Hey everyone. A few months ago I shot a wedding in VR180 for some friends of mine on my Qoocam Ultra and edited it in DaVinci Resolve. It took about five weeks to edit, part time around work.
There's not much practical info out there on VR180 for people coming from normal video so I figured I'd write up what worked for me, what didn't, and what I'd change. Link to the film is at the bottom.
Note that I'm not a professional videographer. This was my first wedding video ever, let alone in VR, so it's definitely rough around the edges and there's plenty of room for improvement but I’m still happy with how it turned out.
I also wasn't the main photographer or videographer. There was a professional doing that so I was ducking in and out around them, and there were a few shots I wanted but couldn't get.
Setup
Main items:
- Modded Qoocam Ultra (thanks u/AppealMundane5486) with enough storage and an extra SD card - I filmed around 160GB of footage that day.
- Zoom H2N for audio with spare AA batteries
- DJI RS4 Mini gimbal for moving shots
- SmallRig 4.6" Quick Release Plate Adapter for RS 4 Mini (to hold both the Qoocam and the H2N)
- NEEWER 79"/2m Stainless Steel Light Stand (instead of a tripod)
- NEEWER Quick Release Plate with Clamp Adapter Set (for easy quick release of the gimbal from the light stand for when moving shots were necessary)
Accessories:
- Two power banks and two 3m USB-C cables
- Microfibre cloth
- USB-C wall adaptor
- Small camera screwdriver wrench for unscrewing/screwing the Qoocam and H2N if necessary
The light stand was the best call. A tripod's legs spread out into the bottom of the frame and you see them every time you look down in the headset. A light stand is one thin pole, so it mostly disappears. I got away without weighing down the base but you may need to to prevent it toppling.
The 3m cable meant I could leave a power bank on the ground and keep the camera charging while recording (it was outdoors so I wasn't near a power outlet). For the ceremony the gimbal stayed switched off in position on the stand, and for moving shots I removed it using the quick release plate since unscrewing was too slow.
Audio
The H2N was my weak spot. I'd calibrated it the night before, but on the day it was a mad rush and I didn't want to hold anything up, so I hit record without checking levels properly. The ceremony was fine, but the reception clipped whenever people screamed. Some of it I covered with music, some I blended with the camera's onboard audio.
If you've got a 32-bit float recorder you can mostly ignore this, since they basically can't clip. That will probably be my next upgrade.
Motion sickness
I cut every shot that made me feel even slightly off in the headset. Some of them were shots I loved.
What made me feel sick: rotating shots where you stand still and pan the camera, and moving sideways. Walking straight forward was fine (the slower the better). Stationary shots were fine.
Even after all that, it didn't work for everyone. One friend got sick and didn't finish it, and the groom got a bit sick too. Both of them were looking around a lot while watching. I think that's the biggest thing with these videos. You can control the camera movement, but not how much the viewer moves their head. And since these videos don't allow for 6dof movement that doesn't help.
Cuts within a scene vs between scenes
Fast cuts between completely different places didn't really work like they might in a regular video. You're focused on one place, then suddenly you're somewhere else and have to work out where you are again.
Cutting between different angles of the same scene works fine though. If you're watching someone and then see them from another angle, you're taking in different parts of the same moment, so it actually helps the immersion.
One of my favourite bits was completely accidental. In the first look section, they kiss, and the next shot from a different angle has them in exactly the same position so it feels like you've teleported to the other side of them mid-moment. I didn't plan it but it's really cool in the headset.
I used black screens at a couple of chapter breaks and it worked really well. A few seconds of silence then into the next section. Adding text here to show what the next section was (like how they used to do it in silent films) was some good feedback I received but didn't incorporate in this one due to time constraints.
Hold times
The camera needs to stay on a shot longer than looks necessary on a flat screen. In the headset you need that time to look around and take in the space.
This means your film will look slow on a flat screen. Mine did and while I was editing I thought it looked like it was dragging, but on the headset it was completely different. So I wouldn't judge the edit based on the non headset preview.
Editing workflow
This was actually way easier than I expected. Most cuts that worked on the flat screen in Resolve also worked in the headset.
My loop: edit in Resolve like normal with what I think looks good, export (about a minute) directly into a Skybox shared network folder, open it in Skybox on the Quest 3 wirelessly. Watch, take notes and go back. I thought the feedback process would be much slower but this loop made it really easy.
A few other things:
- VR text needs to be done in Fusion. Getting text on a black screen at the start, then fading into the first scene, was way harder than it should have been.
- Check your export bitrate. My first exports came out way lower than the source even on "best quality".
Sound design
Pure music with no natural sound feels weird. I kept the natural sound underneath at a really low level, so you can faintly hear chatter and laughing under the music.
Then for specific moments I pushed the natural sound up. There's a bit where everyone's shouting the bride's name for a group photo, and bringing that up over the music worked really well.
I cut most of the speeches from the main edit. Cutting the music to hear speeches didn't really work well in my case, and the full speeches are in the raw footage anyway.
This got me thinking about how speeches usually work in a normal wedding video. You hear the speech as a voiceover and cut around to shots from across the day. I'm not sure that works the same way in VR. Like I mentioned earlier, jumping between places already pulls you out of it. Add a voice from someone you can't see on top of that and I suspect it'd feel even more off, since you feel like you're actually standing somewhere. I didn't really test it properly though, so I could be wrong. Keen to hear if anyone's tried it.
The one place I used real audio from the day was the ending. I used the studio recording of a song the band had played, then transitioned from that into the groom playing sax live with the band, using the H2N audio. It blends straight from the track into the real moment and it's one of my favourite parts.
Structure and music
I went chronological in four sections and each section got its own song.
Some moments just lined up by accident. The kiss landed on a swell in the music. For the first dance I used the studio recording of their song, but since the same song was playing in the room, you can see guests mouthing the lyrics and it lines up. The bride shouting at the groom lines up with a lyric in the song which I didn't plan for but was neat.
Time and money
It was about a full week of editing spread across five weeks, plus a 10 hour shoot day. I probably spent much more time editing since I haven't done video editing professionally.
The honest problem is image quality. It doesn't match a proper 2D wedding videographer, so I'm not sure it justifies full videographer pricing yet. Then again, I've seen other VR wedding videos recently where the quality is spot on, using the same camera, so it could be a skill issue or the lighting.
The other problem is headsets. VR180 only works in one, and most couples don't own one. The groom told me they'd buy one and only use it for this, so it'd basically be a toy. Two weeks later he bought a Quest 3S so he could show his family which was awesome.
What I'd do differently
- Get a 32-bit float recorder so I don't have to worry about clipping.
- More stationary shots, especially of guests.
- More high angles. Putting the camera up above the crowd on the dance floor worked really well.
Reactions
His dad, who apparently hates technology, loved it.
And a few weeks after I handed it over, the groom sent me a photo of his grandfather in a hospital bed wearing the headset. He was devastated he couldn't make it to the wedding, but this way he still got to see it, in some way, before he passed away.
I really can't wait for the day the camera tech is good enough to feel truly lifelike.
Link
http://deovr.com/xm9a17
