OXFORD, MISS.—KTVB in Boise, Idaho, had found its 360-degree GoPro Omni camera to be a great tool for capturing interesting news stories, but like drone video has found that it is best when used with a purpose. Xanti Alcelay, director of photography at KTVB, told the Meek School of Journalism’s News Lab that because of the difficulties and time-consuming nature of 360 video production, that newsroom’s have to pick and choose when to use the technology. However, for certain things, like a recent video on base-jumping the station did, 360 cameras can provide a different angle to a story.

Read the full story on News Lab.

FREMONT, CALIF.—Blackmagic Design has taken a dive into the water as its Micro Studio Camera 4K is being used as part of an underwater stereoscopic 360 system from VRTUL Live. VRTUL utilized a number of other Blackmagic products for the system, including the Video Assist 4K monitor/recorder, Teranex AV standards processor, Arduino Shield, HyperDeck Studio 12G broadcast deck and Smart Videohub 40x40 router.

The VRTUL system was used recently for a “Good Morning America” broadcast, capturing a 360-degree underwater live stream. The footage captured was used for a three-hour stream of an underwater shipwreck in the Bahamas during a shark dive.

The Live rig featured five Micro Studio Camera 4Ks to capture the underwater 360 footage, with the SDI signal from each camera converted to fiber using Blackmagic Mini Converters Optical Fiber 4K, as well as Mini Converters SDI Distribution. Arduino Shields were used on the boat to adjust camera gain, shutter and other manual controls. Also on the boat was the Smart Videohub, receiving live color grading from DaVinci Resolve Studio and stitching from on-set engineers. The Teranex AV was used for audio embedding and signal processing, while the HyperDeck Studio 12G recorded the master.

The VRTUL system was created with the help of 30Ninjas and Lewis Smithingham.

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, CALIF.—Some soldiers serving the U.S. abroad are going to get a taste of home thanks to Hyundai, who is bringing this weekend’s Super Bowl to them through 360 video. Hydundai is producing the Super Bowl spot “Operation Better,” which will be directed by filmmaker Peter Berg.

Using specially built 360 “immersion pods,” troops based at unnamed locations overseas will be able to experience the Super Bowl like they are actually in the stadium. The footage from these pods will then be edited together for a 90-second commercial depicting the soldiers’ experiences. The commercial will air in the first commercial slot after the game concludes.

The Super Bowl takes place Sunday, Feb. 5 at 6:30 p.m., in Houston.

CHICAGO—President’s Obama two-terms as commander-and-chief were historical firsts, so it’s quite fitting he’s unofficially closing his tenure out with another. According to a recent report by MarketWatch, Obama’s farewall address scheduled to take place on Tuesday, Jan. 10, will be the first presidential address to be broadcast live in 360-degree video.

The production will be handled by Los Angeles-based virtual reality company VRScout, who will work with camera rental and production company Radiant Images and virtual reality company Vantage.tv. VRScout expects to have three Nokia Ozo cameras on hand for the speech to capture different angles.

The broadcast will be available through VRScout’s social media handle on Facebook Live, Twitter and YouTube. The company also has goals of making it available through the Samsung Gear VR headset. After the live broadcast, the footage will be edited and enhanced for future viewing, according to VRScout Head of Studio Ryan Bell.

Obama’s farewell address will take place in the evening on Jan. 10 from the McCormick Place convention complex in Chicago.

NEW YORK—The newly announced TV Everywhere apps for Amazon Fire TV and Android TV will both offer 360-degree video playback. The first 360 video that is available through the app is a behind-the-scenes look at a gorillas in Africa segment from “60 Minutes.”

To read the full story, check out TVT’s sister publication B&C.

SEATTLE—Live streaming company Streambox Inc. has announced that it will now offer live 360 video streaming to YouTube. The company will combine its Streambox Cloud Services with a beta of its Cloud Encoder-360 to provide what it calls a “simplified solution” for live 360 streaming.

The Cloud Encoder-360 integrates real time lens distortion correction, video stitching and ACT-L3 compression while also including automated network bonding technology that uses 3G/4G/LTE, Wi-Fi and internet networks for high bandwidth. The system transmits to Streambox Cloud servers located around the world to provide connection from anywhere.

Hardware required to handle the live 360 streaming is a Ricoh Theta S Camera, Blackmagic UltraStudio Mini Recorder, and an Apple Macbook Pro. Streambox Cloud delivers the live stream to YouTube for users to view via headsets, browsers or apps. Streambox says it plans to support Facebook live streaming, as well as other social media websites.

A free trial download of Streambox Cloud Encoder-360 is available at streamboxvr.com.

IRVINE, CALIF.—The Teradek Sphere hit the dance floor before its upcoming release to help stream 360 video of the “Dancing With the Stars” season finale. The Sphere, which is designed to compress, stitch and stream 360-degree video to the web, offered online viewers a 360-degree view of the main stage during the broadcast.

The footage was shot with four GoPros mounted on Teradek’s proprietary rigging system, allowing fans to pan all around the studio.

Sphere is a four-channel H.264 encoder that compresses and streams 4K footage to an iOS or OS X device for real-time stitching. The content can then be streamed to an online platform that supports 360-degree video. A second Sphere unit can be connected to additional camera rigs through a Gigabit Ethernet port.

Teradek plans to release the Sphere on July 1 at a starting price of $2,990.

STATE COLLEGE, PA.—AccuWeather was on the scene over the weekend when a tornado touched down in Wray, Colo. Using a 360fly, the weather forecasting services provider, AccuWeather was able to capture a 360-degree video of the tornado’s path.

Posted on AccuWeather’s YouTube page, viewers change the view of the video by using the arrows in the upper-left corner, or by clicking and dragging the mouse. Check out the video below.

LOS ANGELES—New media platforms demand new production methods and none, since the introduction of the pixel, have needed a rework more than virtual reality.

First job of any media content is to engage the audience. Whether it consists of a teenage boy cloistered away with his VR headset, the urban hipster with the latest flavor of augmented-reality glass, or a family at the local theme park’s 360 panorama; if you don’t hook them with something compelling they’ll move on to something that will.

What flavor are you selling?
VR: Contrary to what you’ve probably read or heard, VR is a very finite format and not something that has anything to do with physical cameras. To quote the ubiquitous Wikipedia, “Virtual reality… replicates an environment that simulates physical presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds and lets the user interact in that world. Virtual reality artificially creates sensory experiences, which can include sight, hearing, touch, and smell.”

AR: Augmented reality superimposes a computer-generated image over the live view of the physical, real-world environment. The image remains in alignment to the real-world or a pre-defined target as the viewer moves.

PANORAMIC VIDEO: 360 and panoramas surround the viewer with an environment intended to create a sense of presence. They can be “stitched” together from several conventional video streams or by using a fisheye or purpose-build lens. Although 360 has been with us since well before the pixel showed up, the recent media frenzy over VR, combined with low-tech design and fabrication needs, have created a glut of acquisition systems spewing from garages and home workshops all across country. Even though 360 is not VR, it does share a number of the same issues with respect to narrative production.

Why this iteration of VR is different:
Thanks to your tax dollars and the military industrial complex’s need for more accurate real-time targeting, Inertial Measurement Unit, or IMU, technology took a major leap forward. Poised on a tiny chip that sits inside nearly everything from the Predator drone’s AGM-114 Hellfire missiles to your smartphone, the IMUtracker uses a gyroscope, accelerometer, GPS and magnetometer to figure out where it is, where it is looking and where it is going: And this is precisely why VR will work this time.

The Oculus Rift head-mounted display isn’t the about virtual reality—that’s been around since Jaron Lanier coined the phrase back in the early ’80s—or simply figured out how to make the IMU faster. Facebook stepped in and bought Oculus because they understand where this is all going. Motion-to-photons lag is the delay between inputting a command and seeing the effects of that command. For Oculus, that magic number is somewhere under20 milliseconds and even though you can’t perceive it, for the very first time, VR doesn’t make you puke.

THE MECHANICS OF VR CONTENT:
The fact that VR gear will play both true virtual environments and panoramas does not mean that 360 video is VR. Your ability to make real VR content is limited by your grasp of CGI and game engines. Good engines are relatively easy to create with and come with an extensive catalog of ready-made sets and props that will get you started without writing a single line of code. There are even fully rendered scenes with controllable characters that you can reverse engineer and modify.

To create a “reality” that lives up to the name, a rather significant number of computer scientists, artists and engineers have been working for more than 20 years to make synthetic characters that are driven by predictive analytics and voiced by prosodically guided phonetic engines that queue emotionally appropriate posture, gesture and empathy scripts.

This is not a pursuit for the faint of heart, but if you’ve got an XBox Kinect, you already have the rudimentary tools to start creating real VR content. Download a demo copy of the Unity or Unreal game engine and get started.

THE MECHANICS OF AR CONTENT:
The actual manufacturing process for Augmented Reality content is essentially the same as for VR with the exception that your entire environment is now replaced by and registered to the real world. The true importance of VR is that it is driving the R&D on AR. AR is so important because it is the de facto interface for the Internet of Things. Everything within your field of view will have an AR tag. Think of it as visible Bluetooth gone wild: And those synthetic characters, they will be your semiautonomous, very smart, personalized digital assistants.
THE MECHANICS OF 360 PANORAMA CONTENT:
Buy a 20-year-old QuickTimeVR camera on eBay or one of the hundred or so 360 systems out there on the market. Good entry style systems are the Sony Bloggie and the VSN v360. For a cinematic quality image I recommend the time-tested Pont Gray, Lady Bug5 that Google has been using for Street View for the past ten years or the Immersive Media, Dodeca, a proven performer for both civilian and military use.

The craft of virtual content:
A very large part of linear narrative is wrapped up in the art of framing. The director, cinematographer, actor and editor all conspire to convey the emotional arc of the actor as they drive their vector along the central theme of the narrative. The problem with VR is that there is no framing. The viewer is free to look around and will most likely be looking the other way at all the major plot points: you’ve lost the narrative. This holds true for VR, AR and Panorama. The narrative must be reimagined.