PSVR 360 video support works, needs improvement

Plex Players Gaming Consoles
1

I’m impressed. I was able to watch 360 videos on my plex server using the Sony Media Player app. Not perfect yet and many video formats not supported (by PSVR). It will be really great when I can use VR mode in PLEX app on PS4 to watch my 360 home videos that I store on the server. Especially if PLEX can optimize videos for PSVR

2

Now that I have a 360 cam and am getting lots of footage, I am even more interested in improved PSVR support with Plex.

As it is, PLEX is the best solution I’ve found to viewing my 360 videos and pictures on my PSVR. It was already great before the PSVR but it turns out to really enable that tech as well.

I store my 360 content on an external drive connected to my (MacMini) Media Server. I can then access them from the Playstation in VR Mode using the Sony Media Player app.

My 360 photos are viewable without any reformatting. This is so great!

My videos are another story… due to the somewhat limited formats supported by Sony Media Player app, I have to reformat every 360 video I take (with the Nikon KeyMission 360) into a format supported by the PS4. This is very slow, especially with 4k video, and takes up more space (multiple copies of videos in different formats…) and is confusing to get just the right codecs and formats (at first). Much of this is Sony not supporting these formats of course.

What would be great is if the Plex app on PS4 supported PSVR/360 videos (with more formats), the Plex app for iOS would support 360 and Cardboard VR modes, Windows with oculus, etc… so users could stream 360 content from their media servers to any of their HMDs on any platform. PLEASE! THANK YOU!

Additionally, if plex channels could include 360 youtube and any/all other 360 video streaming services (or websites) that would firmly park a lot of VR users in the Plex app/camp.

3

I don’t know if it was the recent updates or recent power outages but now the PS4 media player doesn’t recognize/show my Plex server. I can still use the Plex app on PS4 fine, but need to use the PS4 media player for 360 content.

Any ideas how I can fix?

4

Hi there, I’ve stumbled across your post by chance. This isn’t a plex query, I also have a Keymission and I’m battling to get the videos to work on PSVR.

Can you please tell me the the export settings that you use to encode your files so they work on PSVR. I’m using Adobe Premiere. I’ve tried h.264 MP4 / YouTube preset, at various different resolutions and bitrates, but none of the videos play in 360 through media player. (They do work if I upload them to YouTube and view them using the PS YouTube app in VR mode). I’m fairly certain the exported files have the 360 metadata embedded.

Thanks for your help.

5

Actually never mind. I kept playing around have now sussed it out.
It appears that media player was having issues on my PS4 originally, but it’s now working. When I was first testing low-res 360 videos, the VR option would not appear in the menu. I tried about 10 VR videos, they all only played with the video stretched out, not in 360. However when I exported a video using Premiere with the preset HD 1080p, this video worked. Then, and very strangely, all of the other videos that I had previously tested also started to work, I could enable and disable VR mode. So it appears that it wasn’t a problem with my export settings, but I’ll include the settings I use for videos below.

For anyone else looking to export videos for use on PS4 Media Player (Normal or VR videos are constrained to the same)

  • PS4 -
    H.264
    Res: 1920 x 1080p
    Profile: “High”
    Level “4.2”
    (Level 5.2 won’t work on PS4)
    Frame Rate: 29.97 (NTSC)
    Bitrate Encoding: CBR
    Target Bitrate: 50Mbs
    Key Frame Distance: 24
    VR Video: Tick
    (You can get most of the above settings configured automatically if you choose HD1080p Preset in Premiere when exporting).
  • If you are exporting the video for YouTube, the recommended settings are the same as above, except for ‘Bitrate Encoding: Variable 2 pass’

*For PS4 Pro, you can export videos in 4K, 3840 x 2160. Which is “level 5.2”

The resolution kind of sucks to be honest, it would be fine viewing a normal non-VR video at 1920x1080 as a single surface. However since this is 360, the entire 360 degrees of video footage need to be constrained to 1920x1080. It’s quite pixelated.

Time to go buy a PS4 Pro I think so that I can watch the videos from my Keymission in 4k, that will be a bit better but still not ideal.