from the its-like-you-have-eyes-in-the-back-of-your-head dept.
Here's another 360° video camera:
There are quite a few 360-degree cameras on the market now and they cover a range of needs. For professionals and major VR buffs, there's the Samsung 360 Round and for more casual videographers there are a slew of options from companies like Ricoh Theta, Garmin and Samsung. But there's now a growing market for those wanting to shoot high quality 360-degree video and decide later on during editing what images to focus on and what to cut out, minimizing how much effort is required during the actual video-capturing process. For that, there's the GoPro Fusion, the Insta360 and, as of today, the Rylo.
Rylo has two 208-degree wide-angle lenses that capture your entire surroundings in 4K resolution. Its stabilization technology even allows you to carry the camera while shooting and still get a smooth image. To edit your video, plug it into your iPhone and use the companion app to easily find what frames you want to include in your HD video or alternatively, download the whole thing for a fully immersive 360-degree viewing experience. You can then easily post your videos on Instagram, Facebook or share them directly with others.
It will ship with a 16 GB MicroSD card. How is that even remotely enough storage for 360° video?
Also at TechCrunch and CNET.
Related: Secure Digital 5.0 Standard: Memory Cards Intended for 8K and Virtual Reality Recording
YouTube Adds Support for Live Streaming 360-Degree Video
Virtual Reality Audiences Stare Straight Ahead 75% of the Time
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The SD Association has announced the SD 5.0 standard, which will specify memory cards with write speeds capable of recording 8K and 360°/VR video:
The SD Association, the multi-vendor consortium responsible for developing standards for Secure Digital flash memory cards, has unveiled the newest version of the Secure Digital standard, SD 5.0. The latest iteration of the standard has been released specifically to accomdate video capture, particularly the write speeds needed to record 8K (7680x4320) and 360° videos. To that end, the upcoming SD 5.0 memory cards will introduce the Video Speed Class labeling, as well as a newer protocol that takes into account new NAND flash architectures, enables higher transfer rates and supports multi-file recording.
In order to address the needs for video, the new standard will be tackling both transfer rates and the overall nature of writes with video recordings. The new standard does not introduce a new bus - the current UHS-II bus supports over 150MB/sec in full duplex mode, more than any SD card can currently handle - but rather the focus is on the cards themselves and how they behave.
In particular, the SD 5.0 standard takes into account the fact that recent, high capacity NAND flash chips feature larger block sizes (the smallest area of NAND flash memory that can be erased in a single operation) than previous-gen chips. For example, SK Hynix recently released planar MLC and TLC NAND ICs (integrated circuits) with 6 MB page and 9 MB block sizes, whereas upcoming 3D NAND flash from Intel and Micron will feature 16 MB (MLC) or even 24 MB (TLC) block sizes. Erasing a group of larger blocks takes less time than wiping out a huge number of smaller blocks, which is why larger blocks enable faster write operations, something that is needed to build memory cards for UHD video capture.
The Video Speed Class standard includes a set of 37 block sizes that range from 8 MB to 512 MB, which should be sufficient for the foreseeable future. In addition, the SD 5.0 VSC protocol supports simultaneous interleaving of eight different files, which is useful for 360° videos, multiple independent video streams, or even numerous high-quality still pictures taken at the same time.
The new standard adds new write speed classes of 60 MB/s and 90 MB/s. The fastest former class was UHS Speed Class 3, which specified a minimum of 30 MB/s write speed to allow 4K video recording. The whitepaper lists a 120 FPS frame rate for 8K video recording.
SD Association press release (PDF) and whitepaper (PDF).
YouTube is adding support for live streaming while using a 360-degree video camera, as well as "immersive audio" features:
For a little over a year now, YouTube creators have had the ability to share 360-degree video content, but those videos didn't offer proper immersive audio formats, and you couldn't do a live stream with a 360-degree camera. As of today, YouTube is offering both of those features, although you can't use both features at the same time.
The company plans to broadcast its first large scale event using this feature this coming weekend at the Coachella music festival. You will be able to watch select artists' performances live during the festival in spherical video.
[...] The spatial audio feature is currently limited to on-demand content. Live-streamed content does not support spatial audio cues. YouTube said that the addition of spatial audio to immersive video content enhances the experience with "depth, distance and intensity all playing a role." The company put together a small playlist of sample videos that have spatial audio enabled, but you'll need an Android device to take advantage of the technology.
YouTube's revealed the secret to making an engaging virtual reality video: put the best parts right in front of the audience so they don't have to move their heads.
Google's video vault offers that advice on the basis of heat maps it's created based on analysis of where VR viewers point their heads while wearing VR goggles. There's just such a heat map at the top of this story (or here for m.reg readers) and a bigger one here.
The many heat maps YouTube has made lead it to suggest that VR video creators "Focus on what's in front of you: The defining feature of a 360-degree video is that it allows you to freely look around in any direction, but surprisingly, people spent 75% of their time within the front 90 degrees of a video. So don't forget to spend significant time on what's in front of the viewer."
YouTube also advises that "for many of the most popular VR videos, people viewed more of the full 360-degree space with almost 20% of views actually being behind them." Which sounds to El Reg like VR viewers are either staring straight ahead, or looking over their shoulders with very little time being devoted to sideways glances.
A video channel wants people to treat VR like video. Hmmm. Perhaps the answer to their question is in the question: people should be considered "participants" instead of an "audience."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:17AM (1 child)
I don't see it able to replace a 10 yr old camera for close ups. 4k is not enough to match good FullHD or even HD if you have to crop a lot out.
OTOH it costs less than a wide angle lens which does not even cover 1/3rd of the angle so, this kind of cams save the day in many situations.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday November 02 2017, @04:58PM
> this kind of cams save the day in many situations.
Save the day ? From what, having only 90 or 180 degrees video? From not having about 3/4 of the video information being useless?