Pano2QTVR

A new and real promising Windows project by Thomas Rauscher to convert equirectangular and cylindrical panos to QuickTime cubic movies and link them together to virtual tours. Since version 0.9.8 it is also possible to create single and multi row Quicktime VR Object Movies

Features for the free version (for non-commercial usage):

• graphical userinterface
• converting equirectangular and cylindiric images to QTVR (.mov files).
• converting equirectangular to single cube face files (either JPEG or TIFF)
• assembling single cube face files into a QTVR (.mov file) to allow retouching of the cubefaces
• setting of PTStitcher interpolator and interpolator gamma for cube face creation
• usage of the internal or the PanoTools remapper
• supported image formats: everything that ImageMagick can handle f.e JPEG, JPEG-2000, TIFF (8- an 16bit), PSD, BMP, PNG, GIF,...
• creating hotspots in an internal hotspot editor using various forms (round, elliptic, rectangle, rounded rectangle, polygon)
• setting of most (if not all?) QTVR parameters like f.e. pan, tilt and Field of View defaults and limits, title, description, author, date and time, copyright, source, comment...
• subtiles of cube faces for progressive download
• optimizer to rearrange the tiles depending on the viewing direction. more
• spot the initial viewing parameters and grab this position
• high quality is enabled by default. more
• droplets for batch processing
• induvidual JPEG quality for each cubeface
• option for compressed headers and protection to disallow further editing with Quicktime.

Additional Features for the pro version:

• Object Movies (single- and multi row)
• import up to 10 sprite-tracks, soundfiles, images, Flash movies,...
• background sound for panoramas
• import autorotate sprite for panoramas
• create thumbnails from the source image (GIF, TIFF and PNG with correct alpha channel)
• create HTML files for Quicktime, DevalVR and PTViewer
• create vertical Image strips for SPi-V and Immervision PurePlayer
• use the output files for commercial purposes

Features specially for Object Movies:

• Specify animation and autoplay speed with rotation or ping-pong
• Unlimited viewstates and animations
• Different contollers like grabber, joystick and absolute position

Pano2QTVR page: http://www.pano2qtvr.com/

The interface is no-frills and easy to grasp in a single sitting. I was able to put together a 7 image tour with multiple links in under 30 minutes, and that was the first time using the program. See it here: http://www.add360.com/archangels/virtual_tours/tour-quicktime/image2.mov

The software offers links to internal images, external webpages and tooltips.