- Hey, it's Justin Brown from Primal Video,
and this video is a little bit different.
This video is shot in 360, so if you've got a VR headset,
throw it on now. If you don't,
view it on your mobile phone and move the phone around
to check out the cool 360 view,
Or you can click and drag using the mouse on your computer
to experience the full 360 video.
So, in this video we're gonna be talking about
the Samsung Gear 360 camera
which I've actually had for about three months now.
So, I thought it was about time that I did a video
showing my thoughts on the Samsung Gear 360.
So, obviously we're down at the lake,
which is also right next to the beach
if you turn around and have a look behind you.
There's quite a bit of wind around
so I apologize for the wind noise but
to do a 360 video, I don't think it could be done well
sitting indoors, so it's all about experience
and taking everyone outside with these cameras.
So, what better way to do it than to be outside?
So, why 360? Well, 360 is probably one of the
fastest growing things in video production at the moment.
We can now go live in 360 with YouTube,
Facebook now supports 360 videos as well.
And this is an area that's growing rapidly.
So, there's a lot of new 360 cameras that
are coming onto the market at the moment.
And there's some pretty exciting ones as well.
So, this one here, the build quality's for this is awesome,
it's really easy to use, and it's even better to use
if you've got a Samsung device or a Samsung phone.
The audio, it does have two built in microphones,
one on either side of the camera.
There is quite a bit of background noise,
a little bit of wind around as well,
so you can see how well the built in microphones work.
But the real beauty of using a 360 camera
or viewing 360 videos is when you're doing it with
a 360 or VR headset on so you can really get immersed
in the video and in the world that
the video creator is showing you.
So, for a really quick 101 on how it works,
there's two cameras, one camera on either side
of this device and it films both of them simultaneously.
And then you need to stitch the two together,
this camera doesn't do stitching internally,
so it's a process that has to happen
after you've finished recording your videos.
And all that does is it stitches the two,
the front camera and the back camera together
into one video file.
From there you can edit, you can edit easily in programs
like Adobe Premier Pro and even Cyberlink Power Director,
both have really powerful 360 editing built in now.
And I'm sure it's something that
other software is going to jump on board really soon.
So, being a Samsung camera,
probably the biggest thing you need to know with this camera
is it will only work with Samsung devices,
many Samsung mobile devices.
You need to have one of the latest Samsung phones
to be able to use this camera at its maximum.
So, to be able to fully control it with your phone,
the only phones it will work with are Samsung phones.
This Samsung camera does have basic buttons
or basic functionality to use without a phone,
things like start and stop recording,
whether you're taking photos or video,
but it in order to get the most of the functionality
out of this camera, you'll want to be using a Samsung phone.
So, the biggest downfall with this camera
as far as I'm concerned is it doesn't do
the stitching internally.
The fact that you need to use your phone,
or Samsung phone specifically,
or some after-market software,
which the camera does come with, but it only runs on PC
so, if you own a Mac, then it becomes more of a hassle.
But the fact that this camera doesn't do
the stitching internally really means that
it rules out things like live 360
or broadcasting live from a 360 camera.
Which in this day and age,
I hope that's something Samsung can fix.
Or I hope they bring out a new model
which supports 360 live.
In regards to pitch and quality,
this camera is a 4K 360 camera,
so if you're watching back on YouTube,
make sure you up your quality settings
to playback in 4K, even if you don't have a 4K monitor,
the pitch will look a lot better.
So, it's amazing the quality you can get
on such a small camera and
especially for the cheap price tag.
Now, in terms of the stitching,
or the quality of the stitching
and how well the software does the stitching,
I haven't really noticed a difference between
the phone stitching versus the software.
Being a Mac user, I found the stitching process harder
on Windows because obviously having a Mac
and even installing Bootcamp to install Windows
so that I can use the software,
the results are really, really slow,
so it's much faster to do it in the phone
than it is over the camera.
But even then, it's just an added step to the process
which I would love to be removed.
Now, in regards to the actual stitching
and joining the two together seamlessly,
you can see that if, as I turn around,
you'll probably notice the stitch line
becomes more obvious as the light changes
between the two cameras.
Two things I've found with this camera that
aren't ideal is that three times during the recording
of this video, such a quick video,
the camera has overheated and switched off
and I've had to go and sit in the shade,
take the battery out, and wait for it to cool back down.
Now, in my experience over the three months
I haven't had that problem before.
It could be that today is over 32 degrees Celsius,
and that I'm out in direct sunlight.
But the first time that I filmed this video,
one of the camera lenses actually fogged up as well
which was really strange so,
one of the camera lenses were sitting facing the sun,
the other one was facing me,
and the one that was facing the opposite direction
fogged up after about 15 minutes so,
again, not ideal and really not something that
you want to have happen because it's not something that
you can check easily and see
until after you've finished your recording.
Now, battery life wise I found that
you can get about two and a half hours
out of each battery,
they are replaceable batteries
which means you can purchase more
and carry more with you as well, so that's pretty good.
Work file wise, editing the footage
off this 360 camera,
there's a fair bit that has to happen.
You need to sync your phone to the camera,
you need to download the clips
from the camera to your phone.
You can do it over wi fi or you can actually
take the micro SD out and put it in your phone.
Once they're in the phone,
the phone can then stitch both the cameras together
to give you one video file that
can then go off and be edited.
The other option is to take the
micro SD out of the camera and put it in your computer.
In Windows, use the Cyberlink software
or the software that comes with the camera.
It has to be used on Windows,
there is no Mac option or easy Mac option at this point.
And then you're right to edit
once the stitching has happened.
So, what that means is the workflow for editing
isn't as seamless as it could be
or as some of the other cameras are.
It's not as easy as just taking the footage off the camera
and dumping it straight into your editing software
and editing it that way.
There are a few more steps, and it's not so hard
but they definitely take some time
especially if you're a Mac user.
So, those are my thoughts on the Samsung Gear 360.
If you found this video helpful,
make sure you click that big subscribe button,
give us a thumbs up, and leave a comment below.
Let me know one of your thoughts on 360 video.
Have you tried it? What cameras have you used?
And I'll talk to you soon.