How to make a perfect 360 movie with a 3D sound?

3/29/2017

6 Comments

By Łukasz Januszkiewicz

Some time ago we had a chance to record a big performance at Great Theatre in Poznan (Choir and chamber orchestra of the Grand Theatre, conductor Mariusz Otto, program: Christmas carols). It was a Christmas Concert. We decided to make a 360 movie with 3D sound recorded with ZYLIA. With 360 movies there is always a problem with a sound scene following your eyes. We took the challenge to solve this problem.

Step One - Preparations

We used:

Two Kodak PIXPRO SP360, 4K
ZYLIA Portable Recording System. We used one ZYLIA ZM-1 placed in the middle of orchestra and three additional ZYLIA ZM-1 mics as the backup.
Stands for camera and ZYLIA ZM-1 mics
USB cables for ZM-1
Macbook to record sound from ZYLIA ZM-1
Laptop chargers

Step two - On The Stage

Camera placement.

Both camera and main ZM-1 were located in the middle of the orchestra, in the line with string instruments.

Microphone placement.

Because of the size of a music scene, there were four mics used on the stage.
The main ZM-1 microphone was positioned approximately 20 cm below the camera.
Backup ZM-1’s were positioned on the right and on the left side of the main ZM-1 (distance of 4-5 meters). There was also one mic just right in front of the choir.

The final setup

Recordings made with 6DOF Development Kit by Zylia
Read more ...

Step Three – Recording our perfect 360 movie

… and hiding behind the curtain :-)

Step Four - Video And Audio Post-processing

Captured video was stitched and processed with Kodak PIXPRO SP360 software. The recorded audio was manually synchronized with the processed video. Then we used our software to convert ZM-1 recorded tracks into 1st, 2nd and even 3rd order HOA (Higher Order Ambisonics) signals. Finally, we merged the video and the 1st order Ambisonics audio track into one MP4 file and uploaded it to YouTube 360 service*.

*At this moment YouTube 360 supports only 1st order Ambisonics audio.

360 movie with 3D sound - The final effect

We have recorded a great performance of orchestra and choir with a newest microphone array technology. Final effect is astonishing! Our 360 movie gives you a chance to participate in this beautiful event, and actually be in the middle of the stage.

Video will be available soon.

How to turn a room into a recording studio?

6 Comments

What is the Ambisonics format?

3/21/2017

2 Comments

By Jakub Wasilewski

Nowadays the entertainment industry is more and more interested in immersive experiences when it comes to movies, video games and music. Along with already quite common 360 degree videos, there is also a growing demand for 3D audio. Surround systems like 5.1, 7.1 or cinematic 22.2 can surely deliver impressive effects, but none of them is an actual full spatial audio system. Mostly because once sources had been recorded, there is no way to change their positions freely.

In order to obtain a real spatial audio, an entirely different approach is needed. An approach that should not perceive sound as list of spatially speaker-fixed sources, but as a whole soundfield instead. It is where an Ambisonics technique comes in handy. But before explaining what it actually is, let me begin with a quick overview of the Ambisonics.

At the same time when the music audience was thrilled for the first time with “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, an Ambisonics idea has been conceived by Michael Gerzon from the University of Oxford. He realised, that using three figure-of-eight microphones and additional omnidirectional one, he can make a soundfield recording that can be expressed as four speaker-independent channels, the so called B-Format. It allows to store soundfield information in four channels and decode it later into specific speaker setup.

As you can probably imagine, representing a whole soundfield using only four channels is not optimal. Spatial audio resolution is not very impressive when using a B-Format which is only 1st order of Ambisonics, In the 1970s It was difficult to achieve higher audio resolution due to the level of technical advancements at that time. Despite the fact that the Ambisonics technique was grounded on solid technical and mathematical foundation, it has not gained much attention or commercial success.

In order to obtain higher orders of Ambisonics, which provides better soundfield representation and spatial resolution, a dense microphone array and advanced signal processing algorithms are needed. Both of these advancements are the cornerstones of the new recording system developed by ZYLIA.

ZYLIA 3rd order Ambisonics microphone

Fig. ZYLIA ZM-1 - a 3rd order Ambisonics microphone.

The ZYLIA ZM-1 microphone array is capable of recording sound in the 3rd order Ambisonics format. Recording in such format will be soon very relevant due to the recent announcements by Google and Facebook to add support for higher order Ambisonics playback in their players. Soon it will be possible to enjoy amazing spatial audio recordings on any web-enabled device.

You need ambisonics microphone? Just try ZYLIA!

2 Comments

How to make a perfect 360 movie with a 3D sound?

Step One - Preparations

Step two - On The Stage

Recordings made with 6DOF Development Kit by Zylia
Read more ...

Step Three – Recording our perfect 360 movie

Step Four - Video And Audio Post-processing

360 movie with 3D sound - The final effect

What is the Ambisonics format?

ZYLIA 3rd order Ambisonics microphone

You need ambisonics microphone? Just try ZYLIA!

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Step One - Preparations

Step two - On The Stage

Recordings made with 6DOF Development Kit by Zylia ​Read more ...

Step Three – Recording our perfect 360 movie

Step Four - Video And Audio Post-processing

360 movie with 3D sound - The final effect

ZYLIA 3rd order Ambisonics microphone

You need ambisonics microphone? Just try ZYLIA!

Categories

Archives

Authors

Products

Connect with us

Subscribe to ZYLIA Newsletter

Recordings made with 6DOF Development Kit by Zylia
Read more ...