Nokia had a lot to say and show at NAB with a commanding presence in the VR pavilion in the North Hall. In our meeting with Paul Melin, VP of Digital Media, Nokia Technologies, he said that the steps they are taking are designed to establish “Ozo Reality” as a higher level of consumer experience defined by superior immersion, new creative possibilities, and increased efficiency for the creation, delivery and experience of immersive storytelling.
“We are investing in the VR creative process first, but we have the expertise for delivery and playback as well. We want to create VR experiences and iterate market deployments with real customers to get feedback for improvement. Today, we have a first generation ecosystem solution for content capture, production, delivery and playback – and these are not proprietary tools,” said Melin.
Last October, Nokia announced Ozo Live and in December they announced a player SDK. At NAB, the focus was to announce major upgrades to the whole ecosystem.
First, Nokia announced Ozo+ as an upgrade to its stereoscopic 360º video capture camera. It looks the same on the outside but improves the color and dynamic range capabilities – although they were not clear what those specs were. Ozo+ is also the only VR camera that creates depth maps ready for 3DFX compositing and mixed reality experiences. The upgrade also facilitates on set monitoring and control and an on set stitching tool.
Ozo Creator is Nokia’s off-line stitching tool that features a new image signal processing pipeline to deliver improved stitched visual quality in addition to a depth map export option. There is also a Nokia VR distribution format extension support to enable mixed reality content. It is designed to interface with third party software for editing and other tasks.
Ozo Live has been upgraded, as well, with new spatial audio mixing capabilities for the creation of customized audio mixes for each camera feed, incorporating both ambient audio and sound reinforcement from multiple audio feeds. Outputs can be 5.1, ambisonics, or Ozo Audio format.
For delivery and playback, Nokia announced the Ozo Reality Platform, including Ozo Deliver, Ozo Player SDK, and Nokia VR format extensions. The idea is to allow higher-quality experiences to reach broader audiences by allowing for delivery and playback interoperability.
- VR format extensions – Nokia’s VR distribution and streaming format extensions now enable higher resolution, depth carriage, and spatial audio.
- Ozo Deliver – A software component that enables Ozo Reality Platform partners to ingest and manage advanced immersive experiences, and to deliver them at lower bandwidth to broader audiences.
- Ozo Player SDK – Native code that can run in an existing video app for turnkey playback of VR content to provides a single interface to efficiently develop for all major VR and 360º video platforms and apps. It now features depth rendering with occlusion to provide real-time integration of mixed reality elements like advertising and game-engine created elements.
- Ozo Audio – Advanced spatial audio technology with 3D recording and playback capabilities, designed specifically for smartphone and camera manufacturers. Provides a single interface to efficiently develop for all major VR and 360º video platforms and apps. Ozo Audio is also fully integrated into the Ozo Player SDK to deliver the most immersive audio and visual experiences
Nokia listed a number of partners who will be working with the Ozo reality platform including 3stage Design, Accedo, Akamai, AWS Elemental, China Intercontinental Communication Center (CICC), Haivision, Harmonic, Ideal Systems, Kaltura, LiveLike, NeuLion, Nibiru, Primestream, Ratio, Qello, and Youku.
Separately at NAB, NeuLion and Nokia announced a new partnership that will combine Nokia’s Ozo Live and Ozo Reality Platform with the NeuLion Digital Platform to offer a complete end-to-end production, delivery, monetization and play-back solution for live and on-demand VR 360 content.
This integration will send the single stitched live video feed from Ozo Live to the NeuLion Digital Platform, for the live encoding of sports and entertainment. The Ozo Reality platform, with the new efficient viewport-adaptive streaming software Ozo Deliver and Ozo Player SDK, is intended to unlock new high quality experiences for NeuLion customers. – CC
