FAQ

Can I embed video?

Yes, just export the video as an H.264-encoded .mp4 file and use it in the src attribute. If you use some other type of container (i.e. not mp4),
it could work too, but you need to also specify attribute kind=“video“

Is there a nice web UI for embedding the media?

That’s work in progress, hopefully coming soon.

How many 360-degree photos/videos can I embed on one page?

As many as you want (though don’t use too many – this may make the page too slow on slow computers)

How can I support you?

• Give 5 stars to this plugin
• Subscribe to my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/rtfms and keep posting cheerful comments

How do I save a screenshot of the 360-degree photo viewport?

Click on the photo you wish to save and press Control-Alt-S (yes, it’s still Control-Alt-S even on Mac, not Command-Alt-S).
This will save the current viewport. If you want to save the entire photo you need to press Control-Alt-Shift-S.

The center part of the photo looks good, but everything further away from the center looks distorted. How do I fix this?

You may also notice that the parts of the image close to the left and right edges are are moving unnaturally when you’re
looking left and right. It looks like one of those photos made with bad fisheye lens. This happens when you’re trying to
fit an image into the viewport that’s too stretched horizontally. The photo dimensions are „calibrated“ by the vertical
dimension, so the horizontal part gets too stretched at the edges. There are two ways to fix the problem:
* a better way is to always display the image in a viewport with x/y ratio close to 3/4. For instance if you sent the width
to 300 then the height should be close to 400
* if the „better“ way is not possible due to your page layout then adjust the „fov“ parameter. The default is 80, so try
to reduce it to 40 or even less for extremely stretched images. This will cause some image quality degradation though
because science (optics, to be more specific).

My picture looks like some kind of kaleidoscope. How do I fix this?

360 View plugin only supports equirectangular images (at least at the moment). Check your camera software, it most definitely
supports export in the most popular equirectangular format and use that format. If you open your image in a regular photo viewer
and it looks like two circles, that’s the wrong format. For instance, in Insta360 One X Studio 2020 you need to open the .insp
file and export it – that will generate the acceptably formatted image.

My mobile browser shows strange message when I’m trying to view the 360-degree image: „Set your browser to request the mobile version of the site and reload the page to enjoy immersive mode.“. How to fix this?

This message appears in mobile browsers (Mobile Safari for instance) when it’s configured to retrieve the desktop version
of the site instead of mobile. You have two options:
* Just click „Close“ and continue watching the photo using the „finger version of drag-and-drop“. It’s not impressive,
especially since you may not be able to navigate vertically.
* Configure your browser to request the mobile version. In iOS 13 that’s Settings->Safari->Request Desktop Website->All Websites
and turn that off. This will allow you to watch the image by moving your mobile device around, it will work like a „portal“.
BTW, this will also fix this problem in Chrome since in iOS Chrome is Safari-based.

My mobile browser asks „This immersive website requires access to your device motion sensors. (Deny/Allow). What do I do?

You have two options:
* Deny – in this case you will only be able to watch the image by scrolling it horizontally with your finger. That’s
less than impressive and very inconvenient.
* Allow – this will allow you to navigate the image by moving the mobile device around. That’s a lot more immersive!

How do I configure video autoplay?

This is not possible, at least not in this version for couple reasons:
* personally, I dislike autoplay, so don’t wasn’t to spend much time making it possible. Autoplay is highly annoying and, well, disrespectful to your blog visitors.
* browsers began their war on autoplay and at the moment they handle it inconsistently. While I can reliably enable it under Firefox and, with some work, under Chrome, it is completely unpredictable and unreliable under Safari.
Bottom line: your blog visitors will need to press the „Play“ button in the bottom-left corner of the video in order to play it if they want to.

The video is not playing, I can only see a black rectangle (the audio is playing fine though). How to fix this?

• Most likely there is something wrong with your video.
• Try recreating/reuploading the video file.
• Make sure it uses tested H.264 codec and .mp4 container format.
• if you’re exporting from Insta360Studio, please be aware of the bug it has in export. If you change the resolution, you also need to change the codec to H.265 and then back to H.265, otherwise its export won’t be correct.

My video file is huge, what do I do?

• Good news: most modern web servers (for instance nginx) support sending portions of huge video files. So if your server is configured correctly, it will be responding with HTTP code 206 (Partial Content) and only the portion of the video that will be played will be actually downloaded into the browser
• Try changing the video file resolution. In most cases 1280×640 is sufficient for embedding into your blogposts. Lower resolution requires smaller files. Please read about the Insta360 Studio big above if you’re using it.

Can I specify a youtube URL in the src attribute?

No, this plugin is for embedding 360-degree videos and images, not for streaming. If you want to embed a youtube (or some other) 360 video, please find a different plugin developed for embedding youtube videos specifically.

I pasted the URL of my video into Gutenberg paragraph block, I’m sure the URL is correct, but I’m getting a black rectangle instead of the video/photo. How do I fix this?

Is the URL in your text shown in blue and underlined? Well, Gutenberg outsmarted you. It decided that since you’re pasting a URL it needs to convert it into
HTML that would make your URL clickable. What you need to do is
* click on your block and frame and bunch of buttons will appear around it
* click the 3 vertical dots at the top of the block
* select „Edit as HTML“
* replace the text in src=““ with your URL
* optionally click the three vertical dots again and click „Edit Visually“
Now you should see the URL you pasted in normal color and without underlinement and your 360-degree video or photo should render as expected.

How to I experience all this VR awesomeness of my blog in a VR headset (for instance Oculus Quest)?

• Launch Firefox Reality
• Go Open your blog in Firefox Reality (just type in the URL into the URL bar)
• You can use the controller and try to drag the pictures, but you will only be able to pan then left and right
• For complete immersive experience click the „VR“ button on the image you want to see
• For videos press „Play“ button first and then „VR“

Can I add a text label to the video too?

Yes your can.