripAdvisor.com, to drive traffic traffic to the hotel site. Showing the hotel the different ways both can benefit them.

The jist of the news story I got was that the video was high quality and the virtual tours used were low quality. That's easy to overcome, just show people high quality virtual tours. My next hotel article is "Super-Size Virtual Tours, the Next Step"

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM