360° videos are video recordings where a view in every direction is recorded at the same time. 360° videos are shot using an omnidirectional camera or a collection of cameras. During playback the viewer has control of the viewing direction like a panorama.

{{ site.product_short }} supports uploading and publishing of 360° videos. A sample 360° video is shown below. Once you play the video, you can use your mouse to control the view on the desktop, or the gyroscope if viewing on a mobile device.

For information on browser support and known issues with the 360°/VR video plugin, see the 360º/VR Video Plugin topic.

Recording 360° videos

360° video is typically recorded using either a special rig of multiple cameras or using a dedicated camera that contains multiple camera lenses. The resulting footage is then stitched to form a single video. There are many cameras available to record 360° video. The 360° video in this topic was recorded using a Ricoh Theta S. Brightcove recommends recording your video at a high resolution.

Before you upload

Before you upload a 360° video to {{ site.product_short }}, the video file needs to include certain metadata for 360° playback to be enabled. The Spatial Media Metadata Injector application can be used to add metadata to a video file indicating that the file contains 360° video. If the 360° video was recorded on a camera that doesn't automatically add the 360° metadata, follow these steps to add it:

Download the 360° Video Metadata app for Mac or Windows.
Install and then open the 360° Video Metadata app.
Click Open and then select the video file.
Click Inject metadata.
Enter a name for the new file and then click Save.

The video is now ready to be uploaded to {{ site.product_short }}.

Uploading 360° videos

360° video is filmed to be projected on the interior of a sphere. This means that the visible area of the video in the player is only a fraction of the entire video. The following screenshot gives you a rough idea of this concept. The area inside the red rectangle is what is visible in the player, but it is only a small part of the entire video.

Since only a small part of the video will be in the player at any one time, you want a very high quality rendition to be playing, with no chance of a lower quality rendition appearing. In essence, you are "zooming in" on part of the video and a poor quality rendition would yield a very poor quality viewing experience. When uploading your video, Brightcove recommends creating a custom Dynamic Delivery ingest profile with a single 1080p rendition and at least one audio rendition.

360° video properties

All {{ site.product_short }} videos have a set of properties that can be set using {{ site.product_short }} Studio or programmatically using the CMS API. Note that not all of the properties are exposed in {{ site.product_short }} Studio.

To indicate that a video is a 360° video, use the Media module to edit the video properties and set the Video Projection property to 360°.

Publishing 360° videos

Brightcove provides several ways you can publish 360° videos:

Brightcove Players on a web page
Brightcove Social
Brightcove Native Player SDKs

Publishing 360° videos to web pages

To play 360° videos in a Brightcove Player, the player requires the 360°/VR Video Plugin.

To create a new Brightcove Player with the 360°/VR Video Plugin, follow these steps:

Open the Players module.
Create a new player.
Click the player name to open the player properties.
Click Plugins in the left navigation.
Click Add a Plugin ˇ > Custom Plugin.
For the Plugin Name, enter vr.

For the JavaScript URL, enter:

  https://players.brightcove.net/videojs-vr/2/videojs-vr.min.js

If you are using Brightcove Player 6, use this URL instead:

              https://players.brightcove.net/videojs-vr/1/videojs-vr.min.js

For the CSS URL, enter:

  https://players.brightcove.net/videojs-vr/2/videojs-vr.css

If you are using Brightcove Player 6, use this URL instead:

            https://players.brightcove.net/videojs-vr/1/videojs-vr.css

No Options(JSON) are needed.
Click Save and then publish the player.

You can now publish the 360° video using the player that was just created.

Note: To use the 360°/VR Plugin, you must be using Brightcove Player version 6.13.0 or later.

360° videos uploaded to your {{ site.product_short }} account can easily be published to your social media accounts using Brightcove Social. Note that when using the Social module to sync a 360° video, the ingest profile used to ingest the video must be configured to save the master file or the video won't sync in 360°. When {{ site.product_short }} ingests 360° videos, the 360° metadata isn't retained in the resulting renditions. When syncing a 360° video without a master, the highest quality rendition is used in the sync. As the rendition doesn't include the 360° metadata, YouTube/Facebook won't know it's a 360° video.

For information on publishing videos using Brightcove Social, see Publishing Videos to Social Media Platforms.

Publishing 360° videos using the Brightcove Native Player SDKs

Android and iOS apps built using the Brightcove Player SDKs can play 360° videos. For information on publishing 360° videos with the SDKs, see the Using 360° Videos with the Native SDKs document.