360° Photo Booth with Real Slow Motion: What Matters for Camera, Sequence and Music
The 360° platform is what guests head for first at weddings and corporate events right now. You step onto the round plate, the arm with the camera spins around you, and seconds later a short slow-motion clip with music and a logo plays on the screen. The platform itself is the easy part. Whether the clip ends up looking cinematic or choppy is decided by the camera and the software.
This article explains why, which settings have proven themselves and what you should check before your first event.
How a 360° video is made
The process is similar in every system. The platform spins with its own motor and its own remote. The camera films for a set time, usually three to fifteen seconds. The software then turns this recording into the actual clip: with speed changes, music, a frame or logo, in the right format. The guest watches the result on a loop and takes it home on their phone via QR code.
Worth knowing for planning: the software does not have to control the platform. It only needs to know when to film. More on that below under starting.
Real slow motion happens in the camera
This is where the most common mistake lies. Slow motion means every frame is shown for longer. A finished clip plays at 25 or 30 frames per second. To play four times slower (0.25×), it needs a quarter of a second of recording for every second of clip, so four times as many frames per second as it shows.
If the camera only films at 30 frames per second, the software has too few frames. It has to repeat every frame four times, and that is exactly what you see as stutter. At 100 or 120 frames per second there is a separate frame for every moment, and the motion stays smooth.
| Camera frame rate | Smooth slow motion down to | Typical source |
|---|---|---|
| 25–30 fps | 1× (no slow motion) | webcam, camera in standard video mode |
| 50–60 fps | 0.5× | many system cameras in Full HD |
| 100–120 fps | 0.25× | system cameras in slow-motion or HFR mode, Full HD |
Three things belong to this calculation:
- High frame rates usually only come in Full HD. The Sony A7 IV films 100 frames per second in 1080p, not in 4K. For a clip watched on a phone, Full HD is more than enough anyway.
- More frames need more light. At 100 frames per second each frame gets at most a hundredth of a second. In a dark hall the platform therefore needs its own light.
- System cameras write the clip to their memory card. No card, no clip. A fast card avoids dropouts at high frame rates.
Good software tells you after every clip how many frames per second actually arrived. In BoothDock this number is shown in the 360° section, and every slow-motion section shows how many frames per second it needs. With the Sony A7 IV, BoothDock sets the camera to 100 frames per second for 360° on its own and switches it back afterwards.
Speed sections instead of slow motion throughout
A clip that runs in even slow motion for twenty seconds gets boring quickly. The clips guests share change speed: fast first, slow at the best moment, then fast again. Some run backwards at the end, which looks great with confetti or flying dresses.
In BoothDock you split the recording into up to ten sections, each with its own speed between 0.125× and 8×. Below the sequence you see right away how long the finished clip will be. Four presets cover the most common wishes:
| Preset | Recording | Sequence | Finished clip |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · classic | 3.5 s | 0.25× throughout | 14 s |
| 2 · fast, then slow | 8 s | 3 s at 2×, 5 s at 0.5× | 11.5 s |
| 3 · wave | 13 s | 2× · 0.5× · 2× | 14 s |
| 4 · forwards and backwards | 9 s | 1× · 0.25× · 2× · 0.5× | 23.5 s |
Our advice to start with: the finished clip should be 10 to 15 seconds long. That fits into any story, loads quickly and gets watched to the end.
Format: portrait for the phone
Guests watch the clip on their phone and share it as a story or reel. Portrait in 9:16 is therefore almost always the right choice. Landscape (16:9) suits a screen or a company presentation, square (1:1) some feeds.
Make sure the software crops the image and does not stretch it. A landscape image squeezed into portrait turns every guest into a beanpole. BoothDock always crops from the centre and takes the camera's rotation and mirroring into account, so the clip stands exactly like the photo.
Music: your tracks, your responsibility
Music turns a clip into an experience. It replaces the recorded sound, which no longer matches the picture in slow motion anyway, and it should fade out at the end instead of cutting off. Several tracks in rotation make sure not every clip sounds the same.
There is one duty for the operator, though: you have to clear the rights to the tracks yourself. Putting popular chart songs under the clips requires a licence, all the more because guests share them on. The simplest route is royalty-free tracks or tracks explicitly licensed for this use from a music library. In BoothDock you upload your own tracks; we deliberately ship none.
Frame, logo and colour look for corporate clients
At corporate events the 360° clip is an advertising medium. Three tools turn it into the client's brand:
- Overlay: a frame or logo as a PNG with a transparent background. Animated overlays work too, for example an animated logo as a WebM file with transparency, or on iPad and iPhone as a MOV file with transparency (ProRes 4444 or HEVC with alpha).
- Intro and outro: a short clip before and after the video, the company logo for example. In BoothDock up to 15 seconds each.
- Colour look: a colour grade as a LUT file (.cube), the same one as for the photos. Photos and clips then match in colour.
Starting without touching the screen
The guest stands on the platform, not at the screen. Starting therefore has to work differently than at the photo booth:
- Foot switch or presenter: most USB buttons, foot switches and presentation remotes send the space bar. In BoothDock you teach the booth this key once, and it starts 360° straight from the start screen.
- Phone or tablet: through the local interface, the attendant starts the recording from a phone on the same Wi-Fi.
- By motion: if an iPad or iPhone sits on the rotating arm itself, the recording starts as soon as the arm turns.
- On the screen: the guest picks 360° in the mode selection when the booth runs unattended.
The platform keeps spinning with its own remote. The recording ends on its own after the set time; no stop button is needed.
What the guest takes home
After the recording the software computes for a few seconds, then the clip plays on a loop. Via QR code it lands in the gallery and on the guest's phone. A clip is of course not printed.
Think of your guests' mobile network. In BoothDock a 14-second clip in Full HD is about 18 MB at the "Standard" quality level. If reception in the hall is weak, "Compact" is the better choice. The booth uploads the clips in the background and catches up on everything if the connection drops in between.
Checklist for the first event
- Does the camera film at least 100 frames per second if you want to use 0.25×? Does the software show this number after the test clip?
- Is there a fast memory card in the camera?
- Does the platform have enough light of its own for the short exposure?
- Is the finished clip 10 to 15 seconds long and in portrait?
- Are the music rights cleared?
- Does the recording start by foot switch or phone, without anyone having to go to the screen?
- Does the clip arrive via QR code in reasonable time even on a weak network?
360° is available in BoothDock Studio for Windows and, since version 1.4.0, on iPad and iPhone, at no extra cost. You find all settings from this article in the admin area under Camera, Capture, 360°. A detailed guide is in the wiki.