Nokia OZO 360 VR Camera

The Nokia OZO camera was designed to capture 360º video and 360x360 surround sound without the complex rigs that most virtual reality is shot with today. It has the ability to be monitored in VR live and with a single co-axial cable can be used to broadcast live or record for extended periods of time.

Our operations manager, Nick Cretaro, recently spoke with Nokia about the cameras and arranged for us to test it out. He and our friend, Tim Crook, decided to walk it a few blocks north from our 39th street studio to Times Square on a Saturday night.

They also brought it over to Fifth Avenue to get some footage in front of Radio City and the Tonight Show.

The footage is stunning. It records onto a hard drive that connects directly to the back of the teardrop shaped device, and after the media comes off the drive it must be stitched together with the software provided. Outputs to a multitude of settings, but for our purposes a 4k .mp4 would do fine.

I was able to import the video directly into Adobe Premiere and seamlessly color correct and edit. The spherical aspect of the video really has no impact on the initial editing or color correction, it functions like any .mp4. It's in the application of graphics where some thought and direction is required, but essentially you just have to understand how the video will be formed into the sphere shape and adjust.

The spatial audio option also requires some extra effort. I didn't really have an opportunity to experiment with it much this time around, however I was still given 4 audio tracks that are recorded with it's spatial audio array, and a basic mix can be created with that.

The Nokia OZO 360 VR Camera was easy to use and made shooting in VR seem simple. Editing was no difficult task, and I'm excited to see what else can be done with a camera like this.

Sam Hartson

Staff Editor

dvDepot