Keepixo, a leading provider of software head-end products for IPTV and OTT, recently partnered with Divitel, a world-class systems integrator for video delivery, to live stream a concert in 360-degree video.
The companies cooperated to enable a major Bavarian media company to broadcast its annual music festival live in 360-degrees for the first time. Three Nokia OZO cameras captured the event and allowed for an unprecedented immersive viewing experience.
Each OZO camera uses eight 2K x 2K video sensors to produce a full spherical output. The composite video was encoded in UHD using Keepixo’s AL2000-UHD encoder, and packaged in HLS for delivery to end users. Viewers were then able to enjoy this 360-degree stream on smartphones, tablets and desktop browsers.
“In 360-degrees, viewers only look at a portion of the entire resolution. Thus encoding in UHD provides a highly improved video quality,” commented Jerome Blanc, COO of Keepixo. “Our UHD encoder is a perfect fit, whether for live UHD channels or for 360-degree applications. Thanks to our partner Divitel, we were able to provide and configure this solution in a matter of days,” he added.
COO Wouter Slot of Divitel continued, “We’re always interested in leveraging our capabilities and knowledge on video delivery in new ways. This event presented us with the perfect opportunity to show just how quick we can roll out these types of innovative solutions. Partners like Keepixo play a pivotal role in guaranteeing both speed and quality.”
The Keepixo AL2000-UHD platform – used to facilitate the stream – comes in a compact 1U form factor and encodes content into H.264, or HEVC Main 10 profile with optional support for HDR. Output is available in either TS or OTT formats. When used in OTT applications, the AL2000-UHD also features a built-in packager, which generates an output stream compliant with popular streaming protocols such as Apple HLS and MPEG-DASH.
