This year we've seen numerous affordable consumer 360 VR cameras hit the shelves and the Mashable video team is eager to try them. Recently the Ricoh came out with their Theta S 360 VR camera and resident BMX stuntman/Video Producer Jon Lynn took it for a spin around New York City and the results are pretty cool. But we had a few hiccups in the post process, so we wanted to share some of our experience.

Say you've recorded an awesome day out with your friends and want to share it with the world. There is some sort of sharing function directly from the mobile app but instead we want to edit in Adobe Premiere. /95-ford-explorer-owners-manual-free-download.html. If you pull the video files directly off the device using a USB cable, this is what you get.

In these cases, the correct metadata must be injected into your photos before they can be shared as 360 photos. There are two sets of metadata tags Facebook looks for to determine whether a photo is in 360: Photo Sphere XMP Metadata Most 360 cameras and panorama-generation tools include Photo Sphere metadata in saved photos. These include downloading the 360 Video Metadata app on your Mac or Windows device. Then you will choose the file, check the Spherical box and save it. Make sure that 3D top-bottom is not checked when you save the file.

The desktop app does not like these files. In order to get any useful files you need to download the video files to your mobile app one by one via the device's wi-fi. Unfortunately this is a slow, tedious process. In one example I transferred a 12 second, 24MB file to my iPhone6 and it took 70 seconds. In my testing I was shooting a minute or two at a time and had about 15 files, so this took a while to get them onto my phone.

From here you can view them in the Theta app in 360. Unfortunately the app does not use your iPhone's accelerometer like the YouTube player does. But it's still pretty cool to swipe around on the screen to view the full 360.

Now that your footage is in your app you can watch it. As we said, the app doesn't respond to the accelerometer like the YouTube 360 player, but at least it's watchable and interactive. We want to edit and upload this footage to YouTube.

(My own preference for pulling photos and video off of my iPhone is Mac's built in Image Capture utility. Luckily the video clips end up in your camera roll and not locked away inside of the app. Find your video clips and grab them.)

You can upload your raw clips to YouTube and the player recognizes these as a 360 video. You might need to wait a few minutes and refresh your browser until the little arrow indicator appears in the upper left corner of the video.

Now onto editing the footage. For that, we're using Adobe Premiere. Your preview will look a little weird but you can see the image. We're not trying anything fancy here, just some cuts and adding music. You can see our usual Mashable watermark in the upper right corner but this will just end up getting distorted. For the purposes of this post we're not going to get into that.

Now that you've exported your edit you can upload to YouTube, right? Nope. The export does not retain the necessary metadata in the file from the camera to tell YouTube this is a 360 video - we need to add this back.

Luckily there are tools for this and some documentation on YouTube's site.

We used the 360 Video Metadata app for Mac. It's simple. Open the video file in the app, click the 'Inject' and you are prompted to name the file. Upload this file to YouTube and you are done.

Here's Mashable Video Producer Jon Lynn riding around New York City with the Theta mounted to his handlebars. We recommend opening this on your mobile device for the best viewing experience. The YouTube app responds to your accelerometer and you are virtually sitting on his handlebars.

What's 360 Degree Video?

360 degree videos is known as immersive videos or spherical videos. They are videos recorded typically in every direction by a special rig of multiple cameras or a dedicated omnidirectionaly camera that contains many camera lenses therein. 360-degree video is formatted in an equirectangular protection typically. The cameras supporting creating 360-degree videos include GoPro's Omni, Vuze Camera, Kandao Obsidian, Samsung Gear 360, etc. Users can play 360 degree videos with 360º video player, they can have a control of viewing direction by dragging the video around. It's a form of virtual reality.

Top 6 360 Video Players to Play 360 Degree Videos Without Any Hassle

After recording or downloading 360 degree videos, you may find difficulty in picking a reliably 360 vr player or xbox 360 media player for 360 video playback because there only a few video players supports 360 video playing on the market. Now that 360 degree video players are badly in demand for 360 degree videos playback. Here we list top 5 360º video players, giving you a new way to enjoy yourself.

#1 - 5KPlayer

When mentioning a 360 video player, 5KPlayer absolutely takes 360 video playback as its obligation. It is a 100% free 360º video player, specially designed for Mac and Windows users to play 360 degree virtual reality videos, 4K UHD 3840x2160, HD 1080p/720p, 3D Blu Ray videos as well as SD MP4, MOV, AVI, FLV, MKV etc videos. It also features download & airplay knacks. That is to say, you are free to get YouTube 360 degree video download with 5KPlayer. If you don't know how to play 360 videos on your computer, this video player for 360 videos will be a good choice.

#2 - Kolor Eyes

Kolor Eyes is a free 360° video player for Windows, Mac, HTML5, iOS and Android. It allows you to play and interact with your 360° videos on your computer and on your Oculus Rift. The desktop application of this 360 vr player lets you play 360-degree videos on your Mac or PC, watching videos up to 8K and enjoy the finest resolution at 360 degrees. What's more, turn at 360 degrees, zoom in and out, change the projection and apply visual effects all can be done with Kolor Eyes.

#3 - VR Player

VR Player is an experimental Virtual Reality 360 media player for Head-Mounted Display devices like the Oculus Rift. It features playing 360 degree videos, reading 2D/3D images and videos, local files, streams (including YouTube), disc, and more! For the moment, VR Player is a rare 360 video player keeping the trend of videos.

#4 - JW Player

JW Player is one of the most popular embeddable 360 vr players for websites. It supports a wide array of platforms, browsers, and media formats, including 4K 360 degree videos, 3D 360 VR, 1080P/720P, and standard definition videos in MP4, MOV, AVI, FLV etc. It is open-source software which is easy to configure, customize, and extend. Besides, it's a trifle for JW Player to play 360 degree videos, as well as xbox 360 games walkthrough served as an awesome xbox 360 media player.

#5 - Total Cinema 360° Web Player

Our Total Cinema 360° Web Player lets you experience and play 360° videos on the web from both desktop and mobile browsers. Built with HTML5 and WebGL, the 360 Web video Player operates seamlessly on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. But it's a pity that Total Cinema 360° only have access of its official site contents.

#6 - Kolor GoPro VR Player

Metadata App Download

Kolor GoPro VR player is placed sixth in our best 360 video players list. It is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, on which you can play 360°action videos, without an internet connection. With a lightweight interface, the player allows you to play 360 degree videos at the cost of the least effort, by simply loading the VR files and opening the very basic controls. An added value for the tool is you can adjust the general settings, video encoding, controllers, and more before playing 360° spherical videos.