If you want to watch back your 360 videos in
VR inside the Quest 3, start by stitching your videos in your camera's software. If you're using Insta360 cameras, that will be Insta360 Studio. Right-click to export, and in the export menu, make sure you choose the 360 video option so it doesn't reframe your shot. I'd recommend using the H.265 codec for maximum quality and a bit rate of 100 megabits a second. If you have multiple clips you want to add to the headset, select them all, right-click, and follow the same process. Once your files are stitched and saved neatly into a folder, it's time to transfer them into the Quest 3. To do it, first, you'll need to register as a Meta Quest developer, which takes 10 seconds by following the link below. Yes, this is annoying, but you only have to do it
once and never again. Next, turn your headset on and open up the Meta Quest mobile app. Go to your headset, then headset settings. In here, you'll find an option to turn developer
mode on, so go ahead and do that. Next, connect the headset to your computer
through a USB-C cable. Now, put the headset on and confirm the connection. For PC users, this will give you immediate access
to the files on the headset. For Mac users, I'd recommend downloading
the free SideQuest app, which essentially acts as a file browser as it would be on PC. So go ahead and navigate to the DCIM folder and drag and drop your 360 video files across. Done! Next, put on the headset. You will need to restart it. Then you can find your video files by going
to Files > Media, and they should be in there. To view a 360 video, select it, then down the bottom
right, change the viewpoint to 360 or whichever format it is, whether that be 3D or VR180. The exact same process applies for 360 photos, by the way. Follow the same workflow, and the
photos should be there in the media section.
What if, however, you've already used up a lot of
storage on the headset and you want to add a whole bunch of 360 videos without having to delete anything? Well, you can do that by streaming. There are a few ways to do this. The first one is
YouTube VR, which I personally wouldn't recommend unless you do want to share your video publicly. The reason being, the YouTube VR app
doesn't play back videos at full quality, and in order to view them in full quality, you'll need to watch them inside the
internal browser of the Quest 3, which is a giant pain in the... Instead, you might want to consider an app like Skybox VR Player. It's not super expensive, and it's a great option to stream 360 photos and videos from your computer to the headset. And it also has features that the inbuilt gallery doesn't have, like the ability to adjust the horizon, the pitch, the yaw, the tilt, as well as doing color correction to
your clips if they're not displaying quite the way you'd hoped. You can also use the Skybox app if
you sideloaded your files directly to the headset, where you can find them in the local files menu. There's also another platform called DEO VR, which which differentiates itself by again being a higher
quality 360 video player. However, viewing your video through this app isn't a speedy process, since they moderate all the content,
which takes hours, including private unlisted uploads.
Then, when it's published, you have to manually input the video ID, which is a bit of a clunky process.
Hence why I'd recommend Skybox over it. There's also an app someone in the comments told
me about called Immer Gallery, which is a 360 photo viewer for Quest 3, where you can obviously view your photos at full quality, as well as add visual and sound effects. But I don't see those as super necessary. So there you go, that's how you watch back your
360 video inside the Quest 3. If you have any other tips or tricks you want to add, let me know down below. And if you're just getting
started with 360 videos and you're not quite sure which accessories to buy for your 360 camera, I've just written a completely free ebook where I break down my ultimate list of budget-friendly
360 video gear. Inside, you'll find my top camera recommendations, camera mounts, accessories, software, and more for achieving professional looking 360 videos. So feel free to download the
guide completely free by following the link below. And if you're wondering how else the Quest 3
can be used in your content creation process, I did an experiment where I edited an entire
YouTube video inside the Quest 3 to try and figure out whether it would
make me more productive with my video editing or not. You can find the full results in this video here, as well as my thoughts on whether you
should do the same.
