- I've never filmed anything in 360 before
but I have the chance to borrow this 360 camera
so I thought it would actually be really fun
to take you through the process with me
as I try to figure out how to do 360 video.
Even though I've never done it myself,
I'm really curious about it because it seems really fun
and really interesting but I've been kind of scared
of the process (chuckling) of trying to do 360 video
and so what I want to see is if there's actually
a usable work flow that's not too insane.
So this is not a sponsored video in any way,
but the camera that I got to borrow
is this Samsung Gear 360.
It's the 2017 version, kind of looks like
a baby monitor but it's actually really well built.
I actually like this little camera a lot.
(chuckling) This rubber ring, which makes it
look even more like a baby's toy.
But this ring goes on the bottom and then the camera
can stand up on its own.
It's a really simple camera.
You just set it down, hit record, and that's it.
It's a 360 degree camera so you don't need
to worry about framing your shot.
You just need to find an interesting
perspective to film from.
Since this is my first time using it, I decided
to keep it a little bit simple and it turns out
that one of the cymbal stands for my drum set
is the same size as the tripod mount
on the bottom of this camera so I decided
it'd be neat to put this on a cymbal stand
and just play the drums, watch that in 360,
maybe that'll look cool.
I haven't seen that before.
I think that'll be a fun way to start out in 360 video.
So I finished filming everything with this camera
on the drums but the problem is I can't put
the 360 degree footage into this video
because it's just the standard, traditional video,
so that's actually going to be uploaded
as a separate 360 degree video.
I'll link to it right here.
I'll also put a link down below in the description
and I'll put a link at the end of this video
since they're two different file formats,
it needs to be two different videos.
Now the biggest challenge that I've come into is
figuring out how to get the footage
from here into Final Cut Pro which is what I edit with.
Since Version 10.4, which came out in late 2017,
Final Cut Pro has had 360 degree video editing support
which I thought meant I could just take the micro SD card
from this camera and use it to import the footage
directly into Final Cut Pro but I was very wrong.
(chuckling) That's not quite how it works at all actually.
If you take the footage straight from the camera
and put it into Final Cut it actually looks
really, really weird and the reason for this is
it needs to be stitched together first.
And when it's stitched together, it kind of looks like
a weird panorama photo where it takes the 360 degrees
and like lays it out flat.
So the first thing before you can actually edit
the footage is you need to stitch it together
using some kind of stitching software.
I looked and I couldn't find any good free options
for stitching software.
There are several paid options, but I didn't
want to pay for it.
Luckily, Samsung does make a Gear 360 app
that's for iOS, Android, and Windows and Mac desktops
so it's pretty much almost all of the operating systems
which is really, really helpful
but it's very, very basic software.
So, first off the bat, it took me 20 minutes
to import the three minute clip of me playing drums
into the software and then straight from there
the only options I had were to upload it
directly to YouTube or Facebook or to Samsung's
own proprietary VR server and it took a long time
before I figured out that if you go into the Gear 360
preferences there's an option that says Save To
and if you don't change this it's automatically going
to save 360 video to just sort of a random directory
on your computer that you might not be able to find
or might not even think where to look for.
So it's very important that you then change this
to export somewhere that you want it to go to but the
weird part is you don't have any
control over clicking export.
The reason it turns out that it took 20 minutes
to import that footage is because it was stitching
and exporting it at the same time.
So it's kind of frustrating 'cause I didn't know
about that but in the end, it's kind of neat
because the footage was already stitched and exported
by the time it was imported into the program.
Once I found that out I was able to open
a new 360 project in Final Cut Pro.
I chose mono scopic, then the footage
worked really, really well.
As soon as I dragged it into Final Cut Pro,
everything was there, it looked kind of weird
in the preview window but if you click on view
and you select 360, then next to it
you'll actually have a window that you can
click and drag and control and view in 360.
The footage that you're seeing in the main preview window
is your flattened out 360 degree image
which looks very, very strange.
But the 360 degree window is where it's actually
projected around a sphere and then you can
click and drag and see what the final product
is going to be like.
So from here, I was able to edit
the clip like I wanted to.
Since I was playing the drums, the drums are really loud
and this camera sounded terrible since it was
right up against them, so I had a secondary
microphone recording, which didn't sound incredible
but it sounded better than this.
I wanted to make sure to add in that audio.
Also wanted to be able to trim off the beginning and the end
and anytime you're doing like, you know, a bigger
360 project, I would think you would definitely want
the control of editing it yourself just like
any other video.
And once it's stitched and put into the software
it does work pretty much like any other video
except that it might be a bit slow.
I found out that my computer, which is a 2013 Mac Book Pro
really does not like 360 video.
It slowed down like crazy but it did it
and it got everything done.
Now, the last kind of tricky part was actually
exporting it from Final Cut Pro and uploading
the video to YouTube.
There are a few ways you can do this but I found
that for me the easiest way was actually
to export directly to YouTube from within Final Cut Pro,
which is not something I normally do at all.
But the reason this works for 360 video
is Final Cut will then automatically inject
all of the meta data into the file so when
it's uploaded to YouTube, YouTube knows
that it's a 360 video and then can display it
that way so that other people can actually watch it
and do the whole VR thing and drag it around
and really see what it's supposed to be
as a 360 video.
So I just made sure to select the best quality
that the video is gonna be full HD and then I just
uploaded it as a private video so that I could
go back and adjust the thumbnail and the title
and all those things later before making it public.
And that's pretty much it.
The trickiest part was figuring out
how to get the footage stitched from this
so that I could bring it into Final Cut Pro.
The Samsung 360 software is free as long
as you have a serial number from a camera.
The only frustrating part is that it just
doesn't tell you that it's exporting stuff
to a random spot on your computer but as long
as you go into preferences and adjust that,
everything should be fine.
So in the end, it actually took me quite awhile
to figure out how 360 video works but now
that I've figured out the work flow, it's not too bad.
It's a little clunkier than I'd like it to be
and I think it's a little clunkier than it needs to be,
and then editing 360 video can be a little tricky
if your computer's a little slower, a little older
it might struggle a bit.
But the work flow's definitely manageable enough
that i think it makes 360 video a viable option.
I did it for Final Cut Pro, but the stitching process
would be the same no matter what editing software
you're using, I just really prefer Final Cut Pro.
And I'm really hopeful that over the next few years
as these cameras continue to change and this technology
continues to develop that it will become
a bit more user friendly and the work flow
will be streamlined even more where when you're
working with 360 video it's really no different
than working with any other video because then I think
it would really open the doors for a lot
of people to jump on and do really cool stuff
that we haven't seen before.
And that's always pretty exciting.
So that's pretty much it.
Let me know what you think about 360 video
down in the comments below.
Maybe you have some tips and pointers
that would be helpful to a beginner like me,
I'd really appreciate that.
If you haven't checked out or haven't had
a chance to check out the 360 video I recorded
with the drums over there, go ahead and take a look at that.
It actually looks really cool on the cymbal.
It's kind of a cool perspective I haven't seen before.
Hope this was helpful.
Thanks for watchin', I will see you guys next time.
(upbeat music)