Facebook has rolled out a pair of new tools to help publishers who are using 360 videos: guided tours and heatmap insights. Here’s how they work.
Guide
Guide is a way for you to highlight points of interest to your 360-degree video experience.
Guide is on by default. When users watch your video, they will be taken to whatever places of interest you select. Or they can swipe to leave Guide mode and explore your video.
To add Guide to your 360 videos, make sure to select the “This video was recorded in 360” format when uploading. Then:
- Go to the “360 Controls” tab.
- Check the “Enable Guide” box.
- Play your video to find points of interest you want to make sure your viewers see. Pause your video at those points and click on “+ Add Point” to add the points to your Guide.
Here’s how GoPro, The New York Times, and ABC News have used Guide.
Heatmaps
Want to know which parts of your 360 videos people are spending the most time looking at? Heatmap, a new tab in the Video Insights tool, will show you.
As the name indicates, Heatmap will visually show you a colored map of the “hottest” parts of your videos.
“This information is pulled from aggregate data of our view ports, measuring every time your viewer moves 30° within the scene,” according to Facebook.
Here’s how it will look:
As Facebook noted in Facebook’s blog post, it would definitely be worthwhile to make sure you include the “hottest” parts of your video in your Guide.
Heatmap will only be available for any videos posted since May 1 that have accumulated more than 50,000 unique views.
Image Credits: Facebook
