MP4 must contain equirectangular projection metadata

I'm Stuck
1

Platform category: Scaniverse Web

  • Device Model & OS version: Windows 11 w Chrome browser
  • NSDK or Scaniverse version:

Hi, I’m trying to upload my first 360 video (under 5 minutes) via web and I keep getting the message “MP4 must contain equirectangular projection metadata”. I have specifically injected 360 metadata and verified that it’s correct by uploading to youtube where it is successfully recognized as 360.

Is there a tool and/or specs for what the online upload requires?

Thx, Scott

2

Hello Scott,

Please make sure the video is exported as a stitched equirectangular MP4 and that the final file is 2:1 aspect ratio. If you have ExifTool available, you can verify the file by running exiftool -XMP-GSpherical:ProjectionType -s3 yourfile.mp4 — it should return equirectangular.

Let us know if you have any further questions.

Thank you,
Anu | Niantic Spatial Support

3

Thanks for the reply and additional info. For anyone else in the same boat, here’s what I found to solve the problem (courtesy of Claude):

Why exiftool isn’t seeing XMP-GSpherical:ProjectionType

GSpherical metadata is not regular XMP. Despite the namespace name, XMP-GSpherical tags are written into the video track of MOV/MP4 files, not at the top level like normal XMP tags. This is the core of your problem. Trek View

Specifically, Google’s Spatial Media Injector writes the spherical metadata as a uuid atom embedded inside the video track’s container atoms — not as a standard top-level XMP block that exiftool scans for. Exiftool can be made to write XMP-GSpherical tags that appear correctly formatted, but they won’t actually be recognized by players/apps because the uuid atom placement is what matters, and that’s what exiftool can’t write. Cweiske

This is why YouTube recognizes your injected files (it reads the uuid-embedded GSpherical block in the video track) but exiftool’s -XMP-GSpherical:ProjectionType -s3 returns nothing — it’s looking in the wrong place.

The solution is to write it where exiftool can also see it, using exiftool directly in addition to the Spatial Media injection. The command that actually works:

exiftool -XMP-GSpherical:Spherical=true -XMP-GSpherical:Stitched=true -XMP-GSpherical:ProjectionType=equirectangular -XMP-GSpherical:StitchingSoftware="Spherical Metadata Tool" "My_video.mp4"

Claude actually patched the Google injector tool to do this automatically for me from now on. Hope it helps!

Cheers, Scott

4

Hello Scott,

Thank you for sharing the workaround and detailed explanation. I’m glad you were able to identify the cause and get to a solution. Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Thank you,
Anu | Niantic Spatial Support