Best Practices for Live 360 Video

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1 O Z O L I V E O Z O B e s t P r a c t i c e s Best Practices for Live 360 Video VR is a new medium, and live 360 video production is perhaps the most intense, stressful, and gratifying way to create VR content. As always, careful planning will reduce risk and help ensure that the production goes smoothly. In this section we share some of our early experiences with 360 video productions using OZO Live. Many aspects of live 360 production are shared with standard live video production; these are out of scope for this document. Our focus is on the unique aspects of 360. Camera Placement Camera placement is everything. Get as close to the action as you can! Sometimes, as in the first image, that means you're pretty far away: Sometimes it means you're up close and personal! PAGE 1

2 Always fight for camera placement.360 video works when the camera is close to the subject; it becomes boring when the camera is far away. (OZO's award-winning design makes it easier to convince reluctant producers to give you prime placement: It's the single most important thing you can do to make a compelling production.) Moving Cameras Moving cameras in 360 adds dimension and interest to a live production. While fast or uneven motion can definitely be uncomfortable at best, when used correctly, motion adds enormous depth and interest to your productions. OZO's excellent stereo capabilities provide high-quality binocular parallax in addition to motion parallax, providing a compelling sense of immersion. With OZO Live's digital pan feature, you can maintain the user's viewing direction even when using jibs and booms that lack automatic pan control. Please try out jibs, booms, dollys, and other motion platforms with OZO Live: you wont be disappointed!) Multi-camera Direction Like multi-camera television shows, 360 video productions are much more compelling with a skilled director managing the viewers' attention across multiple camera viewpoints. Try out the following best practices for multicamera shoots although we also recommend that you experiment and draw your own conclusions! Hard cuts are usually disconcerting for headset users. Start with a 1/2 second crossfade and season to taste. Use OZO Live's digital pan to set the most salient point of a camera's feed at the center of the frame before you switch to it. This feature is super effective when used to match viewpoints before switching. OZO Live imposes a 1 second delay on what the director sees. He or she needs to anticipate this delay in commands to jib operators, who operate in real time. Monitors for each camera are nice, but you don't strictly need them - after all, any camera feed shows you the entire scene in equirectangular view. With a little practice it's possible to direct from the program feed alone. PAGE 2 OZO Live gives you all the tools you need to integrate into your regular broadcast workflow. Use all the tricks of the trade you're used to.

3 OZO Camera Usage Tips Rain OZO is not waterproof. However, with care, even under heavy rain (and some wind) you can produce a successful event. The two areas where water infiltration is a risk are at the buttons on the top of OZO, and the cable connections on the underside. Use clear packer's tape to cover the buttons; you'll still be able to use them. Also, wrap tape around your cables, sealing them to the body - this area is already protected by the camera itself and would only be a risk in a hurricane! Keeping rain off the lenses is another matter. We've had success by using a half-meter square of Plexiglas, mounted above the camera using a Magic Arm. This can be angled to protect the camera from driving rain. The rain shield is visible, but it's not as distracting as you might think: if you angle it correctly you can keep it out of a typical user's viewport for a typical production, and any raindrops on the shield are so close to the camera they're out of focus. An example: PAGE 3

4 Cold OZO behaves well in cold environments; no special measures should be necessary even when operating at temperatures well below its 0 specification. Heat Heat requires management: OZO does not like direct sunlight. Follow these steps to avoid a heat-related shut down: Get a fan! Some OZO resellers make integrated fans that have proven to be super successful in multi-camera festival shoots. Contact OZOsupport@nokia.com for more information. Avoid direct sunlight if possible. The camera's black body absorbs radiant heat. In the shade the camera can generally handle high ambient air temperatures, but in direct sunlight temperature can become an issue. Remove the battery pack. This reduces power usage slightly and improves cooling. Make sure you're using 4-sensor mode. This should always be the case for OZO Live. Shut down the camera when not in use. At the least, turn off broadcast. Cover the camera with a reflective shield or blanket when not in use. Managing Difficult Scenes LED Light Flicker. Indoor scenes for sports and concerts are often lit using LED lighting. In some cases the refresh rates on these lights will cause flickering. This is a common problem across all digital sensor technology. To reduce or eliminate this effect, try reducing the OZO camera shutter speed as low as you can this will allow more LED refreshes to occur during a single shutter, and can reduce or eliminate flickering. If that approach is insufficient, be sure to enable the temporal noise reduction in OZO Live. This should help as well. As a last resort, you can overexpose the image and compensate with color correction within OZO Live. Direct Sunlight. When outside, you might get direct sunlight on one or two sensors, causing color variation. You can compensate for this using the per-lens color correction capability within OZO Live. (Avoid using the auto white- and black-balance features in these cases). PAGE 4

5 Audio for Live 360 Audio is an essential component of the immersive 360 video experience: While our eyes give us about 110, or 170 if we turn our heads fully, our ears allow us a full 360 of immersion. OZO Live provides the user with multiple audio solutions: The Nokia OZO family of products provides fully immersive, spatial audio experiences. Like all of OZO Live, there are multiple ways to integrate the system into your workflow. For instance, if you are looking for a single-camera experience using only OZO ambient audio, you can choose from among these formats: Loudspeaker 2.0 Loudspeaker 5.1 Loudspeaker 7.1 Binaural Ambisonics (first order) Pass through (8ch 48kSpS 24bit) You can opt to De-Embed OZO audio before it reaches OZO Live, mixing externally and reembedding into OZO Live via SDI before you send your feed to the encoder. PAGE 5

6 Some Con guration Examples One OZO, one encoder, external audio only Create mix with external mixer Embed audio upstream of OZO Live Configure OZO Live for passthru Multiple OZOs, OZO ambient audio only Audio from OZO Live Switch audio along with camera Trigger scenes on mixer Multiple OZOs, external audio only, unswitched Separate mixes for each OZO Requires 6 output busses per OZO (This becomes your main constraint on the number of cameras you run!) Embed audio upstream of OZO Live Configure OZO Live for passthru. Delay not required. Multiple OZOs, ambient audio PLUS external audio mix De-embed OZO audio downstream of OZO Live Delay all external audio by ~1 sec Separate fixed mixes for each OZO (mixing both ambient and external) 6 output busses required per camera Re-embed 5.0 audio downstream of the switcher Slave the audio mixer to the video switcher PAGE 6

7 S u p p o r t The entire OZO team wants to make sure your experience with OZO Live is awesome. We are ready to help, and are eager for your feedback. OZO Live Forum The OZO Live Forum is a place for OZO Live users and partners to exchange information. It may be found as part of the "Support and Community" section of the Nokia OZO website, at Support Registered users of OZO may access the OZO Support team via at OZOsupport@nokia.com or online form at Customer support requests will be responded to within 24 hours. It helps the whole community if you report any issues you find with OZO Live. Please run following command in the folder that you ran the ozo_live application. $ sudo /opt/nokia/ozo_live/bin/report.sh Or go to the Support Tab and click Download Report: Report_ txt.gz is generated, please attach the file in the support request Then you will see report_xxxx.txt.gz in the same folder. Attaching this file to your support request will help the support team diagnose your issue quickly and efficiently. PAGE 7

8 L e g a l I n f o r m a t i o n OZO Live ships with both third-party and open source software. A listing of the open source software and the accompanying license terms is included in a.txt file in the software package. Please read the applicable license terms, listed here: Your use of the Licensed Software is only permitted if you comply with the terms and conditions of the open source software licenses included in the.txt file. Copyright Nokia Technologies Ltd. and/or its subsidiary(-ies). This OZO Live software, including the accompanying documentation, is protected by copyright controlled by Nokia Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Unless you have signed an individually negotiated license agreement with Nokia, the license terms applicable to your use of this software are available at: If you have signed an individually negotiated license agreement with Nokia, the terms contained in that license agreement shall govern your use of this software. PAGE 8