Today, we are going to learn how to export and publish Top and Bottom Stereoscopic 360
VR video with CORRECT 6-channel ambisonic spatial audio for YouTube VR.
We are focusing on VR headset delivery.
But it will also work great for browser and phone if your viewers are wearing a pair of
headphones.
And yes, 6 channels, not just 4 channels.
There is no video guide at all on the Internet to show you how to leverage all the great
features YouTube built for ambisonic audio.
I hope this tutorial answer all your questions.
So let's dive right in.
Hey, what's up, everybody.
It's your boy Hugh here from CreatorUp - the #1 YouTube channel dedicated to 360VR storytelling
for everyone.
To tell a good story in VR, visual is only 50%.
Immersive audio is as important as 360 visuals for a good VR headset experience.
As Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, and most of the VR headsets are consistently sold out, VR
is so HOT right now during the pandemic.
As a storyteller, you should learn how to get on one of the largest platforms out there,
the YouTube VR.
Not like Oculus TV.
YouTube VR is available on ALL VR platforms, including Oculus, SteamVR, PSVR, and so on.
If you are going for reach, you should be on YouTube VR, like yesterday.
But, almost no independent content creator knows how to release high-quality immersive
content on YouTube VR.
So, your boy needs to fill the knowledge gap so you can do it yourself.
And, it is actually very easy thanks to Adobe and Facebook.
Uh huh, you hear it right.
Facebook has the FREE 360 Spatial Workstation software that will help you to encode for
YouTube VR and Oculus 3rd ambisonic for the Quest and Go.
To capture 360 VR video, you need a professional cinematic VR camera like the Insta360 Pro
2 or Titan right here.
Since almost 80% of my followers don't own this expensive camera system, you can use
a monoscopic 360 camera to follow along with this tutorial.
A good and a very cheap 360 camera with the First Order ambisonic is the GoPro MAX.
Not even GoPro themselves advertise that feature.
But, you can use FFMPEG to extract 4-channel spatial audio out from the GoPro MAX to use
it as your 3D soundtrack.
This is a follow-up tutorial of my first ambisonic workflow tutorial right here.
It covers the difference between YouTube and Facebook Oculus, what microphone to use to
capture spatial audio, and how to get your sound design from Adobe Premiere into Reaper
or other DAWs.
We are only going to cover Export and Publish on YouTube VR on this tutorial.
So watch that tutorial first and then come back for this one.
Not like other popular tutorials, from Adobe, out there, we are not going to export spatial
audio directly from Adobe Premiere.
The reason is that, Premiere only supports 4-channel ambisonic.
So your 360VR video can not have Head Lock stereo audio soundtrack.
Almost 99% of films or narrative videos have stereo background music or sound design that
are not spatial.
And Premiere can NOT generate that.
Or at least it can not generate that for free without the help of third-party VST like what
I have here - Noisemaker Spatial plugins from France.
So we are only going to use Premiere to render video WITHOUT audio.
And bounce your audio tracks to Reaper or other DAW for spatial sound design.
For 3D 360 video in 2020, I recommand this render setting for all delivery.
For codec, I will recommand to use HEVC H.265 for the smallest file size.
For resolution, I think 5.7K, which is 5760 by 5760 is more than enough for final delivery
on YouTube VR or Oculus TV.
In Premiere 2020, your export resolution of H.265 can not be more than 5968 by 5968.
If you want 8K by 8K render in H.265 - I will recommand use AfterCodec - which detailed
in this tutorial.
In post-pandemic era, YouTube server is getting very slow because of high viewing traffic.
I will not recommand upload 8K by 8K 3D 360 video onto YouTube.
This will take forever for YouTube to transcode your video, which will affect your release
time.
Even you can, technically, upload 8K by 8K video onto YouTube, you should NOT do it.
The Bitrate Settings, I usually do 60Mbps for H.265.
But sometimes, this bitrate is not high enough, especially for high action video.
Then you will need to use FFMPEG - as Premiere can not do more than that.
Here is the FFMPEG command line for encoding.
If you are using Davinci Resolve, this is what you need.
Please refer to this tutorial for detailed instruction.
Render for Oculus Quest and for YouTube VR in 2020 is the same.
You should check Video is VR, and pick the correct Frame Layout.
Here is Stereoscopic Over and Under.
Check use Maximum Render Quality.
Okay, not yet, we are getting just the video from Premiere.
So uncheck Export Audio right here as we don't need the audio at all.
Now the video part is done.
Easy!
Now, let's spend the major part of this tutorial on 6-channel Spatial Audio.
Design Spatial Audio from Premiere to Reaper So a good film should have multiple soundtracks
- lavalier mono source from the actors, background music, and sound effects as you see right
here.
This is one of my recent 360VR production, go watch it on your Oculus Quest.
I intensionally pan the audio source around so you can hear the audio jump from your front
to the back when the rover is moving on this part.
So how to render all these audio layers?
Well, you don't do in Premiere.
You bounce all these tracks into a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) like REAPER.
I will also recommand design your spatial audio in 16 channel 3rd order ambisonic for
Oculus following the first tutorial right here.
When you have the 16 channel done, making into 6 channel is easy.
So go watch part 1 and come back when you are done.
Okay, I assume you just finish the part 1, let's recap the Export part in REAPER to make
sure you did everything correctly.
We need to render the 16 channel 3rd order ambisonic audio without the background music
or any sound that should NOT pan following the viewer's head turn.
The background music and not spatialize sound effects should be sent to HL Master right
here.
Just to show you the routing again because it is important.
In spatial audio sound track with the FB360 Spatialiser, the routing is 16 channels, to
3D MASTER with 16 channels again.
The background music right here, the routing is stereo and to HL MASTER with Stereo 2 channels.
When you export 16 channel spatial audio, you first set the render duration by highlighting
in REAPER like so.
Select ONLY the CONTROL PLUGIN track, click FX button to turn off Decode Binaural under
settings - very important.
Don't forget to do that.
Now close the FX panel and go to File, render.
Source is Stems selected tracks - which is the CONTROL PLUGIN track.
Bounds is Time Selection.
Channels, you type in 16 manually.
And hit Render 1 file.
Now the 16 channel is done.
We select the HL MASTER, again File and render.
Stems and Time selection again but in Channels, make sure it is Stereo as this is a 2 channel
stereo background music sound track.
Render 1 File.
Now open Facebook 360 Encoder.
Select Format is B-format (1st order ambiX).
Select format is B-format 3rd order ambiX.
Load in your spatial audio file 16 channel output from REAPER here and then hit Encode.
Now we have a 4-channel 1st order ambisonic track just like what you get from Zoom H3VR
or other ambisonic microphones.
The only thing different is your spatial soundtrack will sound 100 times better than just directly
capture audio using the ambisonic mic.
And it is produced in a studio so it is free of noise.
Now we need to combine the 4-channels to the HeadLock audio master background track to
create a 6-channels for YouTube VR. Angelo from 360 Spatial Audio Facebook group
made an incredible guide on how to do that.
So full credit to him.
Here, I am going to walk you tho how to do it.
We are going to use Adacity - because it is open source, and it is free.
Download and install it.
First, go to file - preference - under Import / Export - choose Use Advanced Mixing Options.
Drop-in both the 4 channels and HL Master into Audacity.
You should see 6 channels now.
I assume you already level all the tracks and they should sound perfect.
So we are only going to export them.
Go to file - export - Save as type Other uncompressed files, choose WAV and 32 bit float.
Hit save and now you have a 6 channels audio file ready for muxing.
Now we are back to FFMPEG.
You can use Premiere, Resolve, or any video editing program to mux your video with audio.
I am going to show you FFMEPG, b/c it is free and open source.
Put the video file without the audio and the 6 channel audio source into the same folder
of your FFPMEG bin folder.
Type this command.
Replace video.mp4 to your video file name and audio.wav into your audio file name like
so.
Output.mov, you can replace it with the name you want.
Spatial Meta Injection Before you can upload it onto YouTube, you
need to inject meta to tell Google this is a 3D 360 top and bottom video with the correct
6 channel ambisonic audio for YouTube VR.
So download the Google Metadata Injector with the link down below.
Drop in the muxed video file into the injector.
Make sure you check EVERYTHING, My video is spherical 360, My video is stereoscopic 3D
top and bottom layout and My video has spatial auido ambiX ACN/SN3D format with head-locked
stereo.
Hit inject metadata.
Now, go ahead and go to YouTube.
Upload your video just like any other video.
YouTube will recognize your video as 3D and with correct spatial audio.
Now if your viewers are wearing a pair of headphone, their minds will be blown by you.
Some kids might call it 8D Audio - like the next cool thing after ASMR.
But we know it is a 6 channel spatial audio and it will be the next big thing after ASMR
or 8D Audio.
And now you know how to make it correctly.
Thank you for watching this pretty technical but necessary tutorial.
The knowledge I shared here not only applies on 360 VR Video but also game engine design.
VR game has to have good spatial audio as well.
This is a tutorial request by my audiences, YOU.
So if you want more technical tutorials like this to help you on your job, you need to
tell me in the comment session down below and upvote good suggestions from others viewers.
As always, it helps me a lot by liking and sharing this video.
Technical tutorials like this do not get enough views compared to my more consume focus videos
like camera reviews.
So I need all your help to keep doing that for you, for free.
So smash that LIKE and SHARE button.
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date.
More spatial audio tutorials are coming.
The next one is focused on Oculus Quest in 2020.
So you don't want to miss that one.
Stay safe and stay creative, my friend.
See you very soon!