Import stitched 360 video from Gear 360 Action Director

Report · May 02, 2017

I've had a Gear 360 (2016) since last year and I've never had any problems importing stitched video from Action Director (1.0.0.2423) to Premiere Pro CC 2017 (Windows 10)

However, I bought the new Gear 360 camera (2017), which forced me to upgrade to the latest version of Action Director (2.0.1619.0).

Stitching still happens as it should in AD, BUT, when I attempt to import the stitched video (which plays fine in all of my VR viewers) into Premiere Pro CC, the media browser windows refreshes constantly while PP creates 10s and then 100s of 0KB *.pek files. I can wait for hours and the process doesn't stop. The only way to shut down the loop is to stop PP

PP tells me that there is no video information in the stitched files. Now, I've trawled the forums and followed all the possible remedies, including clearing and even deleting media caches files, re-stitching and re-importing the video files, but no matter what, PP refuses to import the complete files (just audio).

Action Director (2.0.1619.0) has no problem stitching files from the 2016 camera and PP has no problem import importing those files.

Action Director (1.0.0.2423) will stitch files from the old camera but will not stitch files from the 2017 camera (it produces distorted outputs, I'm guessing because of the slightly higher resolution on the new camera).

I've been at this on and on since yesterday and I've got no solution except to edit using Cyberlink's Powerdirector (which doesn't seem to have a problem with files from the new camera). I don't want this because I've paid for a bucketload of PP plugins (Mettle!) and I need them for this particular job.

So, does anyone know what might be going on?

Report · May 02, 2017

I've just tested importing a file stitched using the Action Director App for Android, and it worked. So the culprit appears to be the new version of Action Director for Windows (2.0).

Report · May 30, 2017

I don't consider this resolved. While I can use the app for stitching, it's preferable that I use my editing rig for all processing. What's interesting is that other editing software, such as PowerDirector 15, installed on the same PC, has no problem viewing or processing the same file. Once again, it's Adobe that seems to be fickle (and easily broken - my Mettle plugins disappeared after a recent update). Anyone else having a problem with Premiere Pro CC 2017 and the Samsung Gear 2017?

Report · May 31, 2017

I have the same issue with the latest version of adobe premiere (2017.1.1) and Action Director (2.0.1619). I can stitch the files produced by the Gear 360 (2017) in Action Director, I can play these files in 5K player and VLC but when I try and import them into premiere I get the error message "This file has no audio or video streams".

Report · Jun 02, 2017

I had the same issue, but resolved it by running the stitched files outputted from Action Director 2.0.1619 through FFMPEG with the following example command:

ffmpeg -i 360_0362_Stitch_YHC.MP4 -c:v copy -c:a copy 360_0362_Stitch_YHC_fixed.MP4

The fixed files that ffmpeg outputs retain the same quality (as it's not a reencode but just a copy) but they can be opened in Premiere now.

I show the workflow for this solution in a quick tutorial video:

How to fix The File has No Audio or Video Streams error in Premiere with Gear 360 Actiondirector - Y...

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Geoff

Report · Aug 12, 2017

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for having found this way around, impressive.

Even though this helped me work around the exact same situation, it obviously just is a work-around that I expect Adobe to fix.

Report · Dec 11, 2017

Yeas Same problem Here, Geoff workaround works great, still given that we pay monthly subscription this should have already been fixed.

Report · Dec 13, 2017

This may be helpful.

I have an 2 computers, an iMac and MacBook Pro, both running OS 10.12, Sierra.

I use Action Director to stitch Gear 360 for import into Prem Pro.

On the iMac it stitches fine. Premiere imports and I edit.

Action Director on MBP is problematic however. MBP-stitched files come out 20% smaller (than iMac's) and crash Premiere consistently. Prem cannot import them.

I suspect Aussiemandias is correct in blaming Action Director, a remarkably limited piece of software.