So you got your brand new Oculus Quest and played some Beat Saber...
It's FUN! But now, it is time for you to figure out how to use your Quest for showcasing your
360 or VR180 videos in the highest resolution and best quality.
This is the in-depth tutorial on showing you step by step on how to do just that.
We will talk about the max resolution of Oculus Quest.
If you don't have the time to watch the full tutorial, here is the cheat sheet for all
the available MAX resolution.
... I will put it down in the description below.
But DON'T goes too fast JUST YET, your current rendering workflow in Premiere or FCPX might
NOT generate the best video to leverage the new display on the Oculus Quest.
If you want to know my Premiere setting for 360 and VR180 videos for Oculus Quest, AND
a FREE workflow using FFmpeg, let's dive right in!
Hey what's up everybody?
It is your Boi Hugh here from CreatorUp.
The brand new Oculus Quest is not ONLY a great VR gaming device, but also a fantastic device
to showcase your 360 or VR180 videos, captured by cameras like the Insta360 Titan, the Pro
2, the ONE X, Kandao Obsidian, GoPro Fusion, Vuze XR, and the list go on.
The Quest uses the diamond pentile OLED panels as the display that are capable of delivering
more vivid color.
You can see the true black in Quest when in the Oculus Go LED display, you never get the
true black.
I am not saying the diamond pentile OLED panels is better than LED display in the Oculus Go.
In fact, there are many advantages in the Oculus Go that fail short in the Oculus Quest
for immersive videos.
But I will save that for the next review video.
If you want to know why you should or should NOT, get the Oculus Quest for immersive video,
hit the subscribe button and find out in the next video.
For those of you lucky enough to own the Oculus Quest, which BTW, it sold out everywhere,
here is again, the max resolution for 360 monoscopic and 360 stereoscopic videos.
This is the same resolution recommendation for Oculus Go according to my previous Video
here.
So, yes.
To answer your question, Oculus Quest does not have any MAX resolution increase at all
compared to Oculus Go.
Except for one particular scenario - VR180 in top and bottom with codec HEVC or H.265.
You can not use H.265 in 5.7K (5760x2880) both Mono or VR180 side by side.
Only H.264 will work.
We will talk about why you want to render in H.265 next.
Just know it is a better codec for higher resolution with smaller file size.
But if you are VR180 filmmakers and use cameras like Z Cam K1 Pro, Insta360 EVO or Vuze XR,
they all capture in 5.7K.
In Quest, you can render 2880 x 5760 in top and bottom format in H.265 - which is the
highest resolution and best compression codec all your VR180 lovers.
Your next question is how?
But before I show you how, I want to mention my independent test, NOT back by the
official Oculus recommendation, in the 60fps render on the Oculus Quest.
There are issues in current Oculus Quest 60fps video b/c of the locked refresh rate of the
headset.
But it will be fixed soon by Oculus.
To help you to see the 60fps test result in the highest resolution possible, higher than
the official Oculus recommendation, I provided my test render FREE for you to download and
test on your Oculus Quest - from 30fps to 60fps with both H.264 and H.265.
To see if my videos have drop frames in your Oculus Quest, you can enable developer mode
and use the following command right here "adb logcat -s VideoPlayerAnalytics" with Oculus
Gallery to see drop frames vs rendered frames.
I am a scientist at heart, so I did the test for you and find out the max resolution without
any drop frames in 60fps is this
Go ahead, get a pen, write this down, This will be very helpful in the future.
Trust me.
Also, special shout out to this user (Colonel_Izzi) on Reddit to help me with all these.
So the render quality on both H.264 and H.265 is 70%.
Wait, you ask, what's bitrate?
Well, don't worry about it.
I will show you a non-premiere workflow to get the best quality without worrying too
much bitrate.
So keep watching.
Now, let me give a quick tutorial on how to sideload my test videos into your Oculus Quest
Gallery.
You need to download those videos and watch it yourself.
And comment below if pushing pass the oculus recommended resolution has a real benefit
in resolution increase.
In theory, Oculus Quest has a higher resolution than the Go.
But image quality is subjective.
So you tell me in the comment below after you watch my test videos.
Here is the sideloading instruction.
Connect your Oculus Quest with your computer via a USB-C cable.
BTW, no one seems to mention, one of the huge improvement of Oculus Quest is the file transfer
speed thanks to the USB-C. Moving lots of videos onto your quest is like 10 times faster
than the Go.
Which is a huge time saver if you are loading lots of videos all the time for testing.
Another reason why you should get a Quest as an immersive filmmaker.
After your computer connects to the Quest, you need to wear your Quest and authorize
the connection each time.
Which is kinda annoying but that's how you do it.
Then you can just drop all the video files you downloaded from my YouTube link onto the
Movies folder.
Now, for your own videos.
Make sure the naming is correct based on Oculus Standard.
For 360 mono video, end with _360.
For 360 Stereoscopic top and bottom video, end your video with _360_TB.
For VR180 video, Side by Side or Top and Bottom, just end with _180_3D.
So Oculus Gallery will play your videos with the correct projection.
So now, put on your Oculus Quest, go to Oculus Gallery.
Beside sideload your video using a USB-C cable, as you see here, you can also setup a media
server on your PC to drop video directly via your home network.
Go to internal storage, now you see all the videos here.
In order to see the files' names, click the list icon on the top left corner so you know
which version of the video you are watching.
I highly recommend you to check out the VR180 version - which is in vertical 2880 x 5760
- 5.7K in h.265 shot with Z Cam K1 Pro, Insta360 Evo and Vuze XR.
You see the Quest indeed look great for VR180 with max resolution render.
Okay, now you know how to sideload and watch immersive videos with Oculus Quest.
Let's jump back to reality and let me show you how to render the best quality immersive
vidoes for your Quest.
Open Adobe Premiere for your finished master video file.
They should be in .mov container with ProRes 422, Cineform or DNxHR if you are on a PC.
If you don't know how to edit 360 or VR180 video to get to the master video file, please
check out my other Premiere tutorials.
If you are not using Premiere, don't worry.
I will show you a better and free way to render perfect video for the Quest.
But I want to show you why Premiere is not up for the task just yet
Now, Select the timeline, and hit Ctrl-M to bring out your render windows.
So I will not suggest using the Premiere rendering engine for the Quest at least.
B/c I don't really know what Premiere does to my video.
For H.264 render, there is speculation that Premiere is using YUV TV range instead of
Full range color for your final render.
Which mean for your already limited 8-bit color, you only get range from16 - 235 instead
of the full 0 - 255.
So that is why your Black is not a true black and kinda look gray-ish.
Everyone is so worried about the resolution, and never pay attention to the color depth
- which is equally important, if not more important than resolution.
Especially for Oculus Quest.
And for HEVC or H.265 render with Premiere, I don't know about you, but for my machine
- which is top of the line - it is extremely slow compared to H.264 within Premiere.
I think there is a bug somewhere in the version - but I just don't know.
So to advoice all these confusions - I will use a third party plugin called AfterCodec
- which use the latest FFmpeg - to help me define the correct render setting.
Here is how.
Pick container as mp4, and then pick Open After Codec setting.
Now you know how to use AfterCodec to render from Premiere.
The only thing is, AfterCodec is not free.
Although I highly recommend just to save yourself some headache, especially if Premiere is your
editing software.
AfterCodec is extremely fast with Premiere or Media Encoder.
But for those of you want to do it yourself for free or just not using Premiere at all
- here is the FFmpeg way to render the best video for Quest.
This is not a FFmpeg tutorial - but I will make one soon to cover everything you need
to know on using FFmpeg for 360 video rendering.
Today, we will only focus on Quest render.
Install ffmpeg on your PC or Mac.
Open terminal, or command prompt on PC like right here.
Navigate to your video render folder like so.
And drag and drop the location after cd to navigate to the render folder.
Btw, to know if you have FFmpeg correctly installed in your system, type FFmpeg -version
to make sure you see this.
Then copy and paste this command and I will walk
For VR180, let's assume you follow my VR180 workflow and get your master video file in
side by side VR180 format in at least 5.7K.
This is the command to convert them for Max resolution in H.265 inside Quest.
I only show you H.265 here b/c I think H.265 give you the best image quality with the smallest
file size for distribution.
Again, if you need help on installing FFmpeg and use it for H.264, comment below.
And I will make a follow-up video on how to use FFmpeg in both PC and MAC.
Woooo... that is a long tutorial and not as fun as playing beat saber with Quest.
But now, hopefully, you have your best VR works in your brand new Oculus Quest and ready
to show in your next client meeting.
Impress them with your quality hard works.
So you can get paid and buy more beat saber songs or other VR games for your Oculus Quest.
Hit me up if you want to play some VR game together.
Comment below what you want to learn next on your Oculus Quest for productivity works.
I am not a VR gamer.
But I will help you to maximize your Quest investment.
The next tutorial is my official review of the Quest compared to Oculus Go.
If you have not bought the Quest yet, hey! hold on!
Wait for my review before you pull the trigger.
You might be surprised by what I have to say.
As always, stay creative in VR, and I will see you next time!
VR creator level up, on CreatorUp.