A website to display 360 degree image, or create embed code for inclusion in your and plus social media sharing.
One of the issues for people who have taken up 360˚ photos and video is just how to display them for the world to see. Making it harder, is how to embed these videos into other locations apart from Facebook or YouTube – for example your own website.
In our travels, we have also had these problems, but recently came across a dedicated website for 360˚ imagery called Memento360.
Usage
Using Memento360 is easy; simply create a login with a username and password – the basic version is as usual free – and then upload your video or photo taken on a 360˚ camera. We use the Ricoh Theta V and the VUZE XR and have found both to be excellent. The Ricoh has the better optics we think, which is not surprising considering the pedigree, and the VUZE is more adaptable, also allowing 180˚ panorama shots due to its architecture It also has a very good companion app and program.
Once you have taken a shot or video you can upload files and then view them in a chronological order or inside folders you can create.
Initially, an image /video will appear in its raw format, that is, no stitching has been done, but once double clicked, the website will render the image and show it in a separate window. It can then be panned around as it was intended to be seen and giving credit, even on a satellite internet connection, is quite fast.
From there, you have a number of options. The first is to simply load the previous image or the next for rendering. You can also create a standard photo from a 360˚ one, view the (rendered) image full screen, close it, add it to a collection you create or to an existing collection, delete it, rename it or the most important, share it. And of course, you can add the ubiquitous “like”.
Sharing
The sharing options let you publish it to the Memento360 boards for public / private viewing or send to social media (Facebook and Twitter) accounts. You can also share the rendered image via a link or embedded code in much the same way you can say with YouTube footage.
For WordPress users, there is a free plugin called MomentoPress for Momento360 that creates a “shortcode” you can add to a page letting you embed a 360˚ photo or video into a WordPress website.
The inline documentation is a bit vague for the plugin, so we went to the developer’s website to get an example of the syntax to use and replaced the embed string in that with the generated one. We now keep a copy of that syntax in a Microsoft OneNote page for future reference maing future embeds quick and easy.
Tutorials
The plugin besides, there are many tutorials on site taking you through using Memento 360 making its implementation very easy.
It will even show you how you can even create 360˚ panoramas for use in VR headsets such as Google Cardboard or the Samsung Gear using the tools Memento360 gives you.
Paid Plan
If you shell out some money – between USD$5.99 or USD$18 per month, you can add customisation to your 360˚ imagery, removing references to Momento360 entirely. For example, you can replace the Momento360 watermark with your own, or change the hyperlink coding.
Conclusion
In short, we have yet to find something better that covers all the common and well used bases of both social media and your own website for displaying 360˚ footage. The free version will suffice for many, and if corporate branding is required, it won’t break the bank.
Momento360 is easy to use, does what it says on the wrapper and is foolproof.