Virtual Reality Streaming Tools and Workflow, Part 2: Production Workflow
In Part 2 of this 3-part series on VR streaming, I detail the workflow for producing VR video in Vahana VR, which is the software in charge of stitching together the video from the 6-camera GoPro rig I used to shoot the video.
Injecting the Metadata
The final step of the process was to inject metadata into the rendered file so that YouTube would recognize that it represented a VR file and handle it accordingly. You can download the program to accomplish this and read the instructions here.
What happened next was the only serious hiccup in the entire process. When I downloaded the file as instructed, and tried to load the rendered video file into the metadata tool, I kept receiving an error message that stated “no metadata found.” I tried the Windows tool first, then the Mac tool, and got the same error message (Figure 15, below).
Figure 15. Ruh, roh, wasn’t expecting this error message.
Fortunately, I called the tech at Mobeon, who sent me an older version of the tool (Figure 16, below). This worked as advertised on the Google site, and produced the files I was able to upload to YouTube. I'm guessing that between VideoStitch, the developer of Vahana VR, and Google, things will get worked out in the next few days. If you find yourself running into this brick wall, you can download a zip file containing the older Windows exe that worked for me.
Figure 16. This older version worked fine.
Okay, so that's the workflow, which I perfected before the shoot. In the next article I'll cover the lessons learned during the shoot itself.
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