NIMS (pronounced "neemz" after my childhood nickname) stands for Nima's Immersive Media Samples.

I've had many situations where I was working on a project or app related to immersive media and I was unable to find decent comparisons between different immersive cameras, their visual output, and the file formats they encode in. In addition, I would often reach out to other professionals in the field who had an app and ask why it didn't support a specific camera or file format, and they said there was no support purely because they didn't have that device or camera or sample media to test with.

That made me realize how helpful it would be to have a repository of files from various cameras taken from the same spot that would allow creators and devs to compare the output and use the sample files to develop applications that support immersive media.

This repository is broken into "Events", which are the specific scenes that the shots within come from. Some Events are "Scientific", meaning they were controlled and shot simulataneously on a tripod with the cameras as close to one another as possible, and others are "Unscientific", meaning they were shot in the same location on the same day but not simultaneously at the same time and/or not with a tripod (i.e. handheld).

Within an Event's folder, you will see "Camera" folders, which match the name of the camera model the shot was taken with. Within the Camera folder, you will find the immersive files, which may include stereoscopic 3D, disparity map 3D, depth map 3D, VR180, and both 2D and 3D 360 photos and videos. There will always be the original file from the camera (which will be exactly what came out of the camera, down to the filename), and there will sometimes also be additional files in there, usually converted from the original file into a more universal format, for example from Apple MV-HEVC to Full-Width SBS MP4. The filename will reflect that it's not the original file by including the camera name, and if there's any additional changes made, such as convergence, width, stitching, color space, cropping, metadata etc. it will also be clearly noted within the filename.

Immersive media from this project will come from a wide variety of cameras. These include:

• FujiFilm FinePix W3
• Sony DEV-50V
• RED Hydrogen One
• Leia Lume Pad
• Leia Lume Pad 2
• Vuze XR
• Insta360 One RS 1-Inch
• Kandao Qoocam EGO
• Canon R5 with RF5.2mm F2.8 L Dual Fisheye Lens
• iPhone 15 Pro

Immersive Image File Formats include:

• JPG
• MPO
• LIF
• HEIC
• INSP

Immersive Video File Formats include:

• MP4
• MOV
• AVI
• INSV

Nima Zeighami

If you'd like to contribute, either make a pull request or reach out to me over Twitter (@NimaZeighami) or email ([email protected])

This project is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/