Nokia OZO Live User Manual

O Z O L I V E

O Z O B e s t P r a c t i c e s

Best Practices for Live 360 Video

VR is a new medium, and live 360 video production is perhaps the most intense, stressful, and
gratifying way to create VR content. As always, careful planning will reduce risk and help ensure
that the production goes smoothly. In this section we share some of our early experiences with
360 video productions using OZO Live.

Many aspects of live 360 production are shared with standard live video production; these are
out of scope for this document. Our focus is on the unique aspects of 360.

Camera Placement

Camera placement is everything. Get as close to the action as you can! Sometimes, as in the first
image, that means you're pretty far away:

Sometimes it means you're up close and personal!

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Always fight for camera placement.360 video works when the camera is close to the subject; it
becomes boring when the camera is far away. (OZO's award-winning design makes it easier to
convince reluctant producers to give you prime placement: It's the single most important thing
you can do to make a compelling production.)

Moving Cameras

Moving cameras in 360 adds dimension and interest to a live production. While fast or uneven
motion can definitely be uncomfortable at best, when used correctly, motion adds enormous
depth and interest to your productions. OZO's excellent stereo capabilities provide high-quality
binocular parallax in addition to motion parallax, providing a compelling sense of immersion.
With OZO Live's digital pan feature, you can maintain the user's viewing direction even when
using jibs and booms that lack automatic pan control. Please try out jibs, booms, dollys, and
other motion platforms with OZO Live: you wont be disappointed!)

Multi-camera Direction

Like multi-camera television shows, 360 video productions are much more compelling with a
skilled director managing the viewers' attention across multiple camera viewpoints. Try out the
following best practices for multicamera shoots – although we also recommend that you
experiment and draw your own conclusions!

Hard cuts are usually disconcerting for headset users. Start with a 1/2 second crossfade
and season to taste.

Use OZO Live's digital pan to set the most salient point of a camera's feed at the center
of the frame before you switch to it. This feature is super effective when used to match
viewpoints before switching.

OZO Live imposes a 1 second delay on what the director sees. He or she needs to
anticipate this delay in commands to jib operators, who operate in real time.

Monitors for each camera are nice, but you don't strictly need them - after all, any camera
feed shows you the entire scene in equirectangular view. With a little practice it's possible
to direct from the program feed alone.

OZO Live gives you all the tools you need to integrate into your regular broadcast
workflow. Use all the tricks of the trade you're used to.

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OZO Camera Usage Tips

Rain

OZO is not waterproof. However, with care, even under heavy rain (and some wind) you can
produce a successful event.

The two areas where water infiltration is a risk are at the buttons on the top of OZO, and the
cable connections on the underside. Use clear packer's tape to cover the buttons; you'll still be
able to use them. Also, wrap tape around your cables, sealing them to the body - this area is
already protected by the camera itself and would only be a risk in a hurricane!

Keeping rain off the lenses is another matter. We've had success by using a half-meter square of
Plexiglas, mounted above the camera using a Magic Arm. This can be angled to protect the
camera from driving rain. The rain shield is visible, but it's not as distracting as you might think: if
you angle it correctly you can keep it out of a typical user's viewport for a typical production, and
any raindrops on the shield are so close to the camera they're out of focus. An example:

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Cold

OZO behaves well in cold environments; no special measures should be necessary even when
operating at temperatures well below its 0° specification.

Heat

Heat requires management: OZO does not like direct sunlight. Follow these steps to avoid a
heat-related shut down:

Get a fan! Some OZO resellers make integrated fans that have proven to be super
successful in multi-camera festival shoots. Contact [e-mail] for more
information.

Avoid direct sunlight if possible. The camera's black body absorbs radiant heat. In the
shade the camera can generally handle high ambient air temperatures, but in direct
sunlight temperature can become an issue.

Remove the battery pack. This reduces power usage slightly and improves cooling.

Make sure you're using 4-sensor mode. This should always be the case for OZO Live.

Shut down the camera when not in use. At the least, turn off broadcast.

Cover the camera with a reflective shield or blanket when not in use.

Managing Difficult Scenes

LED Light Flicker. Indoor scenes for sports and concerts are often lit using LED lighting. In some
cases the refresh rates on these lights will cause flickering. This is a common problem across all
digital sensor technology. To reduce or eliminate this effect, try reducing the OZO camera
shutter speed as low as you can – this will allow more LED refreshes to occur during a single
shutter, and can reduce or eliminate flickering. If that approach is insufficient, be sure to enable
the temporal noise reduction in OZO Live. This should help as well. As a last resort, you can
overexpose the image and compensate with color correction within OZO Live.

Direct Sunlight. When outside, you might get direct sunlight on one or two sensors, causing
color variation. You can compensate for this using the per-lens color correction capability within
OZO Live. (Avoid using the auto white- and black-balance features in these cases).

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Audio for Live 360

Audio is an essential component of the immersive 360 video experience: While our eyes give us
about 110°, or 170° if we turn our heads fully, our ears allow us a full 360° of immersion.

OZO Live provides the user with multiple audio solutions:

The Nokia OZO family of products provides fully immersive, spatial audio experiences. Like all of
OZO Live, there are multiple ways to integrate the system into your workflow. For instance, if you
are looking for a single-camera experience using only OZO ambient audio, you can choose from
among these formats:

Loudspeaker 2.0

Loudspeaker 5.1

Loudspeaker 7.1

Binaural

Ambisonics (first order)

Pass through (8ch 48kSpS 24bit)

You can opt to De-Embed OZO audio before it reaches OZO Live, mixing externally and re­embedding into OZO Live via SDI before you send your feed to the encoder.

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Some Conguration Examples

One OZO, one encoder, external audio only

Create mix with external mixer

Embed audio upstream of OZO Live

Configure OZO Live for passthru

Multiple OZOs, OZO ambient audio only

Audio from OZO Live

Switch audio along with camera

Trigger scenes on mixer

Multiple OZOs, external audio only, unswitched

Separate mixes for each OZO

Requires 6 output busses per OZO (This becomes your main constraint on the number of
cameras you run!)

Embed audio upstream of OZO Live

Configure OZO Live for passthru.

Delay not required.

Multiple OZOs, ambient audio PLUS external audio mix

De-embed OZO audio downstream of OZO Live

Delay all external audio by ~1 sec

Separate fixed mixes for each OZO (mixing both ambient and external)

6 output busses required per camera

Re-embed 5.0 audio downstream of the switcher

Slave the audio mixer to the video switcher

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S u p p o r t

The entire OZO team wants to make sure your experience with OZO Live is awesome. We are
ready to help, and are eager for your feedback.

OZO Live Forum

The OZO Live Forum is a place for OZO Live users and partners to exchange information. It may
be found as part of the "Support and Community" section of the Nokia OZO website, at
http://support.ozo.nokia.com/

Support

Registered users of OZO may access the OZO Support team via email at
[e-mail] or online form at https://ozo.nokia.com/ozo_en/contact/. Customer
support requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

It helps the whole community if you report any issues you find with OZO Live. Please run
following command in the folder that you ran the ozo_live application.

$ sudo /opt/nokia/ozo_live/bin/report.sh

Or go to the Support Tab and click Download Report:

Report_201610281154.txt.gz is generated, please attach the file in the support request

Then you will see report_xxxx.txt.gz in the same folder. Attaching this file to your support
request will help the support team diagnose your issue quickly and efficiently.

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L e g a l I n f o r m a t i o n

OZO Live ships with both third-party and open source software. A listing of the open source
software and the accompanying license terms is included in a .txt file in the software package.
Please read the applicable license terms, listed here:

https://ozo.nokia.com/ozo-live-licensing-terms

Your use of the Licensed Software is only permitted if you comply with the terms and conditions
of the open source software licenses included in the .txt file.

Copyright © Nokia Technologies Ltd. and/or its subsidiary(-ies).

This OZO Live software, including the accompanying documentation, is protected by copyright
controlled by Nokia Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Unless you have signed an individually
negotiated license agreement with Nokia, the license terms applicable to your use of this
software are available at:

https://ozo.nokia.com/ozo-live-product-license-agreements

If you have signed an individually negotiated license agreement with Nokia, the terms contained
in that license agreement shall govern your use of this software.

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