You've probably been seeing a lot more of these videos on Facebook and YouTube - immersive, 360 degree virtual reality looks at places we don't usually get to see.
They're ultra-wide, there's nothing like them online, and they are quickly growing in popularity.
YouTube's #360 channel features many of the best examples, from tours of European museums to a swim with sharks, all available for viewing with "click and drag," technology that lets you see all parts of the scene - up, down, right and left, all with the click of a mouse or movement of your finger. They look even better with virtual reality eyewear like Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR or the coming Oculus Rift.
But how do we go about shooting and editing 360 productions?
Many 360 videos are made with professional rigs that combine multiple cameras, but the snag is that later, you have to manually stitch all the footage from the cameras together in video editing software. That can take hours.
Designed like a small cube, the Nikon KeyMission 360 is a wearable action camera capable of filming 360 degree video in 4K ultra high definition.
Only a handful of consumer 360 cameras are currently available - a model from Kodak, the Alliecam, 360fly and Ricoh's Theta S. All promise to eliminate the pain of stitching. I happen to love the Theta, which offers a unique way to see the world - and shoot differently.
The first thing you need to know: on the Theta, there isn't one lens, like on traditional cameras, but two, for the front and back - hence the 360 look at the world.
This will surely throw you off when first working with the camera. How do you compose a shot, with the camera to your eye, without having you in it as well?
You can't. You need to be creative - by using an extra-long selfie stick, or a tripod, to get around this.
There is no viewfinder with the Theta. So you'll need to download the Theta mobile app and use it to compose your shot on an Android or iPhone.
A small, tabletop tripod is vital to not only keep the camera steady, but be able to walk out of camera range and click record on the phone. You also use the app to snap awesome panoramics. And even with the wide format, Facebook is supporting the format, so when you post them in your news feed, your followers will surely notice, as no iPhone shot ever looked like this.
Another tip: unlike most video cameras, you don't want to move the camera with motion, because your viewers are moving the images themselves. So better to shoot natural movement - people walking, cars zooming by, planes in the sky - that sort of stuff.
To watch the clips afterwards, you can download the shot to your phone.
The app also lets you share directly to Facebook and Twitter, which is easy.
For YouTube there's an extra step involved. You'll need to download computer software from Google to "inject" metadata into your file that lets YouTube know your file is 360 enabled. It's very simple. Just open your file and import it into the 360 Video Metadata app, save it, and then you can upload to YouTube. Once there, YouTube processes the video for 360 viewing.
EDITING
So far we've just talked about taking raw clips and sharing them on social media.
What about what when you want to edit your clips into one final production?
This is more complicated.
- Start by importing the clips to your computer. With the Theta, this should be drop dead easy - just connect the USB cable to the camera and computer, but it's not. There's a simple sounding but challenging workaround. To mount the camera to your desktop and start importing, you need to click the shutter and wifi (middle button on the side of the camera) at the same time, and then plug in the USB cord. Now you can import the footage.
- You'll also need to download software, from Ricoh, at Theta360.com, to convert the clips into what's called "equirectangular" format. This moves them from the two balls as seen above, into an ultra-wide format.
- From there, you can import the clips with an -er.mp4 extension into a video editing program. But because the files are a different aspect ratio - 1920x960, you need to be careful in how these get imported - otherwise the file will be stretched.
- I use Apple's Final Cut Pro to edit, where I began by creating a new project - using the CUSTOM feature. I requested a final output of 1920x960. Once set, editing is done the regular way. (However, be careful about adding in extras like photos and graphics, which will look fine on the timeline, but in the YouTube viewer could look to be one big squish, since the player is curving the file into a sphere. And viewers are probably only looking at a quarter of the image at any time.) When done, export the file as a Master File.
- Finally, it's time for that Google 360 app mentioned above to finish off the process, to "inject," the metadata to the file for YouTube.
And that's it, in a nutshell. From there, just upload your new 360 masterpiece to Facebook and YouTube, and be sure to tag the video with a #360 hashtag.
Source: SMH
