How to create 360 interaction videos for YouTube? You can make it as easy or difficult as you want. In this guide we show you a method for all budgets.
Creating 360 videos… I recently wrote an article about the state of 360 interaction videos and VR (Virtual Reality) on social media. Since then the industry has moved at a very fast pace, content creators continue to improve their technique, and the cost of the necessary equipment continues to drop. Today I am going to show you how to create this type of content for YouTube and thus be able to differentiate yourself on a platform with more than a billion channels.
Creating 360 videos requires special equipment
Since this type of content is so different from what we’ve seen in the past, it would be reasonable to assume that special equipment is needed to produce it. This assumption is true and false. To create 360 videos you will need at least one camera, and although there are techniques to generate this type of content from your cell phone, they are not perfect and have several disadvantages.
Create 360 videos with your cell phone
Before starting to describe this technique, I want to clarify that your cell phone will help you create videos with a static background. That is, you can move your cell phone or mobile screen and look around the video, but you will only see an image without movement. This technique has a couple of very useful uses, among which I highlight giving a tour of a physical space such as an office or a museum. The commercial purpose of this type of content could be to show a property for sale remotely. It’s the next step up from just having 360 photos, with the difference that you can add audio effects to make the experience more immersive.
Here are different applications that will allow you to take 360-degree photos from your cell phone, I prefer Cardboard Camera by Google. Once you’ve downloaded the app and taken a couple of photos, the program will generate a panorama. Next, you must upload this image to a video editing program. The next step would be to lengthen the period in which the video is showing your photograph and add sound effects. Remember that you can add as many photos as you want to the video, that is, if a property has several places that you want to show, you will be able to do a complete tour in a single video. The Editing program can be anything; Windows and Apple have built-in programs that you can use. To create 360 videos, you will need to export this video in an MP4 format.
Before uploading this video to your channel, you have to pass your MP4 through a program that will transform it into the format that YouTube uses to create 360 interaction videos. This program is free and is also designed by Google, so it has a lot of support in case of that you have any doubts. Finally, all you have to do is upload the final file to YouTube and publish it.
Create 360 videos with specialized equipment
The quality of content will depend on you. Very interesting videos can be created on a limited budget, but as you spend more money on your production your technical possibilities will expand. I mean there is specialized equipment to create 360 interaction videos, and these cameras are in a very wide price range.
For example, Kodak has invested in developing a 360 camera that is “affordable” for most budgets. The opposite case is GoPro, which has created a professional system that will allow you to create videos of unparalleled quality, but this system is in the thousands of dollars. The difference between these two teams lies in the image quality. However, both will allow you to create interaction video.
To give you an example of the price difference, you can find 360 cameras for less than $60 US that will allow you to record video in HD and 28 FPS. There are also systems in the thousands of dollars, which combine several professional cameras, and offer you video quality in 4K and 60 FPS.
Now that you have an idea of the prices and differences between equipment, we can get into the process of editing and uploading the videos to YouTube. The system is quite similar to the one we follow to create content with your cell phone, with the difference that the most advanced equipment will require “Stitching” (or video stitching) between the shots of its different cameras. The cheapest systems like Kodak’s will give you a video that you only have to go through the Google program that we mentioned before to be able to upload it to your channel. Instead we have systems like GoPro’s that produce content that is almost cinematic, but requires stitching. There are programs designed to do this, and they are usually around $600. In any case, once you have the video ready, and you pass it through the Google program, you can use it on YouTube.
