The Future of Vlogging?? — Sail Video Systems 3rd Person Harness with a Z-CAM S1 360 Camera. Consider this a telling prototype for the very strange future ahead.

There’s a lot of mixed feelings around 360° video in the marketplace today. Some chalk it off to be a gimmick, others cite it to be a radical departure from directed/framed media, while some don’t even consider it to be virtual reality at all, let alone a subset...

Regardless of where you stand, by the end of this piece you’ll see how 360° and spherical video capture not only creates a new form of media (VR video), but also radically impacts existing forms of 2D video we all know and love, giving you content creation superpowers we couldn’t possibly have conceived in the past.

#1: Spherical Video Enables “Overcapture”

Capture everything on-site, frame it live or later in post — the future of vlogging/journalism in a nutshell.

A single 360° camera with a minimal footprint can replace a multi-camera shoot with ease. You shoot everything on-site, framing it in post-production, creating your “directors cut,” if you will. No need to make snap decisions on what to point your camera at… you have everything recorded. As 360 cameras increase in resolution and dynamic range, this is becoming a very pragmatic option.

According to GoPro Product Manager, Jon Thorn, news organizations are already using their Omni camera system for this very purpose — Overcapture. In fact, it’s a key feature advertised for their upcoming 2-lens 5.2K Fusion 360 camera system.

Just think about it, let’s say you’re a journalist out in a remote village in India or Vietnam interviewing a village-dwelling couple. If you show up with a massive RED Dragon or Canon C300 with a slew of crew and equipment, you’re probably not going to get the most natural performance out of the couple. It’s intimidating to say the least.

Instead, if you plop this innocuous looking ball of cameras, it’ll inspire curiosity, but not get in the way of an organic interaction or performance. Later in post, you can do all the cutting and framing you need. You can even bring a pair or trio of 360° cameras, or tag teaming with traditional cameras to give you increased flexibility and coverage

#2: Spherical Capture Will Transform 2D Live-Streaming

Think Mevo Cam on steroids + narrow AI

Building upon the previous example, let’s apply spherical video to livestreaming applications. Since we have the entire “sphere” captured, all we need to do is run rudimentary image/face recognition and Google Home/Amazon Alexa style “acoustic beamforming” to identify who is talking and speaking, letting you crop in and cut dynamically in a live-streamed interview setting for example…. No need for 4 different cameras or someone constantly monitoring the switching board.

Just like the Mevo Cam captures a wider than normal field of view, eliminating the need for a 2 camera setup, with 360 video we even more flexibility, since the entire sphere is at our disposal.

The implications are massive. An entire live-streaming and switching team can be replaced by a couple of 360 cameras and some smart software. The fact that we needn’t deliver the entire 360 image at once, also makes the compute-intensive process of video stitching a lot easier, since we only stitch the video feeds that are needed at any given time for the virtual camera view. The same applies to streaming… at the end of the day, we’ll be piping over a normal 1080P feed, not a massive 4K-6K 360 lat-long file. For the initiated, think of it like viewport-dependent streaming reversed. Nimbler teams will be able to create more compelling livestreamed content thanks to democratization of spherical capture and narrow artificial intelligence.

#3: Spherical Video Enables Easy Vertical & Square Video Production

Capture video for responsive delivery to vertical, square and widescreen video

Currently, vertical video production is done in one of two ways, shoot in 4K and crop down, or put your camera in portrait orientation and shoot in 6:19 directly. It’s a different way of thinking and impacts everything from shot framing and editorial to titling and overlays.

Enter 360° video. Now we’ve got everything captured, allowing us to go in and crop in on just what we need. 360° video is a phenomenal medium to capture in all directions and pull out a beautiful vertical orientation video. Plus, in 360° video, you can do some pretty unique things… like change the field of view subtly to get that actor in frame or to ridiculous extremes, creating the hottest trend on social media right now… tiny planet content (which we’ll cover shortly).