GoPro Fusion Great for 360 Video

Originally I was just testing the GoPro Fusion to see if it would suffice for 360 photos for a virtual reality tour project I was working on. The pictures were “ok” but I need great. I needed high resolution and color. I realized this when I compared it to some 360 pictures I took with my Sony a6500 (check out the Virtual Tours shot with the Sony A6500).

I know that may not have been a fair comparison. I just though maybe it would be a fair compromise since the GoPro Fusion would have such a significantly faster workflow. But, my client wasn’t happy with the GoPro Fusion results.

Instead of returning it right away I figured I would try the 360 video on the GoPro Fusion with some of my favorite local musicians (check out DerekMcCoyMusic.com and Oak Grove String Band). I became hooked fast (check out the videos below). It’s not something I’ll do all the time by any means. But, it’s fun for the occasional moment. And now I have 360 video to include in my Virtual Tours! So, it ended up being a win win of sorts…

Below you can purchase the GoPro Fusion that we use. It requires two micro SD cards. So be sure to get two of those cards below as well. And, you’ll probably want the tripod mount. Send us a link to your 360 videos so we can check them out!

Examples of the GoPro Fusion

Underneath the links below are the two 360 videos we referenced. In the Oak Grove String Band video we edited the Point of View (POV). In the Derek McCoy Trio video we didn’t edit the POV but we did swap the audio.

The audio from the GoPro Fusion is cool in that it’s spherical. This means, when the viewer pans around the audio changes based on their POV. We wanted higher quality for the Derek McCoy Trio so we used separately captured audio. We didn’t swap the audio in the Oak Grove String Band video but because we did edit the POV of the video in premiere and then render it through adobe’s encoder the original audio doesn’t appear to have been preserved.

I’ll be doing another test soon and uploading it here. There’s another way to bring the video in from the GoPro called overshooting. I’m excited to try this, just haven’t had time yet.