This is a continuation of an attempt to give newcomers to fulldome some useful information so that they can swim rather than sink. For some reason, there isn't all that much out there for people who are just starting out -- there's more for people who are already immersed in making videos themselves. So with planetarium folks who have not done their own video processing much in mind, here are the tools I've found in the…

Now I just need to find editing software that has enough instructions to be usable, and that a struggling 501(c)(3) nature center can afford. If anyone else needs assistance being a noob, glad to share whatever experience I've got so far!

Yesterday I wrote about the problem with obtaining mp4-formatted fulldome features, which is that to play them as mp4s I'd have to play them on my laptop with the fisheye projector set up as an extended desktop (a bit fiddly since the commands to start and so forth are visible on the dome -- although another planetarian says he uses fade to hide the commands in between features). Besides which, I keep my laptop with me rather than leaving it lying about at the planetarium, and there are…

In September I became a planetarium director. It made sense, I'm a professional astronomer and have run shows using a couple of different Spitz projectors and even an old Zeiss. This was my first fisheye fulldome experience. Should be straightforward, right? The fulldome projector is offset from the dome center, however, because the Spitz is still in residence in its doghouse in the geometric center of the 44' dome.

The projector is a JVC SX21 D-ILA (native 1400x1050) so the "1K"…