How to upload 360-degree virtual reality videos on YouTube and Facebook

by Oh. on June 13, 2016 in 360 Degree Video Tech

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The music video for “Love of Avalanches” is a handmade 360° immersive video.

The 360° fully immersive virtual reality environment was created entirely from a fusion of animated 360° panoramic images sequenced from custom handcrafted cube map seamless textures.

The full story of how the 360 VR music video was created is explained in the post:

How We Made A 360° Virtual Reality Video Without A 360° Camera and with $0 budget with a workflow/hack with Mettle Skybox plugin.

The settings we used to render the video are on a great tutorial on the Mettle Skybox website:

How to Use Adobe Media Encoder + Youtube Metadata Tools for 360/VR Video

You can host your 360 video on your own website using Google’s VR view.

The instruction on how to do that are on this post, How to embed a 360 degree VR music video to your website

Or you can upload to YouTube and Facebook.

YouTube specs

Prior to upload, YouTube recommends you export your content in a 16:9 display aspect ratio at 3840 * 2160 resolution (2160p). Maintain square pixels (i.e.,1:1 pixel/scale aspect ratio). There should be no letter/pillarboxing and all 3840×2160 pixels should be used. The resulting image should appear horizontally stretched.

Tip: If your video exhibits significant compression artifacts, try re-encoding at a higher bitrate (e.g. 150Mbps) before you upload to YouTube.

Metadata for YouTube and Facebook:

Your video file needs to include certain metadata for 360° playback to be enabled. Follow these instructions to install an app that will add the necessary metadata into a new file for you.

Create a 360-enabled file with an app

Download the 360 Video Metadata app for Mac or Windows.
Un-zip the file, then open the 360 Video Metadata app. If you’re on a Mac, you may need to right-click the app and then click Open.
Select the video file.
Select the checkbox for Spherical and click Save as. Do not select the “3D Top-bottom” checkbox. For more information, refer to upload instructions for virtual reality videos.
Enter a name for the file that will be created.
Save the file. A new file will be created automatically in the same location as the original file.
Upload the new file to YouTube.
Wait for the 360° effect to process. This may take up to an hour.

You can also add the metadata using a Python script.

Upload the video

Before publishing, you can verify that the file has 360° playback enabled by watching the video on your computer. It may take up to an hour for 360° playback to be available.

360° videos feature a pan button in the top left, and can be rotated using the WASD keys, so look for these features to confirm your video is in 360.

Be sure not to make edits to the video itself using the YouTube Video Editor and Enhancements tools on desktop or mobile apps, as these tools don’t currently support 360° videos.

Facebook

Facebook recommended Video Upload Specs

FB supports file sizes up to 1.75GB. Videos must be less than 6 minutes maximum.
File type: MP4 Container
Video Codec: H.264 Video (maximum of 30 fps; recommended 20 mbps for 30 fps of mono footage)
Audio Codec: MP3 or AAC audio
Resolution: Max 3K input (3072×1536)
Dimensions: 2:1 Display Aspect Ratio
Depth: Mono
Projection Format: Equirectangular

How do I upload a 360 video to your Facebook Timeline?

If the video was recorded with a 360 or spherical camera system that adds 360 metadata to the video file, then you can upload a 360 video to your personal Timeline the same way you’d upload any other video.

If the video was recorded with a camera system that doesn’t add the 360 metadata to the video file, add the 360 metadata to the video file and then follow the same steps for uploading any other video to your Timeline.

Learn how to upload a 360 video to a Page.

Learn more about cameras that automatically add 360 metadata.

Keep in mind 360 videos are limited to a maximum length of 10 minutes and a maximum size of 1.75 GB.

Great places to upload 360 VR video:

Note: YouTube videos have to have metadata injected into the mp4
Remember to up the resolution to 2160 4k if you can.