In preparation for an upcoming 360 video shoot that we are going to do with iTech Painting and Impact Action Sports we have ordered all the necessary parts and gadgets needed. Today was the first day that we got to test things out.

First we ordered the mount from a 3D Printer in China off of Ebay. with shipping that cost us about $85 dollars. This was a far better price than what we had researched on creating the mount ourselves and using a local 3D printer in town. One estimate was upwards of $400! The only downside of ordering one from China was that it took 2 weeks to ship to us (Thanks Amazon, for making us lovers of instant gratification and expedited shipping).

We plan on renting all of the GoPros that we need for the shoot next week, so before we did that. We decided to create a test video 360 video using our new mount and a single GoPro. All that we did was we pulled up a video on the TV and then we replayed the video for each position that we moved the camera to on the mount. The mount is a cube, and so we had to do this six times.

The most difficult part for us was figuring out how to use the Kolor software. I was very impressed with how easy and fluid it was to work with once we new what we were doing. However, I was very confused on my first couple attempts because trying to wrap your head around how you would stitch together and edit 360 video is quite confusing. My one piece of advice for someone that has never done anything like this before is watch the Kolor Tutorial that they have on their website from start to finish BEFORE you do anything. If I would have followed it exactly it probably would have saved me about two hours of my time and a headache.

Anyways after about twenty-five minutes of processing, rendering, and exporting. Jacob and I successfully uploaded our first ever 360 degree video to YouTube and to Facebook. We emailed shared this success with our facebook friends and family.

The thing that I was most astonished by once we had completed this test was that this technology has been available for 3 years. I don’t mean that a lesser quality version of what we did today has been available for three years. I mean that had we known about these tools we actually could have made the exact same video three years ago. I have never thought that our company is way ahead of the cure the stuff that we produce and create. However, I never thought that we were three years behind the curve! This is a perfect example of how technology is changing faster and faster, and it is getting harder and harder to stay up-to-date on everything that is coming out.

Either way, the most exciting thing about today was that we have officially stepped (I will admit it was a baby step, but a step nonetheless) into the world of 360 video and virtual reality.