You need that extra resolution when stretching a video across a sphere, as we all know your actual FOV is a much smaller portion of the video. Some people assume all 360 video on YouTube is “bad quality” because they don’t realize it’s available in resolutions up to 4K. Also, starting those videos earmarked as 360 in a higher default resolution quality would be ideal. Something to tell users, “Hey, this video is 360 and it looks really awesome in Chrome” would be nice. There’s no error or indication that you could be having a better experience. Furthermore, it’s only available via Chrome browser or the YouTube app for Android. The default projection can also look a bit distorted, maybe not the best choice. There are no projection options, and you can zoom with the plus and minus keys, but only a tiny bit. The initial release pretty much only allows very basic functionality of displaying a 360 video as spherical and allowing the user to click and drag to look around. Turns out, maybe YouTube is “the YouTube of 360.” It only just launched in March of 2015. We’ve actually a seen a little bit of traffic on videos we’ve never shared or promoted ourselves, which is something I can’t say about other networks where the views are next to nothing. They also promote the videos themselves, they have a person on the team who’s only job is managing the community. We’ve tested on the Samsung Galaxy S3, S4 and Note 4 and found the content was playable even on the older generation phone… although not quite as smooth as a native app. There are no dedicated mobile apps available at the time of writing, but Vrideo offers 360 video playback support native in the browser on your mobile device. Users can download videos for devices such as Samsung Gear VR, if you select the option to make the download available. Unfortunately there’s no little planet projection option or zoom in/out ability. Even better, the whole process of how to watch the content is explained in easy to understand tips on the website. They also support direct to Oculus Rift playback via WebVR, for those of you early adopters with Firefox or Chrome distributions with WebVR enabled. The player itself offers multi-resolution up to 4K, and switching between resolutions is quite responsive. Custom thumbnails can be uploaded as well. There have been many times I wanted to tweak orientation just a bit, Vrideo makes this quick and painless. Two big features that set Vrideo apart from others are the ability to upload stereoscopic 3D content and to set your own orientation of your video. We’ve uploaded more than 15 videos at the time of writing, and found the processing times to actually be quite good compared to other platforms. We find more and more that our content is actually being discovered by people browsing, as it should be! You can easily browse trending videos or browse popular channels and videos by category. The first thing we notice is that they must have a talented UX designer, because navigating and using this service is incredibly easy and intuitive. Public beta of Vrideo went live on March 20, 2015. We’re fortunate to have so many options! On with it. Knowing that, sometimes these other platforms can be very convenient for producers who don’t want to go through all of those steps. Still, you’ve got to build this infrastructure into your website, tie in a database, integrate with a CDN and either transcode all of your video projects yourself into individual resolutions or come up with a solution to have a server do it for you. If you don’t mind messing with XML and you fancy yourself a decent web developer, look into krpano and consider the option of building your own UI template for it. All of the video platforms mentioned in this article aside from YouTube were built with krpano of some iteration, which is pretty much the world’s most versatile and amazing panorama viewer. I can’t start this list without giving props to krpano. Get in touch! In the Beginning, There Was krpano However, if you have a real live platform we can actually use, we’d love to test it and send you feedback. As usual, vaporware does not make the cut. If you stick around for the end we’ve got a handy comparison table you can download, skip ahead if you just want the nitty-gritty details. We should probably also mention that we focus on platforms for live action video in 360 or VR, not those designed for CG and games. Our goal at 360 Labs is to get our content in front of as many eyeballs as possible, so we’ve tested a good number of these platforms and would like to share our findings with the community. Over this past six months we’ve seen the emergence of many 360 video platforms.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |