Haivision and Sales Cube Power Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 4K 360-degree VR Live Stream
Hot out of IBC 2016, we just announced that we helped power the first live 4K 360-degree live VR stream in Germany for Deutsche Telekom’s Street Gigs Red Hot Chili Peppers’ concert.
The event was powered by our KB 4K HEVC/H.264 encoder – an essential part of the live video workflow – streaming the Nokia OZO Professional Virtual Reality camera feed to more than 675,000 viewers on YouTube Live. Our partner Sales Cube, a leading media and broadcast integrator based in Germany, worked with us on this great high-profile event. Here’s a few more details on how we streamed 360 in 4K.
Same encoding process
From an encoder perspective, streaming 360 degree virtual reality content is quite simple. The encoder takes a standard baseband video feed from the camera containing the full 360 degree content, compresses it, and the player extracts the 360 degree visual effect.
Resolution is critical
Resolution is criticalThe key for a seamless VR experience for remote viewers is having all data available at every time. Even if users are just looking at a small section of the total 360 degree image, it is necessary to receive the complete 360 degree data stream. This enables the viewers to “move their heads” without any lag due to requesting data for the new perspective.
The 360 degree content is actually made up of an array of 8 2K by 2K cameras, which are stitched together to a single 4K image (with some overlapping). So even if the viewer only has a HD resolution display or smaller, a much higher resolution video stream is needed, since all data needs to be present at the viewer side, so the perspective can be changed to any direction at any given time without delay.
The KB 4K HEVC/H.264 Encoder preserves the quality needed even at low bitrates and enables the immersive experience.
Want to experience it for yourself? Head over to YouTube to watch the 360-degree concert recording. And if you’re planning to stream a live event and need some encoding expertise, contact our sales engineers and we can help.
