Category Archives: 360 Photography

JAlbum and 360-photos – not quite working yet…

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I just posted about the JAlbum program I use to make my photo galleries on some of my other websites. Unfortunately, there are some issues that need to be fixed before I can start using them. I wanted to share this for anyone else who might run into the same problems and search for a solution.

JAlbum core, skins and 360-degree photos.

First, some terms. The “core” is the main part of JAlbum. My limited understanding is that it does not actually generate the web pages. That functionality is done by “skins“. There are many (MANY) skins available with different looks and features. Some support 360-degree photos, for example, while others do not.

I use the PhotoBlogger skin:

https://jalbum.net/en/skins/skin/Photoblogger

I switched to this because is supports the GPS data I embedded in my photos (geotagging), allowing site visitors to see where the photos where taken. It does this very well:

I recently learned that PhotoBlogger also supports 360-degree photos, so I made a test gallery of some of my images. What I immediately saw was that the images were too “zoomed in” when presented. In the two images below, there left one is the default (notice the magnifier slider at the bottom left is about halfway) versus the right image, which is zoomed all the way out, closer to where the image should be:

If we assume the slider is 1-100, then the default is around 50. To change this in JAlbum, you have to go to each image individually and EDIT it. When you enter EDIT mode, there is a special category for 360 images:

The “Horizontal Field of View” is the value the slider represents. Except, when JAlbum/PhotoBlogger displays them, it puts that slider in the middle. By changing that inside JAlbum, the first “core” but is revealed: it modifies the original JPG file!

The “core” bug.

Now, there is an option in JAlbum to allow this. In the settings you will find a checkbox (“Write xmp metadata to files”) that allows the program to update metadata inside your files, but even if it is unchecked, JAlbum still modifies the file. This seems to be a bug.

Adjusting the value in the EDIT window will modify the JPG file and add a new metadata entry that (at least in these test images) was not there before. You can use the command line exiftool utility to dump all the metadata as text, and then filter for the “FOV” entry:

exiftool /Users/allenh/Desktop/JAlbum\ 360\ Test/20160827_192818_VR360.jpg | grep FOV

Initial Horizontal FOV Degrees  : 42.0

Above, I had changed the FOV value to 42 inside the JAlbum EDIT screen.

It appears that if this entry is NOT in the JPG file, JAlbum/PhotoBlogger uses some default that is shown as the middle of the zoom slider. If this value does exist in the file, JAlbum/PhotoBlogger’s 360 viewer will use it instead.

And this reveals the second thing that may be a bug.

The “skin” bug.

In order to make the image zoom out in the gallery I had to reduce the value. The smaller the number, the more zoomed out the image will be shown at. I did a test and edited my images to a 1, which might be a bit too far “un-zoomed” but works…

I thought that was the solution, but then if I try to upload one of these modified-by-JAlbum JPG files to Facebook (which also supports 360 images), the result is an image that is zoomed all the way in, like a screen of pixels from the wall or whatever.

The FOV value seems to be handled backwards.

Indeed, if I look in other 360 software, such as Insta360 Studio, the FOV value uses a smaller number for “more zoomed in” and a larger number for “more zoomed out.”

For modern 360 images taken on an Insta360 X6 camera, the Insta360 Studio app seems to show a default value of 88 there — but this changed based on the “View Angle” that is selected. For “Mega”, it is 80. For Ultra, 79. For Dewarp, it is 99. Other values get adjusted to compensate for the fisheye lens. I do not think any of these settings where available in the RICOH Theta camera I used in 2016 for the test images I was working with originally.

Insta360 Studio appears to default to Mega with an 80 FOV for images that have not been edited yet. At least, that is what the UI shows. But when I export them as 360-degree JPG files (the camera uses a proprietary .insp format), I see this reported by exiftool:

exiftool X6-test.jpg | grep FOV 
Initial View Vertical FOV Degrees: 95
Initial Horizontal FOV Degrees  : 100

This tells me the old RICOH software did not put this metadata in, but modern Insta360 software does. And when I process an X6 image with the Horizontal FOV set to 100, I see the JAlbum/PhotoBlogger slider set all the way to the right – as expected:

This is too zoomed in. But upload the same file to Facebook gives a zoom level that works nicely:

What I don’t know…

I do not know what Facebook is choosing for the default Field of View, but it is clearly different than what JAlbum does with the same file.

I am unsure if there is a workaround currently. If I modify the image file so it renders properly on JAlbum/PhotoBlogger, I get an image that will NOT show up properly on Facebook and other places that support 360 images (assumption; I have only tried this on FB as of this post).

There are some very helpful folks in the JAlbum forum that have been looking into this. Perhaps a part 3 of this post will follow, once a solution is figured out.

Until then…

JAlbum supports 360-degree photos? Who knew!

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…other than anyone who ever read the fine manual.

UPDATE: I have since learned that this does not work as it should. I have a follow-up post on 9/12 that explains what has been figured out. As of right now, the below information is not entirely accurate…

Since 1996 (when I got my first digital camera), I have been sharing digital photos online. Mostly, these are from my old theme park site, DisneyFans.com. I have a less ancient site (*cough*, WordPress Blog) over at https://parkhopping.com which has links to my various photo galleries. I think I have well over 300,000 photos online at this point.

Every photo gallery program I have ever used has eventually stopped working for me as my galleries grew too big for them to handle. Originally, I created them on a Windows PC (back in the late 1990s) using some Java program and DOS-based utilities and such. There really was no good software for this in those early years. Heck, the thought of having more than a few dozen photos on a “personal home page” was ludicrous back in the days when sites like GeoPages (later known as GeoCities) offered you 512K (yep, K) of storage.

But I digress.

For the past two decades I have been using this free (well, it used to be; I think you have to buy it now) cross-platform photo gallery program – JAlbum:

https://jalbum.net

It works great. And I only recently learned it even supports 360-degree photos. As a test, I took a batch of photos from Atlas9 in Kansas City, KS and added them:

https://www.disneyfans.com/photos/misc/OtherPlaces/Kansas/Atlas9/360/index.html

Now I can share these images without having to use Facebook to do so. Check them out. It’s cool.

Or don’t. No biggie.

Insta360 X6 and August 12 and…

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As you read this post, please keep in mind that, while I am an old fart when it comes to 360 photography (I have been experimenting with this stuff for over 20 years), I am still a relative newbie with Insta360. I have only been following Insta360 since 2021 when I began researching their ONE X2 360-degree camera. Back then, the Internet seemed to agree that the ONE X2 picture quality was worse than the RICOH Theta camera I already, had but you could do more “fun things” with it thanks to a more advanced app. In January 2022, I became an Insta360 owner. I speak with a whopping five years experience following the brand.

Although I missed the release cycle of the ONE X2, I did follow the announcements and releases for the subsequent X3, X4 and X5 models.

On August 3, Insta360 posted this recap of their camera evolution to YouTube:

A day later, they posted this announcement (teaser?) for their next camera – the Insta360 X6:

I am posting this with the hope that one of you will know much more about Insta360 than I do. This release feels different.

First, in the past, Insta360 would post a cryptic teaser with a date, and no specific information about what they were going to announce on that date. Here is how they teased the X5:

As you see, nowhere did they give us the product model “X5” — but since the video clearly showed 360-degree footage, “everyone” assumed this would be the followup to the X4 and that it would be called the X5.

Assumptions are not always correct.

It goes without saying that assumptions are seldom always correct. For example, when the X3 was released, “everyone” assumed it would be called the “ONE X3” because the previous two “X” cameras were the “ONE X” and “ONE X2“.

“everyone” was wrong.

It looks like Insta360 is changing things up yet again. This time, instead of a cryptic teaser with an announcement date, we got an actual video with the product name and a date – August 12, 2026. Many think this is when you will be able to buy the camera. But for the X5 release, the date in the teaser was when the product name and details would be announced, with the availability (i.e., “when can I buy it?”) happening shortly after.

The first time the name “X5” was announced, we were given all the details:

…but for this X6, we just get a teaser with the product name and a date, and no details.

If August 12th is the date you can buy it, what are you buying? Do folks really think Insta360 is really able to just say “hey, buy the new model on this date, without knowing anything about it.” Even Apple doesn’t do that, and that is a brand folks used to line up to buy before they figured out how to handle preorders ;-)

So perhaps, for 2026 and the X6, “shrinkflation” is just hitting marketing. Instead of a teaser giving an announcement date, then an announcement date with the name and details, followed by availability, we just get an announcement without details, and then will get the details on the day we get to place our order.

We shall see.

Even if the only improvement is better low light, that would be enough to make me interested in having one. I currently travel with a DJI Osmo 360 for low light, and the X5 for everything else.

Fakefluencers and the Insta360 X6 and DJI Osmo 360 2.

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Whelp, the 360-degree camera rumor mill is running wild. Every since some registration paperwork was discovered about unannounced camera models, everyone is suddenly an expert on what the new models will be like – yet again.

Pro tip*: If you want to save some time, just block any influencer that is currently using photos showing fake images of hands holding the unreleased cameras, or boxes, or anything else. You can be assured these folks are not there to show truth – they are creating fake images for clicks. DO NOT TRUST.

You will then see your feed becomes much quieter.

Good luck, fakefluencers.

* There is nothing “professional” about a tip. Unless the person is a professional at giving tips, I guess…

We probably can’t trust X5 bloggers about the DJI Osmo 360 or Go Pro Max 2, can we?

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I first took “one shot” 360 photos in 2005 using a weird “half-mirror on a stick” thing called SurroundPhoto. It created images like this one, which were processed into 360 panorama QuickTime VR files:

360 Disneyland in 2005.

I later backed a kickstarter for a 3-lens device that was specifically designed for taking 360 photos (the failed 360cam). I’ve also owned a Kodak SP360, as well as several RICOH Theta cameras. The Thetas became my go-to camera due to their ease-of-use and form factor. My first Insta360 was the ONE X2, and that device is what switched me from RICOH to Insta360 cameras.

All this to say … I’ve been following and playing with this stuff for twenty years (and even longer if you consider the way we used to make 360 panoramas by taking a bunch of photos and stitching them together later with software). Here’s a 2002 example of photos I took specifically to make a 360 panorama out of using special software.

But I digress… since my 360 world has been Insta360 for several years (I’ve had the ONE X2, X3, X4 and now X5), YouTube has learned to show me lots of Insta360 YouTubers. Meanwhile, other camera manufacturers such as GoPro and DJI have their own set of YouTubers that I am completely unfamiliar with. I assume they are also “sponsored” and generally say good things about the gear they “review” just like the Insta360 reviewers do. My current pet peeve is the YouTubers who have hardware sponsors that provide them gear, then they lie to use and say they are unsponsored (this is illegal in the U.S.A. thanks to Federal Trade Commission rules that require disclosures).

But I digress…

Familiarity

Since I do not know the DJI YouTubers, I have no idea if I can trust what they tell me about the new DJI Osmo 360. Instead, many of us have been waiting to see what our Insta360 YouTubers say about it. After all, we are familiar with them and “trust” them because of it.

But can we?

If you are getting special perks from a company, such as free hardware, gift packages, and even being paid to make special tutorials from time to time, would you risk all of all that to tell us that a competing product is better? I cannot see why Insta360 would keep supporting content creators that promote another company’s product as being better.

With that said, I have found the Insta360 YouTubers take on the DJI Osmo 360 to be very interesting. I have also been watching the (unknown to me) DJI YouTubers discuss it, though since this is a new category for DJI, those videos have to explain the basics of what makes 360 video so cool to their audience that is likely unfamiliar. This makes the DJI videos a bit less useful for those of us that have been doing this stuff for years.

My ask of you…

Please leave a comment and share links to the “best’ DJI Osmo 360 review videos you have found. This can be dedicated videos, or comparison videos. I will share them here in a future post (or update this one).

BONUS: With the upcoming release of the GoPro Max 2 360 camera, I’d like to know similar GoPro channels that I should check out.

Thankes!

Insta360 X5 (?) camera coming out 4/22

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Insta360 has announced a new product reveal for April 22, 2025 at 9 a.m. EST. The name of the product is unknown, but the promo video clearly shows 360 camera stuff. This would make it a follow-up to the Insta360 X4 (which was a follow up to the X3, which was a follow up to the ONE X2, which was a follow up to the ONE X).

“All Day. All Night. All Angles.”

In addition to seeing that it is a 360 camera, there are also demonstrations of low-light video recording. The existing X series cameras have never done well in low light.

Also, at the end, someone smashes the lens with a hammer, then is shown replacing it using some kind of suction cup tool. This indicates user-replaceable lenses.

Improving low light is much needed. The lenses are a nice-to-have since a protruding/exposed lens on each side of the camera means damage can occur easily. Yet, I have never done damage to any of the 360 cameras I have owned over the years. Still, better to have this capability and not need it, than need it and not have it.

Unlike previous Insta360 releases I have followed, this time the video bloggers seemed to be allowed to release sample footage. As soon as this teaser posted, several other videos showed up with side-by-side videos comparing this new (unnamed) camera with the X4 or GoPro Hero 13. The low light capability far exceeds either of those.

While none of them can say the name of the product or mention specific details, apparently Insta360 allowed them all to start sharing footage ahead of the official announcement.

I am looking forward to seeing the details on April 22, 2025. When I receive my unit, I will begin posting some raw comparison videos of it versus the X4. Most of the “experts” do alot of manual settings, editing and processing so you never get to see what the camera is like “out of the box” when you just click record.

More to come…

My 360 photo/video (VR) experiments…

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I often forget to cross-post things between my project sites, so let’s do that right now.

I bought my first digital camera (an Epson PhotoPC) in 1996. I have had many others since then. In addition to photo cameras, I also had various camcorders including my first digital camcorder in 1999. It recorded digitally to 8mm video tapes (Digital8 was the format, I believe). I have also experimented in 3-D, with a NuView camcorder attachment (what a beast that was) and some other gadgets, and some 360 photography.

For 360 photos, you could originally just use a normal camera and take photos in all directions then “stitch” them together using special software. You can find examples of that in some 2002 photos I took at an Illinois Renaissance festival.

There was an early attempt to do “one shot” 360 photos by using a half mirror ball on a rod, and attaching that to the lens of a camera. You would shoot with the camera pointed up, which captured the mirror ball and all things going on around it. Those images could be processed back to panoramas with special software. I had a gadget called SurroundPhoto I experimented with back around 2005.

In the mid-2010s we started seeing consumer 360 cameras made by companies like Giroptic, RICHO and even Kodak. I have had a variety of those in recent years and am currently using an Insta360 X4.

Sharing 360 photos and videos is not easy. Facebook supports them, and YouTube supports video, so I created some Facebook Groups for sharing photos (I made them groups so others could share theirs’s as well) and new YouTube channels for sharing videos.

If you have ended up on my site for Insta360 topics, maybe you will want to pop by these groups/channels…

VR videos on YouTube:

VR photos on Facebook (post your own there, too):

Until next time…

Insta360 X4 360 camera with 8K

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The latest 360 camera from Insta360 has been released today. You can watch their Apple-like presentation here:

I became intrigued with 360 photography quite some time ago. Apple QuickTime VR was the first time I ever saw it, and that software allowed taking a bunch of photos in different directions and splicing them together in to on virtual reality image that let you look in any direction. That started back in 1995 though I did not learn about it until a bit later.

I got my first digital camera in 1996, and experimented with panoramic “stitcher” programs that let me stand in one location and take photos in all directions then stitch them together to make a large panoramic image. This is why you can find odd “panorama” folders in my only photo galleries, like this one from 2002:

https://photos.atthefaire.com/Illinois/Geneseo2002/Panorama/index.html

This led me to experiment with “one shot 360” systems, such as the SurroundPhoto attachment I owned. It was a half-mirror ball on a stick that mounted to a camera, then you took the photo pointing up, capturing all 360 around you. Software would later de-warp this in to a 360 image that allowed you to look in all directions, including limited up/down.

You can read about the various 360 devices on my old One Shot 360 web page.

Here is an example of a 360 photo taken using the SurroundPhoto attachment:

360 Disneyland in 2005.

I was excited to later learn of a new 360 camera that had three camera lenses and promised to take these types of images in one shot, without any post-processing or klunky add-ons. I backed the 360cam on Kickstarter, and that was quite the fiasco, taking so long to actually ship that other companies such as Kodak and RICOH came out with their own (and cheaper) units.

Over the years, I have owned:

  • 360Cam
  • Kodak SP360
  • RICOH Theta
  • RICOH Theta S
  • Insta360 X2
  • Insta350 X3
  • …and maybe one or two others I have fogotten about.

In the early years, Insta360’s “ONE X” had inferior quality compared to the RICOH, but it had more “fun” features and effects that could be applied via the app. At the time, I did not want a device that needed an app. I just wanted to take photos and download.

RICOH remained the king of 360, with the best photo quality in their $1000-priced Theta Z model, but I was not interested in spending that kind of money on a better 360 camera.

I ended up with an Insta360 X2 and installed found it the funnest camera I had ever owned. I used it more than all the previous 360 cameras I had owned, combined. When the X3 came out, I upgraded to get improved photo/video quality.

The X4 is a slightly larger and heavier camera, but adds 8K recording, and thus needed a larger battery. With the release of X4, paid ads (er, “review videos”) have popped up all over YouTube telling us how great it is. After the X3 release, I learned many of these “review videos” were misleading – stating facts that were incorrect (either lying, or just uninformed), or mentioning how great a new feature was that — we later found out — did not even work in the beta firmware the “reviewers” were using.

We’ll see if the X4 lives up to the hype.

With the X3 price down for $399, I highly recommend it as a fun camera. For $100 more, the X4 may be worth it — but I’d wait a few months and see what real users think about it.

To be continued…

Changing default view for 360 video on Insta360 X2/X3 and others…

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When you export 360 video to a format that can be uploaded to YouTube, Facebook, or other online service that supports 360 video, you get a wide, warped video file that looks like this:

For the Insta360 ONE X2 and X3 cameras, the front facing camera (the one opposite of the preview screen) will be the focal point of the video. In this case, it’s the entrance of the Whalebone Grill in the Awa (water) realm of the new-for-2022 Lost Island Themepark in Waterloo, Iowa. (This new park is pretty amazing with its backstory and unique themes.)

But, what if you wanted the 360 view to default to a different view when first played? Unfortunately, the Insta360 mobile app and desktop apps do not provide a way to do this (currently; folks have been asking about it for years, so maybe one day…). Often, the advice is to put the video in a video editor like Premier or Final Cut Pro and change it there.

Some quick web searching led me to this REDDIT post with a comment from user glitch007 explaining a way to use the free ffmpeg utility to reprocess 360 video and set the initial view:

Set initial orientation of 360 video? (Insta360 Studio)
byu/glitch007 inInsta360

ffmpeg has command line options to specify the X/Y adjustments (yaw and pitch) for the 360 video export. You can import the original MP4 file and export it out as a new MP4 with the view changed. If, for example, I wanted my Whalebone Grill video to start with folks facing the seating area, I could change that and it would look like this:

The command line option to do this is:

ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -vf v360=e:e:yaw=90:pitch=0:roll=0 "output.mp4"

In this example, “yaw=90” tells it to change the X view by 90 degrees. You could pass in 180 to make the video face the opposite direction. The “pitch” controls the looking up and down, and “roll” controls tilt (I believe; I haven’t actually tested it).

For the curious, the command line options mean:

  • -i … Input file.
  • -vf … Video filter (and any parameters it needs).
  • v360 video filter:
    • e … Equirectangular projection (the type of 360 format the video is in).
    • yaw / pitch / roll … Set rotation for the output video. Values in degrees.

glitch007 shared a timesaver where you specify a start and end section of the video and can quickly process just a snippet so you can see the results before doing the entire video. Using “-ss” sets the starting section, and adding “-to” lets you specify the ending second:

ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -ss 00:03 -to 00:08 -vf v360=e:e:yaw=90:pitch=0:roll=0 "output.mp4"

If you run that, you’d get a 5 second clips covering seconds 3 to 8 of the video, and could look at that and see how the view is. This allows quickly making changes to yaw/pitch/roll to get what you want.

I used the ffmpeg command line utility to do this, but there may be Windows/Mac programs that put a graphical user interface on it, making it easier for folks to use. If you know of a good one, please leave a link in the comments.

Thank you, glitch007, for this tip!

Looking for Insta360 .insp and .insv file formats.

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I am posting this in case someone else is doing the same searches I am.

I am trying to find details on the Insta360 ONE X2 file formats for photos (.insp) and videos (.insv). They contain meta-data I’d like to be able and parse to determine what kind of files they are. Going by filename is not enough.Th

This came up again today when someone contacted me with a ONE X2 video that was recorded in Bullet Time mode. It was not meant to be, but because the file is saved that way, the Insta360 Studio program will not allow reframing/editing the video.

Insta360 support (via app chat) has an auto responder if you ask about changing Bullet Time files to normal videos, so they have a way to do it — if you send them the files.

In the case of Bullet Time, is is recorded at 100 fps in 3K mode. It stores both lens videos in the same file. This is the same format used when recording normal 360 video at 3K / 100 fps. It appears only the meta-data is making the file appear one way or the other.

To be continued…