YouTube tells budding VR film-makers what not to do when shooting an immersive 360 in this excellent crash course in this fledgling but ever more popular form of content.
With the production of VR film and 360 video becoming ever more commonplace and access to camera hardware easier, there more and more people out there making content who may not be aware of the cardinal sins and best practices associated with the medium.
To that end, YouTube as part of its ‘Creator Academy‘ initiative has produced this fun and informative video designed to school 360 video newbies on what not to do when producing immersive video content. It helpfully draws attention to the placement of actors outside of stitching zones, urges not to wrestle control of rotational movement away from the viewer and gives tips on viewer comfort when designing shots, taking care not to invade their personal space or indeed making them feel like a gourmet snack.
YouTube is of course owned by Google, with the latter digging deep on 360 video. It launched it’s Jump 360 capture and processing pipeline, alongside Go-Pro’s Odyssey camera last year alongside a processing and editing pipeline called Jump. In May the company announced it’s wish to make Jump available and accessible enough that established, classic YouTubers would adopt the format for content output. Furthering this intent, the latest iteration of the YouTube mobile application apparently designed for “built for comfort and longer sessions,” including a host of normal functions such as search, discovery, and playlists to keep users watching just like on monitors and smartphones.
That app appeared in presentations introducing Google’s dedicated VR platform Daydream, which will will appear inside the latest Android 7.0 “Nougat” release, and clearly 360 video is a key target for early content supporting this latest push into VR in 2016. Android 7 is expected this or next month at the time of writing.