Does adding 360° metadata change the video?
No. It adds a few small boxes describing the projection. The frames are copied byte for byte and the file size barely changes.
Free · runs in your browser
Add 360° metadata to a video in your browser
Mark an equirectangular MP4 or MOV as a 360° video, or take the marker off a file that should play flat, without installing an injector app.
To make YouTube and VR players treat a video as 360°, its file needs spherical metadata: a small marker saying the picture is an equirectangular projection to be wrapped around the viewer. Here you open the MP4 or MOV, turn on 360° video in Edit & clean, and press Download new file; the marker is added and the video itself is untouched.
This is the same job Google’s Spatial Media Metadata Injector does, without the desktop app. It works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebooks and phones, and the file never leaves your device. It also works the other way: turn 360° video off to remove spherical metadata from a file that should play as a flat rectangle.
One limit up front: the marker this tool writes describes a monoscopic equirectangular video, the format most consumer 360° cameras export. Stereoscopic 3D layouts and VR180 need another tool, as explained below.
How to add 360° metadata to a video
Open the exported 360° video
Press Open a file (Ctrl/Cmd+O) and choose the stitched MP4 or MOV exported from your camera’s app or your editor, not the camera’s raw file.
Check its shape
In Video, the resolution should be twice as wide as it is tall, such as 5760×2880 or 3840×1920. That 2:1 shape is the sign of an equirectangular frame.
Turn on 360° video
In Edit & clean, switch on 360° video. To remove spherical metadata instead, switch it off.
Download and upload
Press Download new file (Ctrl/Cmd+S). To double-check, press Inspect new file and look for the spherical boxes in Report. Upload that copy to YouTube or open it in your VR player.
What 360° metadata is
A 360° video is stored as an ordinary flat video. Each frame is the whole sphere unrolled onto a rectangle, the way a world map unrolls the globe: the horizon runs across the middle, the sky is stretched along the top and the ground along the bottom. Without a marker, a player shows exactly that stretched rectangle.
Spherical metadata is the marker. Google published the format in two versions, and players look for one or both:
| Version | Where it sits in an MP4 | What it records |
|---|---|---|
| Spherical Video V1 | An XML block in a uuid box inside the video track | Spherical, stitched, projection type (equirectangular), stereo mode, stitching software |
| Spherical Video V2 | sv3d (with svhd, proj, prhd, equi) and st3d boxes inside the video’s sample description | Projection (equirectangular or cubemap), orientation, stereo mode |
Because the marker is metadata, adding it changes no pixels and costs no quality. In MP4 and MOV only the metadata boxes are rewritten, so even a large 8K file is ready in moments. To see whether a file already has spherical metadata, open Report and look in the MP4/MOV box tree for sv3d, st3d or a uuid box in the video track.
Before you add it: is the video really equirectangular?
Metadata tells a player how to wrap the picture; it cannot fix a picture in the wrong shape. Most problems with 360° uploads come from adding the marker to the wrong file.
- Raw camera files are not ready. Dual-lens 360° cameras record two circular fisheye images (Insta360’s
.insv, GoPro MAX’s.360). They must be stitched and exported in the camera’s app or a plug-in first. YouTube’s own help puts stitching as the first step. - The frame should be 2:1. An equirectangular frame covers 360° across and 180° top to bottom, so it is twice as wide as it is tall. A 16:9 file is almost certainly a flat, reframed export.
- Reframed exports should stay flat. If you used the camera app to point a virtual camera around and export a normal video, do not add 360° metadata to it.
- Camera apps often add it already. Many exports labelled “360°” carry the marker. Check Report before adding it again.
| Typical export | Size | Shape |
|---|---|---|
| 5.7K 360° | 5760×2880 | 2:1 |
| 4K 360° | 3840×1920 | 2:1 |
| 8K 360° | 7680×3840 | 2:1 |
| Reframed flat video | 3840×2160 or 1920×1080 | 16:9 (no 360° metadata) |
Uploading a 360° video to YouTube
YouTube’s help for 360° uploads lists the order of work: stitch the footage, edit it in a VR or 360° sequence, add the metadata before uploading (Adobe Premiere 2019 or later can do it on export, or Google’s tools), then upload.
- Add the metadata here and download the new file.
- Upload it as usual. YouTube notes that 360° playback can take up to an hour to become available after processing.
- Watch it on a computer before publishing. A 360° video shows a pan control in the top-left corner and can be turned by dragging or with the W, A, S and D keys.
If it still plays flat after an hour, the metadata did not reach YouTube. The usual causes are uploading the original instead of the new copy, or running the file through an editor or converter afterwards, which can drop the spherical boxes.
Other platforms and headset players that support 360° video look for the same kind of marker; check their upload help for size and frame-rate limits.
Compared with Google’s Spatial Media Metadata Injector
The Spatial Media Metadata Injector is Google’s open-source desktop tool for the same job, part of its spatial-media repository. Its last packaged release, v2.1, came out on 27 August 2018, with a Mac build for Intel processors (OS X 10.13 or newer) and a 64-bit Windows build; it can also be run from its Python source.
When to use which
- This page: a quick, monoscopic equirectangular marker on an MP4 or MOV, on any device, with nothing to install.
- Google’s tools or your editor: stereoscopic top-bottom or left-right 3D, VR180, or spatial audio, none of which this tool writes.
360° video metadata: questions
Why does YouTube show my 360° video as a flat, stretched picture?
Either the file has no spherical metadata, or YouTube has not finished processing the 360° version, which it says can take up to an hour. Check the uploaded file in Report here, add the metadata if it is missing and upload again.
Can I add 360° metadata to an MKV or WebM?
Not here. The 360° video option works for MP4 and MOV only. Google’s V2 specification defines a WebM form, but this tool does not write it.
Does it support stereoscopic 3D or VR180?
No. It writes monoscopic equirectangular metadata only. For top-bottom or left-right 3D and VR180, use Google’s spatial-media tools or an editor that exports those formats.
Can I remove 360° metadata from a video?
Yes. Turn 360° video off and download the new file. Players will then show the full unwrapped frame as a flat video.
Does it add spatial audio metadata?
No. Spatial (ambisonic) audio has its own metadata, which this tool does not write. Keep it in your editor’s export if you need it.
Is my 360° video uploaded?
No. The file is read and rewritten in your browser, which also means there is no size limit set by a server.