Vimeo Follows YouTube, Twitter And Facebook In Adding Support For 360-Degree Videos

Vimeo just added support for 360-degree videos. The move is a little late according to critics, for YouTube, Facebook and Twitter already have this feature. However, the video-sharing company insisted that it’s not about being the first to launch support for 360 videos, but it’s about doing this right for its users.

On Wednesday, Vimeo officially joined the ranks of social media giants Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by updating its own website and adding support for 360-degree videos to it. The inclusion of this feature is noteworthy because more and more people are becoming fond of 360 videos. Thus, Vimeo’s content creators and filmmakers can now come up with content in this format and upload it to the site in the same format. Not only that, the company is now allowing filmmakers to monetize 360 content, as first reported by Venture Beat.

Vimeo admits that it took time for it to bring support for 360-degree videos to its platform. YouTube introduced this to its website back in 2015, while Facebook and Twitter have since followed suit. Despite this, Vimeo does not mind the criticism it is getting for being late to the game. “It’s more important for us to do it right than be the first,” the company’s senior vice president and general manager of its creator platform, Anjali Sud, said. “We have been working on 369 for some time. While some platforms have been experimenting on its publicly, we’ve been doing it privately.”

In light of the latest developments in Vimeo’s video-sharing website, the company is launching a “360 Video School,” which basically refers to a series of online tutorials creators can check out if they want to learn how to produce, shoot and edit 360 content. Vimeo is offering these tutorials, which range from basic to the most in-depth, to everyone for free.

“Vimeo has always been committed to preserving and delivering the highest quality video and our move into 360 expands our premium video technology solution to 360 filmmakers,” Vimeo’s director of video product Sara Poorsattar said in a statement, as quoted by The Verge. “Their stories now benefit from our advanced video compression and player customization tools, along with streaming and offline viewing in up to 4K.”

The support for 360-degree videos is present in both the website and the Vimeo apps for iOS and Android ecosystems. With the addition of this new feature comes the options to watch 360 content in either monoscopic or stereoscopic mode. Vimeo users can choose from supported VR headsets — Google Daydream, Samsung Gear VR and the Zeiss VR One — to view videos in stereoscopic mode. Engadget has learned that support for HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift is also coming in the near future.