360 rumors

Here are sample 360 videos from Sonicam, a professional 3D 360 camera that has 360 spatial surround audio. Sonicam is a professional 3D 360 camera with 64 microphones to provide 360 surround audio.  It can record in 4K 360 video, with realtime stitching and live streaming.   I saw their booth at NAB Show and got to see the Sonicam, which was about the size of a grapefruit. You can now see  sample videos from Sonicam , including samples that demonstrate 360 audio. Sonicam is launching its crowdfunding program on Kickstarter tomorrow, where it is expected to be available for $2,000, which is half of its $4,000 MSRP.

One of the interesting things about the Samsung Gear 360 (reviewed here) is its excellent audio.  It can capture even loud sounds without buzzing, it seems to be able to reduce wind noise, and best of all, the sound is 360-degrees when viewed on the Samsung Gear VR (reviewed here) . Yesterday I found out just how good the Samsung Gear 360's audio is.  My friend David Grass recorded a wedding reception with his Samsung Gear 360, including the dance, then he uploaded the video.  To his surprise, his video was flagged for a copyright violation!  Apparently, YouTube employs automatic algorithms for detecting when copyrighted video or audio is put in a video file.  In this case, YouTube's computers thought that he used a copyrighted soundtrack, when in fact he was just recording the ambient audio from the dance!  (Fortunately when he uploaded a shorter version of the video, he wasn't flagged anymore - probably as fair use). Anyway, here is a short video I took ...

Vuze (previewed here) , the first fully spherical 360 3D camera for consumers, just uploaded another sample on Facebook. I was very impressed with the stitching, which looked perfectly seamless.  I don't know if the stitching in this case was automatic, or was customized (and if it was customized, I don't know if the included software would allow customization).  I do know that one of their recent videos, of an Austrian concert , had excellent stitching as well. Separate from the stitching, the image quality was also quite good.  I watched the video on the phone and also on the Gear VR.  There was excellent level of detail for the singer.  The piano and the other instruments had less detail because they were farther, but there was still a reasonable level of detail. The color for this sample video was much better and more realistic than the color in the Austrian concert video. There was some glare, which I expected due to the very strong light sources.  (No...