360˚ video shot with a Mobile Phone

This worked.. can't believe it worked.
My first 360˚ video(non cg mostly).. shot with a mobile phone.

Its rough and simplistic.. but proof of concept.
Heres how you do it.

Step1:
Shoot a photoshphere of the space you want a 360˚ video of. this will be a still photograph.. but we'll use it.
NOTE: not all phones can shoot a photosphere.. I used a 2yr old Nexus 5 

Its basically a 360˚ photograph that the nexus' default camera can shoot.
If you have a non nexus android phone, you can install the camera from the play store and see if the Photosphere option is available.

This is the Photosphere I shot. Its an installation I worked on with the artist Pith Bull. I created 3d objects and installed them all over the space and she created these lines, dots and shapes that run all over the room and the objects..

The whole space is lit by UV light. I was looking for a way to document it that would give the viewer a sense of immersion that the space had.. regular photographs were just not cutting it. The space was created at Walkin Studios in Bangalore.. do visit, if your in town.

Step2:
Shoot some short video clips without moving the camera. 
So basically footage of various moving elements in that space..
note: these are elements that move.. yet stay in the same spot..
ie: rotating objects, flapping pages, curtains, computer screens.. person sitting/standing in the same general area and talking..

try and get at least 4- clips.

here are the 2 clips i actually shot and posted on instagram.. and then later realised i could use here..

Glow Job drone/monolith 1 @walkinstudios

A video posted by chaitanya krishnan (@c2ktheotherartist) on Oct 14, 2015 at 9:35pm PDT

A video posted by chaitanya krishnan (@c2ktheotherartist) on Oct 14, 2015 at 9:45pm PDT

Step3:
After downloading the photosphere and the clips to your computer.. heres what you do. I used Adobe After Effects, but you could do this with any video editor/compositor that lets you align and compose clips this way.. 

Basically I used the photosphere as a base layer.. and overlayed the video clips over it.. aligned to their corresponding spots on the photograph.. some feathering to remove the sharp video edge.. and voila. Export a mp4

Step4:Go to this page and follow the instructions by Google, or read on below.

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

Click "Inject and save"

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 degree effect to process. This may take up to an hour.

Step5: 
send me links to what you did on twitter @chaitanyak or in the comments below.

why so tedious adobe?

why so tedious adobe?

Adobe's flash player for mobiles has lost the support of the industry, Adobe themselves have decided to abandon development after the next version.

Thankfully for me that doesn't make much of a difference because the flash games i work on get exported as AIR apps (for android atleast) am not too concerned about the other platforms right now.

Flash on the desktop however is here to stay.. for a while anyway. There are fringe groups and various anti flash movements that keep cropping up now and again.. extolling the virtues of HTML5 and how it can replace flash .. but most serious rich media web creatives know that flash is not going to go out without a fight on this platform.

It doesn't help that after all these years Adobe still hasn't simplified the flash plugin update procedure.. infact its actually gotten even more tedious since they switched to the AIR based installer. note the screenshots below:

when an update is available, this is what pops up first:

then when you click "install" you go to this

most people assume that its installing now.. especially since it usually takes a good 3-4minutes on even the fastest machines. whats actually happening is that its downloading and extracting installation files.. after which you get this

unfortunately most people like me arnt going to sit and watch one progress bar crawl by, so we start working in another app or browser or something.. and when we do notice this screen we.. or atleast i absentmindedly almost click the "quit" button, assuming theat the process has finished. of course its not even started yet. You have to tick off that License Agreement to enable the real "install" button.. and then you get this

takes another few minutes to get done.

heres what i propose Adobe, just give us one screen that looks like this

and clicking the "install" button - downloads, extracts and installs all in one go..
and you see this

please, please, please.


off topic note: for those web designers like me who need a WYSIWYG editor to design anything.. and would like to try their hand at HTML5, try Adobe Edge its quite good(and free for now). Its a lot like working with flash when we used to do stuff in AS2 with timeline based events and actions..


am currently using it to build a html5 version of the Flip Site