I’ve been blown away by the amount of discussion on my YouTube channel about the Gear VR, and it’s probably headed in a direction that was a little unexpected. Where VR units have been more about gaming than anything else, in this case, the interest has definitely been in the category of movie watching.
And now that I’ve used the Gear VR for that purpose, I find myself going back to it again and again. Games are fun and totally immersive, but I don’t seem to spend more than 15 minutes on any one game before I decide to try something else out. On the other hand, I can very easily watch a whole episode of a show or, as I did for my viewers, watch an entire movie.
Entertainment is shaping up to be one of the key compelling uses for Mobile VR, and once you’ve slipped the headset on and entered that world, it’s very easy to just sit back and passively enjoy your video content. It’s almost a holiday on your own couch, unencumbered by the wires and cords that would potentially restrict you on the Rift.
The topic of most volume was how to load your own content. I’m sure this refers to ahem, “acquired” videos as well as other home video content. There are actually three areas of video content that seem to be accessible – the video camera folder, the standard folder within Oculus, and the 3D folder that sits within the standard video folder in Oculus. Sound confusing? It’s not really. Just hit play on the video below for a walkthrough of the process and how it translates to the Oculus Cinema presentation.
File transfers were made easy using a Dual USB drive from Sandisk, but you could just as easily copy across from a PC or from the local file system or Micro SD card. The only caveat here is the frame rate is lower than hoped for as I’m recording the screen using a screen recording app. Still it should give you a good idea of what to expect once you get your hands on one of these headsets.
Jon says
Hi,
I have the new Samsung s7 which came with a free Gear VR headset. I followed your guide, however Oculus Video will not find any videos on the SD Card. It comes up with a message that says I need to record video or copy videos to the phone.
I used Samsung’s built in SD Card Formatter to format the card. Do you know what can cause this? Did they remove SD Card support?
Thanks,
Jon
Jon says
I forgot to say that the same video works when on Phone storage. I just copied the Oculus folder to the SD Card so it would be in the same structure and then removed the video file from the Phone Memory.
Ritchie says
Hi Jon, thanks for the heads up. I’m going to look into this and come back witwh an answer. I have a Galaxy S7 and Gear VR so I’ll try to load videos from the SD card slot.
Kane says
I am also trying to figure out how do this. Followed your guide but the was no my movies and then my video folder inside my oculus folder i only had a videoshots screenshots folders.
Alex Wells says
Ritchie. Big Fan.
Just bought the Galaxy 7 and the Gear VR after watching your reviews. I followed your tutorial on loading ‘my’ videos into the oculus folder, but for some reason when the phone is linked to my hi-fi via bluetooth, there is no sound… There is sound present and bluetoothed over on my personal videos, just not the movies (the sound is present when not bluetoothed).
Any ideas? Am I copying them over correctly?
Help would be greatly appreciated.
Alex
Irfan says
Good day,
I have a Oculus Gear VR and Galaxy S7 edge combo. My problem is that no matter what I do, I cannot find my videos in the oculus theater. I have tried copying my *.wmv and *.mp4 videos from my SD card onto the phone memory (in Oculus/Movies then tried Oculus/Movies/My Videos) but nothing shows up in the cinema.
Could anyone help me out here.
Thanks,
Irfan