Injecting the Metadata

If you search for how to add metadata Google-Yahoo will give all the wrong stuff. Everything is about editing and changing existing data fields. We want to ADD a field. But some geek decided the term “inject” was more accurate. So, search for how to inject metadata. You’ll find what you are looking for… groupthink sucks.

Or… do one of these things.

Flickr Only

If you only plan to use the image only on Flickr and let Flickr handle all the display of the image, just up load the image as normal, but with ONE change. Over in the left column of the Flickr upload page add the tag equirectangular. That is it. Way simple. (example – I renamed the image but, did NOT ‘inject’ any metadata. I did add the Flickr tag equirectangular.)

Oh… do use the Flickr upload web page.  Some other upload processes think because it is going to the web, the metadata is just wasted file space and minimum file size is most important. Thus, they strip out the metadata in the upload.

If you change/add the image tag after you have uploaded it, you may have to clear your Flickr cookies and restart your browser to see the images in 360VR. I didn’t. I suspect most won’t. But, images you view without the tag and later add the tag to, may cause you to need a cookie clear for them.

Flickr & The World

Facebook got into how to use an injector and other 360 image things in a blog post. See Editing 360 Photos & Injecting Metadata. This information works for Flickr and Google. There is a good deal of useful information on the page for a number of scenarios.

Photoshop and Adobe

The Adobe tools built into the apps are great for editing existing tags and adding STANDARD tags. I tried for an hour to find out how to add a tag using Adobe. It is possible. But, expect brain damage if you go that route.

Fortunately, there is a simple workaround.

In Adobe products in their FILE menu drop down is the access to an image file’s metadata File Info. When you open File Info you can get to a place where Adobe allows you to APPEND metadata.

Since you can’t create metadata fields, not easily, you need to get the data from some place so you can append it.

Fortunately, someone made a template for use with Adobe products. Find:

equirectangular-template.xmp

I found Topher McCulloch’s equirectangular template and used it. The file contents read:

<?xpacket begin=”” id=”W5M0MpCehiHzreSzNTczkc9d”?>
<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x=”adobe:ns:meta/” x:xmptk=”Adobe XMP Core 5.6-c111 79.158325, 2015/09/10-01:10:20        “>
   <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=”http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#”>
      <rdf:Description rdf:about=””
            xmlns:GPano=”http://ns.google.com/photos/1.0/panorama/”
            xmlns:xmp=”http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/”
            xmlns:photoshop=”http://ns.adobe.com/photoshop/1.0/”
            xmlns:xmpMM=”http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/”
            xmlns:stEvt=”http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/sType/ResourceEvent#”
            xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”
            xmlns:tiff=”http://ns.adobe.com/tiff/1.0/”
            xmlns:exif=”http://ns.adobe.com/exif/1.0/”>
         <GPano:PoseHeadingDegrees>180.0</GPano:PoseHeadingDegrees>
         <GPano:ProjectionType>equirectangular</GPano:ProjectionType>
         <GPano:UsePanoramaViewer>True</GPano:UsePanoramaViewer>
      </rdf:Description>
   </rdf:RDF>
</x:xmpmeta>

This is a basic XML file and can be edited with any plain text editor to make other templates. Plus, there are other templates you can find and use. The various < and > symbols denote tag start and end and are important. If you haven’t edited XML, read up.

Get or make the file and put it in the folder:

C:\Users\[Win_Login_ID]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\XMP\Metadata Templates

Now you can append this information to your image’s metadata and the image will be treated as a 360-image by most services.

Non-Adobe

But, if you don’t have Photoshop or other Adobe products, you can use YouTube’s equirectangular metadata injector. Wow, that’s some rocket science sounding stuff.

Download the 360° Video Metadata app for Mac or Windows. More information is available here: Google Support – Upload 360-degree videos.

More pages… links below.