Samsung 360 Round, A Powerful VR Video Camera

As its name indicates, the Samsung round is a 360-degree high-resolution camera built to shoot Virtual Reality (VR) footage. It has 17 lenses to shoot in stereo from 8 different viewpoints (2×8) and one lens looking straight up, to avoid severe distortion at the top.

Before you get too excited, this Samsung 360 Round camera costs $10500, a price that puts it into the professional category.  The 360-video hardware market started years ago with people putting together a bunch of GoPro cameras, and we have seen some very weird and somewhat big cameras being put together that way. As of late, Facebook, Panasonic, Nokia and Samsung have been fielding compact, high-quality camera to film 360-videos. Note that the previous evolution of this camera was called “Project Beyond” by Samsung.

Both Samsung and Facebook firmly believe in the future of VR. Ultimately, they could both be right from their specific vantage point: VR could change social interactions, and it will inevitably end up being a “Display problem” once the significant initial issues have been solved. In any case, everyone agrees that the most consumed content will be 360-video. Image quality and video workflow are some of the challenges that many players are trying to solve.

The camera is water-resistant, with an IP-rating of IP65, which means that it is dust-proof and it can resist “Strong water jets” but should not be submerged. In short, intense rain won’t be a problem.

The cameras have 2 Megapixel sensors and a lens aperture of f1.8. It is possible to record 3d audio, thanks to an array of 6 microphones, with the ability to add more with two connecting ports. To process, the video in real-time, there is 10GB of RAM and 40GB of flash storage. It is also possible to connect an additional 2TB via an external SSD drive. A USB-C port serves as the primary data exchange mechanism. The on-board video processing makes it possible to live-stream in 360.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Photo-Video
Tags: Samsung, SDC, SDC 2017, Virtual Reality (VR)