How to watch 360 videos on Linux

Question

My friend has been giving me MP4 files created using his Samsung Gear 360. Is there a way for me to watch them on Linux (for me, Ubuntu) without having to upload them to youtube/facebook?

I tried VLC but that didn't work.

I just want to use the arrow keys to look around the videos, just like facebook/youtube, but on my local system.

Solution 1

• VLC 3.0.0 stable has been released and with the Linux version I'm able to play 360 content!
• I'm using Ubuntu 16.04.
• Install instructions:
  • https://itsfoss.com/install-latest-vlc/
  • http://tipsonubuntu.com/2018/02/09/vlc-3-0-released-install-ubuntu/

I had trouble installing via the vlc PPA so I used Snap to install. Here's how I did it:

sudo apt purge 'vlc*' 'libvlc*'
sudo apt install snapd
sudo snap install vlc     # <== note: this is not 'apt'

Thanks to @Tomislav Nakic-Alfirevic for notifying us about the recent 3.0 release (Feb 2018).

Solution 2

VLC 3 declares support for 360 video playback with "navigation".

Solution 3

Maybe you are looking for VR Player for Linux because I was in a similar situation as you. The search for suitable software did not materialize. Well, enough to endure it - I decided, and started developing this application. So sht-vr-player appeared, and I hope that it will be useful to you as well as to me.

What can it do?

• View directory, convenient preview of media files.
• Support vr-photo (jpg)
• Support vr-video (mp4 - up to 4K, limitations in chrome, I hope they fix it soon)
• Ability to delete unnecessary media
• Ability to clear accumulated cache

It is available under MIT licence.

Solution 4

'Spatial Media Metadata Injector' needs to used with the file to inject metadata, then it will work as a flat picture in VLC 3

View more solutions

Comments

[Charles Sampson]

Thanks! It works! Looks like VLC 3.0 was released around Feb 9, 2018. I used "sudo snap install vlc" to install it (NOTE: the 'snap'). I had to uninstall my 2.X version.

[user3507286]

it's simple, because that's exactly what Charles Sampson asked. What it can? View directory, convenient preview of media files. Support vr-photo (jpg) Support vr-video (mp4 - up to 4K, limitations in chrome, I hope they fix it soon) Ability to delete unnecessary media Ability to clear accumulated cache

[user3507286]

MIT licence, feel free to use

[slhck]

Thank you, looks much better now!

[Ken]

As noted in another comment, 'Spatial Media Metadata Injector' is needed in order for (some) 360 videos to work with VLC - the video files must contain the required metadata.

[Alexey Vazhnov]

sht-vr-player.cf doesn't work any more. Where are the sources? Are they at gitlab.com/go-apps-XnjRcS/vr-viewer-for-linux ?

[user3507286]

gitlab.com/go-apps-XnjRcS/vr-viewer-for-linux/electron-versi‌​on