While we’ve worked with the Insta 360 Pro fairly extensively in the past, we hadn’t yet tested it’s capability for livestreaming. In particular, I was curious about viewing the livestream from within our VR headset, the Oculus Go.
Though there’s a few ways you could set up the livestream, I found the following to be the most reliable. You can follow along this process with this video capture of setting up the stream. After connecting the camera to my local wifi, I updated the WiFi settings on the camera to be in Access Point (AP) mode. I then connected the camera via cable to an ethernet port, which generate a new IP address for the camera. I plugged that IP address into the camera control app on my laptop which was on the same local wifi network and got connected to the camera. I could’ve theoretically streamed just over WiFi without plugging into the Ethernet, but I found the connection wasn’t strong enough when I later actually went to livestream. I could also use the camera control app on an iPad or other mobile device, but using a laptop to setup the livestream was much easier since I could access both the camera application and the livestream host on the same device at the same time.
With the camera control app on the laptop connected to the camera, I then went over to YouTube to set up the livestream host. YouTube makes this really easy – there’s an icon right on the homepage that allows you to “Go Live.” From here, I set up the stream. I named it, and made sure the stream was unlisted so that only I knew where to access it. YouTube provided me a URL and key code to plug into my camera control app. Back in the camera control app, I made sure it was in Custom Rtmp server, and plugged in the stream URL and key from YouTube. I ran the video feed at 4k, 30FPS, 15Mbps bit rate. I then hit the “Live” button to send the signal to YouTube. After a few moments, the feed came through, I toggled on the 360 video option, and I could then Go Live from YouTube to take the stream public. From real life to the live feed, I estimated about a 10-15 second lag.
To access the stream from in the Oculus Go, like most things in a VR headset, is straightforward if not exactly seamless. Within the headset, I opened the YouTube app, searched for my channel, and accessed the stream from my videos there. I could alternatively input the URL manually into the browser, but that process is a bit tedious when wearing using the headset. Watching a 15-second old version of myself from within a VR headset is probably the closest thing I’ve ever had to out of body experience.
