Video: Shop Talk 6: Expanding Camera Lineup, Android Support, New Betas, How to Back Up & Restore Models | Video courtesy of Matterport YouTube Channel | 2 September 2020

Hi All,

Below is a transcript of Matterport ShopTalk #6 Webinar that aired live on 2 September 2020.

Topics Covered

✓ Expanding Camera Lineup
✓ Android Support
✓ New Betas
✓ How to Back Up & Restore Models
✓ Q&A

I did the following separate WGAN Forum posts on these topics using this content:

✓ Video: Backup & Restore Your Matterport Models (And Why This is a Problem!)
✓ Matterport Android Capture Beta for Pro2; Insta360 ONE/R, Ricoh Theta Z1/V

Dan

Transcript (Video Above)

- Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us on this sixth episode of Matterport ShopTalk. I appreciate your attending today. We've got a really, really good one for you today. I've got a couple of special guests and a video that I've been looking forward to showing you for a long time and making for a long time.

So let's check it out. This is what we've got going on today. I will be talking about how to backup and restore your model data from Capture. So I know this is something that a lot of people have been waiting for.

This is finally happened, so I'm very excited to present that. And after that, so we've got Kirk and Indy with us. Kirk was with us in the first ShopTalk episode, so welcome back Kirk. And Indy Sen, VP of Pride marketing is with us as well. We'll be talking about Android, iOS Beta and Pro cam firmware. So let's get going. First let me just say a welcome to Kirk and Indy.

- Thanks Amir.

- Thanks, Amir. Great to be here.

- All right. Thanks guys for taking the time to, help present this information. So yeah, let's just go ahead onto the next slide and let me try and get that video going for you. [Bright Gentle music] Welcome Matterporters.

Thanks for joining me in this video. Today I wanted to talk to you about how to backup and restore your model data from Capture. This is really, really critical because for so many reasons you are eventually going to need to backup your model data.

Model data and Capture is the raw data. This is where you can make changes, add markings, remove markings, send all that new data up to the Cloud to be processed. Eventually you are going to run out of space on your mobile device, so you will need to back that up erase it from the Capture app, and then you can move forward with more scanning. You may have also recently upgraded your device and you want to migrate some of those compositions. Maybe it's a model that you're currently working on and need to Capture a few more scans.

So how are you going to migrate that from your old iPad to the new iPad so that you can continue adding more content and then upload so that everything is in a single model. So today we're going to look at using two applications, iTunes, and iExplorer. You can also use things like iMazing. It's very similar to iExplorer. For this demonstration, I'm just going to stick to iExplorer. First step is take your iPad or iPhone connect it via the USB cable to your computer.

Now I'm just going to go ahead and launch iTunes. And the first time you ever launch iTunes and connect to your mobile device, it is going to need to sync up. So you kind of go through that process. You'll see a little button on there that says to sync the device. Once iTunes and my mobile device are communicating I can go ahead and go to the next step. Now, as I mentioned, we're going to be looking at how to access your Capture data using iExplorer.

And I'll cover why we're going to do that in a little bit. But in order to get a third party application, like iExplore an iMazing to see what's inside Capture you're going to need to launch iTunes and go into the preferences first. I'm going to go into the preferences here, go into advanced, and I need to make sure that share iTunes library, XML with other applications is selected.

So check that box and then hit okay. At this point, I really no longer need iTunes. I can just use the third party applications. The reason I'm going to use iTunes and not just only use iExplorer is because if I'm already backing up everything inside Capture, I may as well use a tool that was developed by Apple since I'm using an Apple device.

So the next step after our preferences in iTunes are set and our iPad is connected, I go to this button right up here. This is supposed to look like a little iPad or iPhone, just click on that to access the device. And now I can see the device. And one thing that I don't want to do, I'm not going to back up using this backup now option.

What this does, as you might know, is back up everything inside the iPad, not just Capture itself. So in order to minimize the amount of data that's transferred over to my computer, I'm going to do this a little differently. I'm going to go into file sharing right here and then select Capture. Once I've selected Capture, I can see all of the content within Capture appears here.

Now I really don't need to pay attention to most of this, except for two things. The DB files, these files right here, and the Jobs folder right here. The DB files, these are the database files. These hold a lot of information that Capture needs to show you what models you have in Capture. The Jobs folder is what actually has the scan data itself.

So those are the two that make up all the information you need to back up from Capture in order to restore any other models you have. Unlike the third party applications, like I mentioned, iExplorer and iMazing iTunes can not see any of the models specifically within the Jobs folder. So I know they're all in there because I see that I've got 233 megabytes.

In your case, you may have gigabytes worth of information. So what I'm using iTunes to do is really just back up the entire Jobs folder. I can't specify a certain Job that I want. We'll get to that in a second. So I'll select the Jobs folder. I'll select the DB files and I can hit Save, or I can just move this over and drag them onto the desktop.

So it's going to copy over and you can see the blue status bar right here working its way across. And as soon as that's done, I know that everything is backed up on my computer. Now to be extra cautious, before you delete that information from your mobile device from Capture it's a good idea to have a second backup. This is really critical information. You don't want to have this stuff lost. Computers crash, iPads, iPhones, they fall, they break.

So to have this information in more than one location is a good idea. Now, before I go ahead and delete this information from Capture, so I can free up that space and go scan again. I want to show you how I would do this with iExplorer. So I've launched iExplorer. And just like with iTunes, I need to go ahead and find that Capture data. So I'll expand the apps tab right here. And then here you can see I have Capture available. I can click on that.

Now you'll see right away that this is very, very similar to iTunes and that I can see everything including the database files and the Jobs folder that are within the Capture application. The very critical and unique difference here is that with this application as opposed to iTunes, I can expand the Jobs folder to see the models within. Now, the first thing you'll notice is that the names of my folders inside the Jobs folder are not named the same as what I have my model's name. So this makes it a little bit more difficult to know which folder represents which model. The way I go about doing this is by using two things, the date modified column right here, I can adjust this to see the date these were modified.

And based on the date, I can get a pretty good idea of which model this is referring to. Also, I can go ahead and expand one of these to see what's within. And I have this little thumbnail, the same thumbnail that's used in Capture to identify the model. So usually the thumbnail along with the modified date allows me to know exactly which model is in which folder.

And if there's any kind of question whatsoever, I'll just go ahead and back up more than one folder. So now let's say this is the model that I want to back up. I'll go ahead and collapse that again and select it.

I'll just move this over and I can just drag and drop right onto the desktop. So no difference there. So now that we've looked at copying everything over using iTunes or copying specific models using iExplorer, I want to go ahead and delete everything from the Capture app. So I can free up that space and continue scanning. In order to do that you use either iTunes or iExplorer this the same way for both. You just select the Jobs folder. I'll select my database files as well, and I'll just hit delete if you're using iTunes or command it delete if you're on the Mac using iExplorer. I'll get a message and I'll say delete. And that information has now been deleted. Now on my iPad I want to make sure that everything is updated.

So I'm going to kill Capture from running in the background in case it still is. I'll just double tap the home screen, and swipe up on Capture. Now I know it's deleted from the background tap Capture again, and you can see that everything is now gone. Now let's go ahead and restore things back. So to restore things back, I can use an iExport to restore specific models from within the Jobs folder, or I can restore the entire Jobs folder itself. Let's go ahead and start by using iTunes in order to restore the entire Jobs folder. So I'm back in iTunes, I'll press file sharing again and go into Capture. So in this case, I want to restore everything that I've backed up back into the Capture app. So I'll use the add button right here, or just like before I can move this over and just drag and drop. I don't need the database files because these are just to be on the safe side, in case Capture doesn't recreate the database files as it should, you always have a backup of those as well.

But for the most part, it has not failed me yet. Now I'll move this over and just hit replace. I'm going to replace the empty Jobs folder that was just created by a Capture. Now with my new Jobs folder, you can see that it's got some information in there. It's not just zero. I can go ahead and double tap the home button again, to kill Capture from running in the background so that it again goes through that launch process and regenerates those database files. Launch Capture, and you can see that all my model information is back where it used to be. Now let's say I just wanted to restore one or two of those models. Or I have these models and I just want to restore a model that was you know backed up a long time ago. In this case, we are going to use the iExplorer because we're just copying the one model and not the entire Jobs folder. So I'm going to go into iExplorer and I'll move this over and I can expand it, but I don't have to expand the Jobs to see the Job folders that are in there.

And I can look at the another backup that I've done a while back. And I can just pick any one of these models, but let's say I've expanded this I've looked at the thumbnail. I can see which model this is, and I'll just grab this whole model folder and bring it right into the Jobs folder here. That'll copy over and now we've got that. So what I'll do now again, is make sure that Capture is killed from running in the background. So again, it can launch and regenerate those database files. So I'll double tap, make sure it's gone and okay. And there you go. Now you saw that I have seven models instead of just the original six that I previously backed and that's it. So backing up and restoring is really quite simple. There's not a whole lot to it.

Just a matter of getting your iPad or iPhone connected to iTunes to generate the backup. If you're going with all of the model data, or if you want to specify certain models within the Jobs folder to be backed up or to be restored, and you can use something like iExplorer or iMazing as well. I hope this information was helpful and we'll see you next time. [Bright Gentle Music]

Okay. So I really hope that was helpful. And we're going to have that video it's already on YouTube. We'll send an email out after this webinar with links to that and as well as to an iExplorer and iMazing. So you can check those out and that's it. We will have a Q&A at the end of course, if you do have any questions, I'm happy to go over any of that. Okay, let's check out what we've got next. Alright it's up to Kirk and Indy to talk to us all about Android, iOS and firmware. What's up guys.

- Hey. Thanks, Amir. Great to be here, you know, and hello ShopTalk. So we're going to kick this off. You know we got a lot of exciting updates for you, Kirk and I are going to be providing Kirk's my counterpart on the product team.

I look after product marketing, so we're really thrilled to be here. So today we're going to talk to you about a couple of things. We're going to go over the very exciting Android Capture beta. So Matterport is coming to Android for the from a controller standpoint, and we're definitely looking to bring it to feature parody with iOS, but super exciting.

You know, I think this is one of the things that a lot of our users have been asking for for quite some time now. And I think it just opens up a world of opportunity for folks to discover our technologies, as well as give our customers more flexibility as to how they deploy Matterport and, and how they do it.

So really excited to share the details with you on that.

We'll also cover some updates on the iOS current public beta, some really exciting new additions to the camera lineups, the we will cover, as well as some updates on the Pro camera and the firmware upgrade. So let's get going. So just as a reminder, you know, I think one of the things that we try to do here at Matterport and just, you know, at least we're focused on is just making sure that we can meet you where you are, right. In terms of both your needs, and giving you the utmost flexibility in terms of like what kind of cameras you can use to do what type of jobs do you really want? Right. I think our really belief, one of our central pillars is to make sure that we can have a camera for every job that you have.

So, you know, I think when you look at this current lineup, you know, the obviously the Pro2 flashing cameras, something that, you know, we've been having for a couple of years now, it is the gold standard when it comes to like doing Matterport captures with great mix of both image resolution as well as speed.

And, you know, whether you're trying to do a simple like in a residential real estate Job to a more complex large industrial Job, you know, many of our customers obviously and know that it's the right tool for the Job. But that's not to say that, you know we know that there are other use cases that folks have and obviously in the lineup, you know with Leica as well as like 360 cameras and iOS we know that depending on the jobs that you have, there's a lot of like things that you need the right camera. So our belief has always been to try and meet you where you are.

And so that's why we're so excited to kind of expand our lineup and show you what we have in the works. So if we move to the next slide here are some really great updates for you.

And something that we're thrilled to announce is that, you know, when it comes to 360 cameras and our friends over at Ricoh, we're going to be offering support with the THETA SC2 that's coming soon. The THETA SC2 is actually in the Ricoh lineup. One of the more affordable cameras also very kind of versatile.

And again, in the spirit of like making sure that we can meet you where you are we know that that's something that a lot of folks have been requesting. We've also been working very closely with our friends over at Insta to deliver a compatibility with a ONE R. So that's something actually we'll go into more detail as Kirk talks about the iOS and Android Capture updates, but working very closely with the Insta team to kind of deliver that functionality.

And, you know the one ONE R amazing piece of kit, you know, there's just a lot of versatility that it has. And so we're thrilled to offer that support. But not to bury to lead, but you know, the biggest thing here is really for and given how closely our customers have been following this is the smartphone Capture and starting to controller, sorry, Android Capture module and controller for Matterport.

So really excited as development this is something that you know, again we knew there was a lot pent up demand for, so without any further ado, let me hand it off over to Kirk, to walk you through what we have.

- Thank you Indy. Let's go ahead to the next slide. So as some of you know, we've been running a Beta program with Capture on Android, and we wanted to make sure everybody's aware of it. We want to talk to a few details about what is supported what's not supported, how you try it, what's coming next and all those good things. So in general right now, our focus on Capture for Android is under your connected cameras. So right now we don't have support for the Capture with your Android phone or tablet camera.

This is all the connected cameras like the Matterport Pro2 and the 360 cameras from Insta360 and Ricoh. Coming soon or coming in the in the short term will be the original Pro1 camera from Matterport and BLK360.

And as you had mentioned the SC2. And then in the next phase, we'll also do smartphone Capture. So that's where you use the camera, that's in your phone or tablet to rotate around and Capture your space. So what do you need if you want to try this? So you need to be on Android 8 or above. And so there's eight, nine, 10, and 11 is in beta now.

And that's coming out with the new crop of pixel devices. So you need to be on a relatively modern version of Android. Your device needs to have three gig of Ram or higher, and that's sometimes there's a little hard to determine so you can look that up on the web, or you can go into your system settings and find out. The reason we need that is because we do a lot of computational stuff on the device. And so we need to make sure that there's enough working memory to be able to Capture and synthesize the space.

Again, this works on phones and tablets with Android. We don't currently support Chromebooks right now. There are some Chromebooks where you could run Android apps on the Chromebook, but that's not supported at the moment. So if you want to give it a try, you go to matterport.com/beta, and you follow the links for Android. And the mechanism to try right now is really simple.

You join a Google group and you use the same email that you have used in your Play Store on your Android device, that will automatically enable you for seeing Capture beta in the Play Store. Sometimes it takes an hour or two before that will show up, but once you find it, then you can install it and continue getting set up.

And there's a bunch of instructions on the beta website for how to go through getting set up and making sure you've got the account and all that stuff. So check out those details. Now that said, one of the things we find is that the most common issues with anybody trying the beta is that they use the wrong or not the wrong email, a different email than which they use to sign into the Play Store. So then the key is whatever used to sign into Play Store on your Android device that's the email you want to use to join the Google group.

If you still don't see Capture in the Play Store, then check your Android version and check to see what kind of hardware you've got, whether you have enough RAM. Those are the most common issues with people who are trying to join the beta and still don't see it for some reason. If you're using the Insta360 ONE R one the most common issues we're seeing with folks who are still having a bunch of errors and trouble, is that it's not running the beta firmware.

And that's one thing that is an additional step that you need to do with the ONE R. There's beta firmware that we are working with Insta360 in collaboration for the beta program. They will be releasing this into production soon before Android comes out of beta. But right now you have to basically for the ONE R use the Android beta and install a beta firmware on your ONE R camera and there's instructions on this, on matterport.com. Okay, let's go to the next slide. So after the phase that we're in now, we're going to move to an open beta. An open beta simply means you don't have to sign up for the Google group. There's no hoops or anything you have to go through. It will be open in the Play Store. Anybody can try it.

And as we move to that stage, we're making sure that all of our features are available. All the features are in check, and we're getting to feature parody with Capture on iOS. So that means using a system alignment in really large spaces, making sure that you can convert and place 360s to 3D.

Do firmware updates on the Pro cameras, all that good stuff. So we're kind of maturing as we go through the program and each phase moves to a fast state of maturity and then obviously we'll release in the Play Store as our final general availability release. So phase two is where we do smartphone Capture. And that again is where you're using the camera on the phone itself, or the iPad to Capture space, just like Matterport for iPhone. So that's kind of it in the recap for Matterport for Android, we'd love to get more folks on the beta, please try it out.

There's instructions on the beta website, if you've got feedback, send it to Capture.Beta@Matterport.com ... And we look forward to seeing you guys on the beta. So that was topic one of three datas. Let's talk about third beta, sorry. The second number, the second beta that we've got, which is if you go to the next slide. On iOS, we've been running an open Beta for Captured version 4.0.3 And so this comes with a couple exciting things.

If folks are not aware, we'll be finally making some improvements for using the BLK360. As folks who have used the BLK360 know we've had several annoying issues in terms of the connectivity between your iPad and the BLK360 scanner. We've finally put those issues to bed. We've updated all the latest libraries from Leica we're testing with the latest firmware. And so we're very, very, very happy to be able to say that the BLK360 is now finally operating as the way that it should be.

We're still working through a couple of smaller issues and bugs, but follow through we will be released in the App Store within a few weeks. Once we conclude the Beta, and we're very happy to be bringing these fixes to the public. Now, as Indy had said, we also supporting the Insta360 ONE R, the same approach, the same rules apply in terms of the ONE R.

We need beta firmware on the ONE R. And those instructions are mettaport.com/beta. And we'd be happy to have everybody try that as soon as they can. And the one other thing we're doing in 4.0.3 is we've made a major effort to try and improve our crash reporting and our stability statistics.

So I know this is building a foundation for improving where we're going, excuse me, building a foundation we're going with the app and improving our stability. Let's see, let's go to the next side Amir. Okay.

So our last Beta is Pro camera firmware, and you can sign up at metterport.com/beta, surprisingly enough is this is again improving stability and trying to reduce the bugs that we're seeing with the Pro camera. So please give it a shot sign up there, and you'll be getting enabled batches as we go forward and you'll get a notification in Capture when you're connected to the camera that you can update to that beta firmware. And I think that's it for the fist few edits. Back to you Amir.

- All right. Great. Thanks, that's awesome. And a lot of work being done on betas. So as Kirk mentioned, you know, metterport.com/beta, check it out that you want to help out.

We'd love your feedback. Great. So we're doing very, very well for, in terms of timing. Just want to cover a couple more things before we get to our Q&A, I've seen a few questions coming in. So we want to address those. Support. So outside of this webinar, as you know, we have a full on support team.

If you ever run into any problems, questions that you need addressed urgent or not, please reach out. They're happy to help. And if you're in the US you can reach them at this number here, 408-805-3347 You can always email them from anywhere in the world, support@matterport.com as well as if you go to our support page, which is found in the resources right up here, go to metterport.com, you'll see resources at the top. First thing, there is Support. Go to that page, scroll down to the bottom, you'll see the phone number that is right for your geolocation, wherever you're located in the world, the phone number you see that's right for you.

We did recently open up a couple of Q&A, or I'm sorry, support staff members for APAC. So if you are in Singapore or Asia, check that out as well. You should be able to, if you go, let me specify actually, if you go to the Support page and then go to the Help Center, if you look at the Support page, you'll at the very top of the Support page is a button that says Help Center click on that, go to Support pages, its at support.matterport.com ... Also scroll down to the bottom, go to your, ask a question a button there. And if you scroll down to the bottom of that page, you'll see all of the phone numbers for every region. So APAC is listed there. I don't know if it's updated yet, you know, as I mentioned before on the Support page itself, but it is in the help center. Okay. So upgrading to a new plan, is it for me, some people, yes some people may still be on the fence. It's something that you it's very individual.

So it's something that you want to look at your invoice at the end of every month and make sure that, you know, if you are on the Classic Plans, that what you're paying is hopefully less than the new plan. If it's not, then you need to switch over to the new plan. It's really that simple. So check that out and there too if you need any help with the invoice and better understanding it, cause I know the classic plans are much more confusing, which is why we moved to the new plans. So if you have any kind of billing related questions or issues, reach out to the support team, they'll be able to help you kind of navigate that invoice and better know whether you, you know, better off with a new plan. And as we just mentioned, the one R is in beta.

And I just added here the kind of a screenshot of what you're going to see if when you go to metterport.com/betas ... the firmware of the ONE R also needs to be upgraded. So if you do, if you are using the ONE R, make sure you've got that. And what else that's about it. Oh, and you know, with regards to your account at around, the middle, you know, of every month, there are going to be some accounts that are not up to date with their payment.

And we do send out three messages, emails, and so forth to, make contact with anybody who is not up to date with the billing before anything has shut down. So I think that's doing pretty much as much as we can to notify the account owner. So if you're not getting notified of things, please make sure or even if you are getting notified, just go ahead and get in there and make sure that your account information, your profile information, phone number, email, address, all that is up to date. So that just in case, if you run into that situation, you don't get left behind. Last thing we want is to shut down your account. So yeah. So just make sure that those, contact information is fully up to date so that we can reach you.

All right. Lastly, Facebook, facebook.com/matterport ... This is our official corporate, you know, Facebook page where we update everything with regards to, you know, things happening with betas, product updates, things like that. So if you're on there, you'll be with your finger on the pulse of what's going on with Matterport. So check that out. And we do notice that from time to time, you guys, or not submit, but, you know, tell us about your fantastic spaces, your models, that you've been scanning and doing such a great Job. And some of these models are absolutely phenomenal.

So we'd love to share them in our gallery and in our destination everywhere website. So if you are willing to share those with us, please check out the nomination form. If you go to go.metterport.com/nominate-your-space ... you'll get to a form where you can submit your models or several of your models. And, you know, we'll be happy to check them out and post them onto the gallery. So that's it. Let's check out what we have in Q&A. I'm just going to go ahead and stop sharing on the screen there. All right.

- Hey, Amir. Can I jump in and just like answer one question that came in for the group. That was a common one for everybody. So in terms of the two different beta applications, so in iOS and Android, the question was, Hey, do these updates happen automatically? How does that work? So on Android, the default is to auto update, any application that comes out with new updates. So in theory, on Android, you should auto update and the new version of the beta would just get auto installed. If you've changed that then that will obviously happen. On iOSs and the app store the default is to install automatically, but betas on iOS happen a little bit differently. So they happen to an application called TestFlight and TestFlight is essentially Apple's beta channel.

And so in TestFlight, you'll get a notification if you've allowed notifications to happen when there's a new version and then you have to explicitly install it yourself. So just if you're on the iOS beta, watch out for that, you need to be paying attention to TestFlight. It's not going to happen automatically. Thanks Amir.

- Very good. Great. I have a question here from Tom, mentions how do we back up using macro OS 10 point 15.5, Catalina. Tom did mentioned that iTunes is no longer a thing on the new OS which is true and super unfortunate.

Basically you would just use iExplorer. There's no reason why you wouldn't be able to use iExplorer or iMazing to get that. I haven't. I need to look into that. I should probably upgrade my OS so that I can better understand. Kirk do you have any experience with the latest OS cause I know with the previous versions, like what I'm running, you know, as I mentioned you have to check that Mac.

- On the latest version of Mac OS, they've split that apart. So the general finder, the file Explorer and Mac OS essentially have a lot of the synchronization features that you use to now that we're part of iTunes. So when you connect your device to the latest OS, you'll see that folder structure, and you can do the file operations that you're doing there, but it's just not in an application called iTunes anymore. So basically with the new one, plug your device in verify the device, verify your iOS device is allowed to talk to it, and then you should be able to see it in the finder folder structure.

- Okay. So you don't even need iTunes. You can just use the finder itself.

- Yeah. That portion of that capability in iTunes can move into the finder to general operating system for the latest version of Mac OS.

- Right.

- For bulk snapshots shots like when you want to take out, when you want to do, like you said, the video, like when you want to take an entire snapshot of your device, that's a great way to do it. If you're specific about taking a different Jobs off, then iExplorer is probably a better bet.

- Got it. Fantastic. And I'll make a, you know, an update to that video as soon as I update my OS when I feel safe doing so. Okay. And yes, Tom, that is made by a Macroplant. iExplorer is made by Microplant and iMazing. If you just go to iMazing.com, you'll find that there. In the video in YouTube, which you'll get a link to a in the up email to this webinar, there will be links to all of that stuff in the description below the video. Okay. Let's see. Anybody else got any questions?

I have a question for Matthew regarding backup. Is there a backup method which keeps the trim windows and mirror markings? I use iMazing. And when I restart the backup, that information is lost. To be honest, Matthew, that's very strange to me because I've never had those markings get lost like that, that information is part of the, Jobs data that gets backed up. And I don't even believe it's related to the database files. Shouldn't matter whether you're using iMazing, iExplorer or iTunes, that's a weird thing. So sorry, you're running into that, Kirk have a better answer? I don't know what's happening.

- Yeah, that does sound strange because the markings themselves are embedded as part of that Job folder that you're pulling off. So that shouldn't be lost. That sounds like a strange bug. I guess, if you could send that example into Capture.beta@matterport.com they'll take a look, but in general, if you're taking that whole Job folder back and forth, it should restore just fine.

- Yeah, that sounds strange. All right. Let's see. Any more questions

- I've had a couple come in here around allowing schematic core plans with 360 cameras and smartphone Capture. And so the general issue here is that the partners that we currently use with the partners that we use to generate floor plans, most of the folks there are looking for good dimensional accuracy and the 360 cameras and the smartphone Capture cameras are synthesize depth data. So the accuracy is a little bit less, and sometimes you can have some misalignments and things like that.

So we know that there's plenty of third-parties that do schematic floor plans for 360 camera models. Right now we don't offer that. That is a topic of discussion in terms of how we would be able to say, what's the level of quality and accuracy and reliability that you could get from those kinds of things. And that's why we want to enable more partners as well. So that basically we can have an array of a marketplace and partners that would be able to serve different kinds of models. So at the moment not yet but its at the top of the discussion.

- Yeah. Great. Alice asked a really good question and a scenario that I didn't mention in the video, this is something that we've actually run into with backing up with another use case where there were two teams. So the question is this, I need to transfer scans from GC accounts to the facilities owner accounts. What is the process for doing that?

So, okay. Two things. One, if you're talking about processed models in your account, you can transfer that between accounts by going into the little three dots menu, and you should be able to see transfer model. And then you just put in the email of the user that you want to transfer that to. That being said, if we're talking about backing up and model data that's in your iPad. So my example was there were two teams, one like a very late night shift kind of team where these were restaurants were empty.

And so they were going around scanning the restaurants and then they would transfer that model data to the day shift that would scan the parking lot. The parking lot was scanned with the BLK and the indoors was scanned with the Matterport Pro2, and yeah, so basically that's exactly what they would do. They would use something like iExplorer to move that model that was just created and Captured from team "A" to let's say like a Google cloud account team "B" will then download that information, restore that into their iPad and then go into the location and continue scanning with the BLK to align the rest of it, to get the outside. So, yeah, that's, another cool use case for backing up.

- I'm going to combine a couple questions into one. Some of the questions are coming in around importing drone base data, importing general 3D data importing data from different 3D scanners, unlike the BLK 2go, which is a handheld LIDAR scanner synthesize 3D clouds, drones, and photogrammetry and stuff like that. So we don't have anything that's currently coming soon in terms of that, but in general, that notion of can we take additional 3d data and imagery from other sources that are not directly tied to Capture angle specific camera, and then put that and simplify the model that is a topic that's been in our backlog and discussion for a while.

And the purpose I think is where folks are going is, you know, can we augment a model that we are creating a space that we're creating with our connected camera? And can we do it with additional devices that don't have a direct integration or direct connection and for real-time Capture. So those kinds of things that are, I would classify, not realtime Captures where, you know, the Matterport Capture app is talking to these devices, but you've synthesized and grabbed that data somewhere else and pull it in. That is something that's very interesting to us and we know there's demand for that. It's just not, it's not coming super soon.

- Yeah. Yeah Benjamin just asked that I think the, basically the same same questions, have you tried transferring a model between devices how you're backing up to a PC and restart or a different device? Yeah. There should be no problem with that. I think as long as you're using, you know, certainly if you're using the latest version of Capture, there should be absolutely no problem. So I've got a comment here for your Kirk. It would be great if you can include GoPro cameras to be compatible with Matterport, any plans on including that.

- We would love to. So one of the problems is that GoPro ended their Developer Program, I think in 2017. So here's the way this works in terms of cameras and other devices that we work with. So the camera manufacturer has to have some way for matterport and Capture to talk to it. Typically that means there's a Software Development Kit.

There's API, there's a language that we can talk to. We can use to talk to it. So for instance, GoPro used to have a Developer Program but they offered so that other people like us could write an application and talk to the GoPro, but GoPro to make a strategic decision couple of years back, and they decided to really focus and they dropped the Developer Program. So there's currently no way to actually to a GoPro via a third-party officially like that.

Now we have, you know, there is the parallel to importing the 3D data. There's just importing 360 equal rectangular circle images. So for instance, if you have gone through and shot a place with your GoPro 360 or any other 360 camera that we don't currently directly support, you know, it is possible to run through and synthesize that into the space in the model. And so that's another thing that's in our queue that is similar to important 3D data to say, Hey, whatever cam you've got, let's pull that stuff in. Now there's another class of cameras, the 360 that we currently support, like the 360 Ricoh and there's the 360 they speak a protocol called the Open Spherical Camera Spec.

And this is the thing that Google developed a while back for Google Street View. So there are several cameras that speak OSC. And what you'll see then is the Capture can start to talk to them, but usually there's a little bit extra that's required. So just speaking OSC as a protocol, isn't enough to be fully functional. And so, you know, the're company manufacturers that have come out with cameras and speak that. One of the high end cameras OSC speaks of, and you'll see, there's mostly functional, but there's still a couple of bugs. So that was a long answer to the GoPro question.

But in general, that's kind of the lay of the land in general rule of thumb is that aside from a general import, we do need to do actual integration work with each camera manufacturer. And if they don't support that, we haven't taken the tactic of trying to hack it where basically we just figure a way to make it work because the next update they do could break that.

- Nice. Yeah. Looking forward to that opening up to just, you know, any pano. Alright. Thomas has a couple of questions actually. Are there plans to allow the floorplan generation from 360 cameras? We kind of touched on this earlier and are there any plans to end Classic plans in the future? So regarding the floor plans and 360 cameras, any Kirk, I think there are plans. It like Kirk mentioned the reason why they're not a thing right now is because, you know, these are 2D cameras.

They Capture a 2D, spherical image that we then convert into 3D. Therefore they are accurate to within four to eight percent as opposed to the one percent accuracy that you're getting with the Pro2.

And so, yeah, so floor plans are going to be off potentially, you know, by eight percent, you know, worst case scenario, which plus or minus which could end up, you know, on a, I don't know, 4,000 square foot home that could add up to quite a bit. So I think for that reason right now, until that accuracy kind of is made better. That's why they're not allowed to do floor plans with those cameras. And as far as the, any of the Classic plans, no, there's nothing I know of no future plans to cancel those as are still a thing.

- So I was just going to chime in, I do see a question from Chris about, so I'm going to read out a question.

My question is virtual staging. I saw you touched on this a while ago, is this an option? So yeah Chris very much so still this is something I, you know, I think we're seeing a lot of our, you know, customers and just even partners, if you think about a Redfin, you know, who are building, you know, virtual tours and stagings of, of different properties. So still very much a very big use case on our side and the way we think about supporting it is that, you know, we, we certainly have like some partners in the ecosystem who specialize in this, you know, they use our technologies and we work very closely with them it's just RoOomy.

So that's a pretty much a very self-serve kind of thing that you can do via partnerships. And then in terms of doing it yourself, obviously this is something you can do also, you know, I think given the you know, the lineup of cameras that we have, whether you have a pro2 or 360, especially if it's a virtual staging of a residential property, you know, I think this is something where you can build the model again very quickly yourself using a combination of a 360 and Matterport, and then just kind of organize the staging yourself.

So both options, I would say the partners, you know, RoOomy is obviously a great one there, or do it yourself, but still very much a use case that we look forward to continuing to support, because we, we see a lot of demand, especially in times like these, right where it's hard to kind of view properties in person. So there's obviously a trend of virtual staging that's here to stay.

- Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to seeing more of that virtual staging, especially with the SDK. If you missed out on the last Shoptalk Episode 5 we had Dominique on here talking about the SDK and we ran through some pretty cool stuff. So check it out. It's available on YouTube and the Shoptalk playlist. And it does go into a little bit of being able to use the SDK to do virtual staging yourself and not being reliant on third party tools. So very, very neat.

- Yeah.

- Chris asked I don't know who I'll throw this out there. I'll ask the question on behalf of Chris and we'll see who can, who has got the best answer here, any future aerial drone scanning options. It would be very nice to be able to scan the exterior with a drone and incorporate that into the model. Couldn't agree more with you, Chris. That would be spectacular. Anything coming down?

- Yeah. So this is, I think this falls into the bucket of two realms if there are, and there was a similar question around if I took 360 from my drone, can I place them into the model? How do we get them like a place to 360 View?

So there's two parts here. One is taking and importing 360, either a standalone 360 Views that are linked into the model or using them to synthesize a model. So that's the general what we call import 360 is path, basically take content that's created from devices that are not directly integrated cameras, hold them into the model however you like to do that.

So that's definitely a track that's in the queue. Don't have a timeline for that, but we're very interested in doing that because that expands the funnel quite a bit in terms of what you can do with your spaces. Importing 3D and putting actual point cloud synthesized from drones, for photogrammetry, from actual other sensors that fall back to what I said before in terms of another import path of the 3D data itself.

And that's a second track for the import realm. Right now, we're focused mostly on getting the 360 import realm working just because that's simpler and more general. The 3D realm starts to get on more specialized, especially if you're trying to make a tour. Like if you're objective as a 3D space in a virtual model, and you're not so worried about the imagery, then the point cloud import is fine. But if you want an actual tour with high definition imagery than just having a point cloud for the exterior is sub-optimal. So very exciting topics, definitely in out queue.

- Nice, looking forward to that as well. That's going to be very exciting.

- We go now to, let me Oh, sorry Amir.

- No.

- So there's a couple of questions that have come in in terms of when we're working with 360 cameras controlling the settings in terms of brightness and quality and all the different camera controls that you typically would have when you're taking your shot using the 360 camera manufacturers application. So Capture, overrides that stuff because we want to take high definition image, HDR imagery and we want to get a baseline across the entire model. And as we process the imagery for that model, we're trying to balance everything across the entire space instead of shot by shot. So we know that one, demand or one request has been to let you take control of that and adjust the image quality settings yourself.

We currently don't have that. And if you've noticed that when you're taking your 360 shots, if you are trying to adjust the settings using say, the ONE R or the ONE X or the Ricoh Theta app, you'll notice that the Capture kind of the, it tells the camera to take, to override those settings, but it takes a shot. And that's why you see this currently, we're trying to synthesize the whole model. We know that having more fine grain control over image quality and your setting is a thing that very we much like.

We've got to figure out how best to do that and how we deal with that in terms of processing our models and balancing how we do image quality across the entire model. That said I will call out that the ONE R, we're still doing some image quality tuning there. So in the current data, as you see your ONE R models, you might see the image quality is good but little bit less as than you'd expected. So we'll have some image tuning things coming very soon in our cloud processing pipeline. There was one other question.

There's two questions around support for DSLRs. And I think this means DSLR is on a panel, if you take a 360 with a DSLR this would fall into the general import 360 class, where however, you have managed to get a 360 echo rectangular image you would be able to import that in to create a model. So that's kind of all to that bucket.

- Yeah. As soon as we were able to import anyone's just any you know, equi-rectangular image, 360 panel that opens it up to all the cameras essentially. So that that's going to be great. Question here regarding mirrors, mirror being parallel to the ground. So like horizontal mirrors, is there any way to solve for this? So yeah, I've seen mirrors in, you know, ceiling tiles and different places and even, you know, mirrors on tables right? So the tabletop is like a mirror finish. That's really complicated.

That's not an easy thing. There's no marking that you can lay across the horizontal service right now, mirrors, trims and windows and all that. They're just vertical surfaces only. We are working on the ability to, you know, eliminate, scatter or sprayed mesh that does get put, you know, above if it's something that's on the ceiling, then you'll see a whole bunch of, you know, reflected data above the model. So we're working on something that be able to get rid of stuff like that to kind of remove things from not just that, but any kind of unwanted stuff.

So if you have like an open ceiling, right and then you're seeing all the beams and the, I dunno, air ducts and whatnot up there, and you want to get rid of that. The dollhouse that's the thing that's also in the queue. Just a matter of time there's a lot going on. So that's the only thing as far as tabletop mirror reflecting down, that's another issue. My best recommendation would be to kind of cover it with like a tip of cloth or something, so.

- I've got one here. So a question for supporting the LIDAR on the iPad. So yeah, so for everybody, who's not aware of the latest version of Apple's iPad. The early 2020 model has an active depth sensor, an actual LIDAR sensor on the back of it.

And we have been doing experiments with that. So, you know, as for what we call medical for iPhone or smartphone Capture, you can take the camera in your iPhone or your iPad and rotate around and Capture 360 image that way. And so what we've been doing is going through and experimenting, how can we Capture that imagery in addition to the active depth sensing capability so that we have actual depth measurements from that iPad instead of synthesizing the depth from the imagery. So you could get a more accurate model. Now, one thing we have noticed is that the LIDAR sensor has a fairly narrow field of view.

So typically when we're using the modern iPads and the modern iPhones for smartphone Capture we use the ultra wide camera. So it's got a really wide field of view. You only have to take a few shots as you rotate around. One of the downsides with the narrow field of view is that you have to take a lots and lots of shots. So we are experimenting with that. You should see something from us soon in terms of enabling LIDAR on the iPad. On the latest iPad. It's pretty cool that the technology is moving this direction. And so basically as new technology breakthroughs happen, we're going to keep on making use of those, just expand the different ways that you can create a space.

- Yeah. Good question. I get that a lot from people who, you know, hear about the new iPads with the LIDAR sensor and what that's going to do for us. I have another question from Randall.

Can you change the names of the Jobs after you've downloaded to your PC? Not recommended, just keep the same, the best thing to do Randall is, you know, what I've done in the past is try and figure out what those models are based on the, you know, the modified dates and the thumbnail, and just create yourself a short text document, or like a little spreadsheet that says this folder name, this weird DUID folder name is this model.

And once you have that reference as like a short file, you can kinda keep that along with your backup. So, you know what folder has what model in it, but you don't want to change the name cause then you'll not going to remember what to change it back to. And so maintaining that unique UDID as the name of the folder is really important. Don't change it. Put in mind. All right. What else? Few minutes last we can get a couple more questions in here.

- Yeah, got a couple more. So Insta 360 has some higher end cameras also called the Pro or Pro1 and Pro2. So just to be different distinguish them from matterport's Pro and Pro2 camera. These are high-end 360 cameras.

They don't have active depth sensors. They do speak the open spherical cameras spec, the LSC spec. So we do see can communicate with them and take some shots. And there's a few bugs that are in in evidence, in experiments that we've done with those.

So full support for those cameras is something that's been in our roadmap for a while, but it's not coming in the queue very soon. I know this is a common request right now. I think we're on imports 360 paths first. So imagery taken from those could be imported, but direct integration with the cameras is not something coming very, very soon.

- All right. Great question. Dan has a really good question regarding I think plans and we're not able to hold onto original files. You know, we document crime scenes and need the files to, you know, for evidence, you know, in perpetuity.

So there's a couple ways of doing that Dan. One is, if you're on the new plan, you can archive those models. Once they've processed you know, and you've done whatever you want to do as far as adding matter tags or any other kind of things to the model to make it as you need it, you can archive it. You can archive it forever. It's indefinite. You can have as many models as you want archived.

You don't need to activate those models until you actually need to go back to that model, you know, for evidence to take a look at it. So and then you can activate it, check it out and then just archive it again. So archiving with the new plans is indefinite it's forever. And as I just mentioned, you can do that for, you know, as many models as you want. There's no limits with the new plan as opposed to the old plan. So another good reason why you may want to upgrade if you haven't yet from the classic plans.

That being said, you can also archive your raw model data and keep that on your own servers and computers and cloud drives, whatever. And if you need to, let's say you've deleted the model from your account. If you're on a classic plan, for example, you can then restore that model data back into Capture sometime in the future, re upload it to be reprocessed again, into a new model. Of course, that means it's not going to have the highlight reel. It's not going to have the matter tags that you've put in there but you do get a new model with, you know, that's generated based on the same model data so that's two ways of kind of archiving it. Okay that helps.

- I know we're very close to time, but I've got one I'll try to sneak in here. Dean asking is there any way that the 3D model is part of the matterport can be a higher density model? Yes, so this is the issue for everybody here is if you purchase a matterport, which is typically what folks in kind of the architecture, engineering, construction or design build world would use to import into other applications that operate on the point cloud and the mesh, the point cloud that we generate in the matter pack is a very lightweight version of the original raw data, and that's generated off of our mash.

And so some folks would need, and like to have the original high density data, very large files that they need that kind of fidelity to work with those in their workflows. So we are doing different experiments with ways that we can deliver the high density point cloud as part of the matter pack or as part of something else in different formats.

So we want to make sure that the standard format understand what kind of, you know, options are there and so forth. So I would say Dean hit us up at Capture-beta@metterport.com. And we're looking for folks to do some experiments with, in terms of taking a look at those and getting a sense of what are the needs and what are the key things that they're looking for and that kind of stuff.

- Right. Right. And that pretty much does it. I do have one more question that I have to answer this. I apologize. Tom did ask another question and I think he's been waiting for this for a few weeks now, cause he's asked us before at another ShopTalk. So I'll go and answer it. You were told Tom to scan a, you know, a Matterporty model with, you know, 800 plus scan positions to have everything included in the same dollhouse. And we do have some information that's available that, you know, you can break that up into multiple models and use matter tags to kinda link between the two. So my recommendation, yes you can do that.

The MatterTag linking between models, you're not going to get one big giant dollhouse. That being said, scanning everything into a single model and Capture that may not also be able to process. And even if it does process, then what's the navigation experience like you may, you know, run into a situation where you start navigating through and things really start breaking down and becoming very slow because that model is too big.

So unfortunately super super large places, you know, convention centers in large malls, there isn't really a great solution for that just yet it's being worked on. But if you go with the, you know, scanning multiple models and linking between them with matter tags, you're not going to get one large dollhouse. If you go with the one large dollhouse, as we may have recommended, what you can do is upload it, see that it processes. see that, you know, what the navigation experience is like if it does break down or if it can't process, what you can do is your Capture app you can actually create a duplicate of that model data as many times, as you want to have several duplicates.

And from, you know, from one duplicate delete everything except for one region, from another duplicate, delete everything except for another region. And that way you have, you know, these, small duplicates that, are like a subset of the model data, upload those to create smaller sections of the overall model. You're not going to get, you know, one big dollhouse, but what I'm getting at is start by trying to scan everything into a single model. See if it works, if it doesn't, then you can break it up. If you start up by you know, with a broken up model, it's very, very difficult and time consuming, to put it together into a single model requires, you know, our stitching team to help with that and so on and so forth. So if you can avoid it, try to avoid it. It's all I want to say.

Hopefully that answers your question, Tom. And with that, we're going to end this one. Really appreciate everybody and you know, your attendance, your fantastic questions for me, for Kirk, for Indy, and thank you very very much to Kirk and Indy for joining us today and telling us all about Beta and what's to come. So appreciate it.

- Thanks for having us Amir. Alright, take care everybody. And we'll see you in ShopTalk, and there will be a follow up email to this with links to the video of this recording, as well as the video that I presented earlier. So check that out. Okay. Thanks. Take care, everybody. Bye.