360 Video Production

This is a recent project that was a significant technical and logistical challenge, including learning new techniques, concepts and software. We were asked to design an experience to allow judges from the City of Culture 2025 panel to engage with a broader range of County Durham’s landscape than they would usually be able to in their short visit.

Our initial feeling was that we would be able to produce something, but weren’t sure to what level. I did some brief research on what might be needed, and spatial audio came up as a potential concern. While one of our 360 cameras has a spatial audio microphone, the other one didn’t – and I felt that on board audio would be a risk due to an inability to counter wind noise. After looking at some product options, the Zoom H3-VR 360 spatial recorder stood out. It features an ambisonic microphone array, onboard decoding, PC and Mac support, and a familiar interface (we already have some Zoom products), and it was relatively inexpensive at around £200. I recommended this, and it was purchased for the video shoot day.

Planning

In this initial design development phase, I found examples, guides and resources to help decide our approach. Having my own headset already, I have a lot of experience of using 360 experiences, and wanted to ensure we got this right, and that the rest of the team understood the principles at play with the medium. The BBC Academy Guide on 360 video production was particularly helpful, and I encouraged the rest of the team to view some 360 videos in a headset to help them see what works best, and how it made them feel. The Guardian’s VR productions, and the BBC ‘Damming the Nile’ 360 documentary were excellent examples.

“I took a Quest home tonight and watched the BBC Nile video – wow I am very impressed. OK it was a bit fuzzy in places but I was truly immersed. Found myself trying to mirror the presenter – e.g. wanted to lean on the balcony. A few things I noticed – I didn’t like it when the presenter disappeared but was still talking. I didn’t like it when people were too close, I really didn’t like the balloon when I realised I was standing outside the basket…It was really engaging and I feel I can recall what I saw and the feel of the place much better than in a video – places feel more messy and so more real.”

Dr Malcolm Murray – Head of Digital Learning

I also suggested some ideas for when the video would be presented, to make it a smoother and more immersive experience for novice headset-users, for example: disable hand tracking on the device so that people’s hands don’t keep showing up when they move, place the controllers on a table where they won’t be knocked, since this activates the control interface and breaks immersion, and if possible seat them in a swivel chair to make it easier for them to turn around in the scene without feeling disoriented.

Filming day

I would have enjoyed playing a part in this, but as a remote worker this project was a bit short notice to arrange. Therefore, the plan was that other members of the team would capture the footage and then return it to me for editing. On the day of the filming, the team originally conceived of this as being a dry run to capture some scenes and scout the locations, before going back at a later stage to capture final footage. In the end, this ‘test footage’ ended up being the footage we used; the weather turned, and the rest of the available time it was very rainy. Luckily, what they captured, though experimental, was usable.

Edit and animation

We used our Microsoft OneDrive to share all the footage and Premiere profiles. This worked well, and through careful version control I was able to successfully share project files between myself and my colleague James, who was responsible for the audio side of the production.

After some work using the Insta 360 Studio software, and setting up the associated Premiere Pro plug-ins, editing the 360 footage was relatively straightforward. The main challenge initially was understanding how the framing worked. Setting the initial view of the footage seemed to adjust this for the whole sequence in Premiere, so I ended up splitting the project into sub-sequences embedded into one overall main sequence. This enabled me to set different initial views of each video section. It also meant that James and I could manipulate the overall soundtrack independently of each separate shot.

An interesting perspective from a remote worker who does not know the area at all, is that while I found each section of footage very interesting, I had no idea of the distances or overall landscape surrounding each location. This inspired me to consider ways of contextualising the footage. I had initially thought of using screenshots from Google Earth or similar, but discovered a new tool from Google called Google Earth Studio. This tool is available on a limited basis, and I had to apply to get access. Fortunately, this was made available to me in time to be of use for this project.

Google Earth Studio (requires Edge or Chrome) allows you to create animated sequences from Google Earth. You can create keyframe animations and overlay highlight areas and place markers using overlay files which can be created on Google Earth, or downloaded from websites. I sourced an overlay file that contained the County Durham boundary, and created a separate file that had place markers for each of the locations visited and other notable areas nearby. I was able to create animations that initially zoomed in from a whole planet view to see the overall county outline, then to the first location. I created separate animations that zoomed out from each location and travelled to the next location. These were then used as transitions between each location shot. This made a significant difference to how it felt to view the footage.

Lessons

Overall, I’m very pleased with the resulting video, with most of the things I would do differently having to do with issues of time, which were unavoidable in this instance. I feel that there is probably a better way to approach the video edit than the one I took, possibly using different effects – and in a project with a longer deadline, I would have taken more time to look at more tutorials and resources before diving in to constructing the video.

One issue that did crop up, which I managed to resolve prior to the final video being finished, was caused by the difference in resolution between the Google Earth animations and the footage we had taken. Google Earth Studio renders at a maximum of 4K overall, while our camera shoots video at 5.7K. I scaled this down to 4K to match the animations, but didn’t initially appreciate that there was also a difference in aspect ratio. In hindsight, I should have realised this was the problem earlier, as it was causing black circles to appear at the top and bottom of each shot. Once I realised the issue, I was able to repair it easily by adjusting the sequence settings in Premiere Pro.

As an experienced user of VR and 360 video, feedback on the animation in the initial drafts surprised me, as some people reported feeling sick due to the ‘motion’. I ended up having to cut the speed to around a quarter of the initial velocity to make this comfortable for a new user. This is an important point, as I had felt entirely comfortable with it – proof that a sample of one is not enough!

The footage quality of the video leaves something to be desired, but this is necessarily limited by equipment. A 4K/5.7K video is not that high quality when used to cover a 360 degree view, and is arguably not high enough quality for truly immersive video at present. Higher resolution cameras do exist, but at a significant price premium. For example, the Insta 360 One X we used was around £400 as a consumer-level camera. The Insta 360 Pro 2, an 8K stereoscopic (true 3D) camera is currently £4500, so out of the question out of the scope of a major investment in 360 video or a high-profile project. The investment in the ambisonic field recorder was well worth it, however; it enabled far better audio capture, with the on-board microphones being almost completely overwhelmed by wind noise.

Implications for teaching

I think the application of 360 video for teaching is a strong one. This project was a test case for the team, to see how the technology comes together and what is feasible in terms of final products.

360 video and imagery evokes a strong sense of presence when viewed in a head mounted display, and even on a screen, it offers a more engaging experience than a static image or fixed-point video. 360 video has advantages over immersive VR in that it can be used with a wide range of simple phone mounts, and doesn’t require a dedicated headset.

I am incorporating 360 photography as a lab tour in another project, and feel that this kind of material is extremely useful for projects involving field trips, dangerous or hard to access environments and one-off events, to allow students to:

• have a more direct replacement of events they can’t attend
• review or revise events or locations they have visited previously, or
• have pre-visit familiarisation with new situations or locations.

Moodle & Blackboard

The learning management system (LMS) is a crucial part of modern education provision. Amongst other things, it allows for students to access, and teachers to share learning materials and activities, and is a key part of engaging students in knowledge creation and learning community development.

I have around five years experience of using Moodle, most of it as a system administrator for three sites. I was responsible for all areas of local system administration, including:

• providing support to users, and managing support provided by the rest of the team
• introducing theme changes and updates to keep the sites looking modern and improve usability
• providing methods to load course users and information
• coordinating system updates with the hosting company that managed the installation.

I introduced the Edwiser RemUI theme to two of the sites to improve usability for learners and staff, and allow for a more modern experience than the standard Moodle theme. This theme allows for a more visual course layout page, and the ability to chunk content into discrete sections, overcoming Moodle’s propensity to create long scrolling course pages.

Combined with introducing standardised icons for course sections, this allowed for a much more streamlined experience for learners, with clearly defined activities, support and an obvious learning pathway to follow.

I also introduced a ticket management system and a rota for learning technologists to provide day-to-day support for learners and staff, ensuring that any problems that arose were addressed in a timely fashion.

I also produced training guides for course administrators to enable them to manage their courses effectively, and add new users to the system. I supported both learning technology staff, and broader staff groups with Moodle training as required. I acted as the technical lead for the transition of one Moodle system to Totara, to manage internal staff training. A presentation I delivered as an introductory session about Totara for service administrators, and a plan for a full online Moodle training programme for course facilitators can be downloaded below.

I have used Blackboard for several years, at the course management and creation level. During my time at The Christie, I supported multiple Master’s level modules offered in conjunction with the University of Manchester. My support included working with the subject experts to refine their content, and create specific learning material such as videos, message boards and activities. It also included ensuring that the courses were scaffolded appropriately, with clear instructions and layouts. I used iconography to provide visual prompts and signposts to learners, so that they had a clear view of what they needed to do, read and engage with each week. This consisted of a set of icons combined with lists at the top of the page to provide an overview for the week. For some courses, I also acted as an active e-learning supporter – helping to prompt discussions and help with problems.

WordPress Development

WordPress started life as a blogging tool, but is now widely recognised as a very capable CMS (Content Management System), and it now powers a huge number of websites – and blogs are just the tip of the iceberg. WordPress is inherently extensible, it supports a very wide range of plug-ins that can combine to create just about any kind of website you might need. WordPress can even power learning management systems with plugins such as LearnDash.

When I wanted to create a community-based learning platform as part of my Master’s work, WordPress was a natural fit. I had used it before and knew that there were plug-ins I could use to achieve the main aims of the project. I initially planned to use BuddyPress, a plug-in I was already aware of and one that is, like WordPress, supported by a broad community. However, I quickly ran into some issues with the fact that BuddyPress has a fairly slow development cycle, and it wouldn’t do everything I wanted. I discovered a fork of BuddyPress called BuddyBoss, which was run by a commercial company. However, it also came with a solid theme that was mobile-friendly by design. Since this was important, and I did have a budget when working with this project, I chose to invest in this plug-in. The addition of BuddyBoss allowed for the WordPress site to instantly gain full social network functionality, encompassing groups, status updates, post walls and other Facebook-like functionality.

The other key plug-in used on this site was Pods, a framework for extending WordPress with custom post types and taxonomies. The site uses several custom post types, including two different ones for submitting visual cases, one for submitting useful papers, and one for help documentation. Custom taxonomies are also used to help filter and organise content, and provide context to each post. Pods also provides for templates, which can be specified for different post types. For example, this allowed me to take content submitted via a form consisting of text fields and multiple image submissions and organise that into a coherent page with different sections, image galleries and carousels.

The versatility of WordPress allowed this project to be built; without it is doubtful that I would have been able to produce something to this standard with the budget I had available. If I were creating a similar site again, the main thing I would do differently would be to research and test different hosts because a WordPress site with a large amount of plug-ins requires greater resources than more basic sites. This affects the potential speed, and if a site is slow, people are reluctant to use it. The other thing I would do is to set a ceiling on the initial feature set. It’s easy to over design a project like this, and end up with something that is too complex.

The link below allows you to download a copy of a presentation about the network site that I gave to radiologists at the hospital.

As mentioned previously, this website is also using WordPress. It also uses Pods. In this case, the Pods are used for custom taxonomies to categorise each section of the portfolio, and to provide a custom post type and tagging system for the evidence entries. In part, this allows for the additional evidence at the bottom of each page to be added automatically according to which categories the evidence belongs to.