What's up guys? This is Ben from Life
in 360 and today I'm going to teach you
how to stitch your Samsung Gear 360
footage; both the 2017 and the 2016 on
your Mac computer.
with the release of the 2017 camera they've now also
included Mac software so you can easily
process your footage and images on any
Mac computer you own whether it's a
laptop or an iMac so it's a free
software, the first thing I'll say is
that you need to actually buy the camera
to get the software you can't just
download and stitch someone else's
footage this is because you'll need the
product key on the camera so if you
don't own a camera then you'll have to
stitch on your phone. So step one of the
process is firstly you want to backup
your footage to your computer just put
in a micro SD card reader, put it into
your computer back it up and then we'll
want to download the samsung software it
hasn't actually officially been released
yet however I'm going to put a download
link down in the description where you
can get it. I found it kind of on the sly
but it's the full software so definitely
take advantage of it. Okay so step one is
to open the software and you'll notice
it's called Gear 360, it's not called
Gear 360 action director, maybe they'll
change it, maybe they won't but that's
what it's called for now. Install it, you'll have
to enter your product key you can either
get that in the manual or actually on
the camera you can find it within the
settings if you can't find it, just have
a look through the menu it'll be there
so first off we have two buttons we have
360 player and live broadcast live
broadcast allows us to connect our gear
360 by tethered connection to our
computer so we can livestream with it
that's really cool you can't transfer
your files unfortunately from this to
the computer via cable so you will have
to take the memory card out and put it into
the back of the computer
hopefully they'll update this but for
now you can only do a tethered
connection for live streaming, the other
option is 360 Player and this is the one
you want to choose alright here we go
and so this opens up a browser on the
left is where all our footage is and on
the right we can see our stitched clips
so for now I'm going to start with
one photo and one video from the 2016
gear 360 and this is super cool because
this was not previously allowed by
Samsung you could not stitch on Mac well
you probably could but it was super hard
you had to do it in expensive software but
now it's easy so this is a really cool
thing if you do own a previous gear 360
the 2016 model you can now stitch on your
Mac I will say though that this is
actually a last resort because this
software was made for the 2017 version
so the stitching algorithm is different
because the lenses are closer together
with the 2017, you will notice a bit
of a disparity in the seam line and
here we have our photo this was taken on
the 2016 camera and that's actually
looking pretty good look yes there is an
obvious seam line there but that was
actually my own fault my own silly fault
because whenever you have one camera
with a lens flare and one without it
that's going to happen no matter which
camera you own the stitching's alright
only because I've got the camera so high
have you not noticed it and the stitch
is perfect actually however if you do
have objects close to the seam you are
going to notice it there we can see on
the video where I've held the camera
closer to me that seam line's pretty
horrible isn't it? That's not really
usable, look if this is your only option
to stitch then I guess you can make it
work so let's play the video and look
it's okay
that side is actually alright as I'm
moving around the beach this side is
horrible you can't manually adjust this
unfortunately it's just not available in
this software yet so really this
software is a plan C for the 2016 camera
but again it does the job so if you're
desperate
then this will solve your problem the
photos and videos it'll work best for is
ones where there aren't any objects or
people anywhere near the camera or the
seam line so in my photo example there
was nothing anywhere close to the camera
which is why the stitch ended up so good
this is going to work for the 2016
version if you keep the camera really
far away however if it's close to
anything then you're going to get
obvious seam
lines however this isn't a problem for
the 2017 version since like I said the
software is built for the 2017 camera
something I want to add to this workflow
is before you import any of your 2017 or
2016 footage you want to go up to
preferences and just make sure you know
where the files are being saved the cool
thing about this software is that as
soon as you import it it stitches it and
saves it to computer instantly you don't
have to do anything however if you don't
set the location for where it's saved
it's going to save to a random folder
that it creates you might have trouble
finding it so you'll want to do this; choose
the folder you want to save to I'm
saving it to one of my hard drives so
now I know they're all going to go there
instantly and also you'll want to tick
'auto correct angle' this is for when
you've taken shots where the camera was
like this; the horizon won't end up out
of whack if you press that button it'll
auto correct it which is going to save
us a lot of time later on here you can
see an obviously tilted photo and just
to prove to you that it does work I'm
going to import it and see how it
handles it so there it is it's
processing and there we go
we look at our equirectangular, horizon is
perfect whereas before it looks horrible
so that's a cool feature it means
there's one less step in the overall
workflow so that's always a good thing
unfortunately this doesn't work for the
2016 not much I can do it does work for
the 2017 and it's a really handy feature
with the 2016 you'll need to bring it into
another program like Hugin or if you're
editing it as a tiny planet it doesn't
really matter anyway so again I'm going
to bring a photo and a video into the
program this time these were shot with
the 2017 camera and we can see down here
the stitching is taking place yes it
probably will take a while especially
if you're shooting really long clips. I imported an
hour and 20 minutes of 4k 360 into this
program and it took probably I'm gonna
say four hours to stitch so it's not a
short process it will do a good job and
it'll do in the background but you need
to prepare for quite a bit of stitching
time okay so here's my first photo
example it stitched
my 2017 photo and that's looking good so
this main window is our viewer and we
can view the photo in many different
ways
you can change it to little planet play
around with it many different ways look
at it in an equirectangular view go
fullscreen if you like and you can go
backwards and forwards from image to
image and video to video down the bottom
left hand corner you'll see there's a
capture button this means it's going to
save a low res sample to your save
folder it's not going to be full res so
only do this if you just need a photo as
a reference that you're going to replace
later if you edit as a tiny planet so if
we choose to do that right we can go
save and the save folder will be right
next to the folder we set before so
there will be a 360 folder and then a
capture the capture folder will be the
snapshot and that's a good little
reference you can use it as a thumbnail
I guess for a video but it's low res
1280 by 720. Definitely don't edit tiny
planets in this program because this is
really just a viewer and a stitcher
you're going to get super low res photos
so it's better taking it into a tiny
planet editor exactly the same thing
applies to video so here's our video
file, there's me in front of the Harbour
Bridge and there we can look around
it in 360 it's just a good little
preview just to see what the footage it
looks like and again you can change your
view, make it look like whatever you want
it is supposed to help with the
stabilization a little bit but don't
expect miracles. At the top right we have
our share button if you click that we
now have the option to share our photos
and videos to Facebook YouTube and
Samsung VR personally I won't be using
this because it only allows you to share
one file at a time and with videos I
like sharing lots of them cut together
so there you go YouTube Facebook Samsung VR
it's all pretty straightforward just
give it a title and description blah
blah
and start your upload! Alright guys i hope
you enjoyed this tutorial this is free
software so get on it it's going to make
your life a lot easier and it'll mean
you don't have to stick to the mobile
workflow if you don't want to, you're
always going to get higher resolution
photos and sometimes videos when you
stitch on computer so it's definitely
something worth learning. If you want to
take your 360 skills to the next level
don't forget to check out my ebook, it's
called Life in 360: A Beginner's Guide To
Tiny Planet Photography, it's going to teach
you absolutely everything there is to
know about shooting tiny planets how to
do it simply, easily and every single
style you see on my Instagram profile
I'll teach you how to do. Life is all
about finding the best shortcuts to
success and why not learn from my years
of failure and get all my lessons in
less than a day of reading? Also don't
forget to subscribe to us on YouTube
we're on Facebook Instagram and Twitter
and we post tiny planets we post 360
tutorials several times a week so you're
going to learn a ton until next time
keep capturing your world in 360 to
those who've already bought a Samsung
gear 360 2017 I hope you're enjoying it
I'm really enjoying mine now I still use
both cameras they're really good video
cameras for 360 and they're pretty good
photo cameras as well I'll also be sure
to do another comparison side-by-side of
the differences between A and B just so
you guys can get more of a feeling for
how they differ and which one is best
for you I'll put a link down in the
description to where you can find both
of these cameras on Amazon they're super
cheap at the moment so you've got no
excuse not to own a 360 camera!