Name: StitchBox™ - Live 360 Stitching
SKU: STITCHBOX
Price: 11999 USD
Availability: InStock

Description

This is your chance to bring broadcast grade workflows and quality to the rapidly growing interest in Live VR aka live 360 video.

We’ve designed a modular system that can expand as your needs allow, or be repurposed into other uses if needed. StitchBox™ is is a top of the line, rack mounted server computer, designed specifically for live 360 stitching, with best-in-class components and performance. It has been rigorously tested under field use to ensure reliability in a professional environment. Finding a stable solution for live 360 stitching of video is hard. Components that are supposed to work together – don’t, and only through extensive trial and error have we found a solution that works reliably, with performance that we feel comfortable using on ‘brand’ productions.

A server based design is preferable because it allows for future upgrades. There are currently no hardware based stitching devices on the market. At some point there will be standalone, FPGA/ASIC stitchers, but they will likely not be upgradeable as resolutions continue upwards. A PC based solution (with server grade components) is the smart option for the foreseeable future, and in the fast moving industry of VR, such an approach offers modularity, expandability, and protects your investment for many years.

All-in-one 360 cameras with built-in stitching are a poor solution for professional grade productions. There are inevitably compromises that prevent you from doing what you need, or achieving decent quality, and the equipment itself cannot be repurposed when the ‘next camera’ comes out. It becomes a lost investment. All of our equipment is designed to be repurposed so that your investment in the equipment is fully protected moving forward. You can use StitchBox™ as a top-of-the-line video editing workstation, live production workstation, or editing / 3D graphics/VFX machine. In fact you can do all these things when the equipment is not in use on a live 360 production. The individual 4K cameras in a Mini EYE 3 can be used for regular 2D productions.

At the moment, 4k is the standard for live 360 productions, and is the maximum resolution of YouTube and Facebook live 360. StitchBox™ can handle 4k now, and 6k or 8k in future.

Our own Mini EYE™ 3 camera offers 6k of live stitched resolution, so as a company we have standardized on StitchBox™ as the basis for our own live 360 production work, and we wanted to make that same quality and workflow that we’ve become known for to others.

The reality is that good quality, live stitching, requires tremendous horsepower, and with each resolution uptick, the horsepower requirement goes up. By abstracting the horsepower to components in a PC architecture, this solution has longevity. You can always upgrade the GPU, CPU, I/O components later, and the live stitching software will also improve naturally over time with upgrades during ownership.

Due to the horsepower requirements for stitching at these resolutions, it is not feasible (or would be poor practice) to stream (encode) from the same device. Streaming also takes lots of horsepower, which is why we developed a companion 2-in-1 live streaming and production studio device – MixBox™. This allows the possibility for professionally produced multi-camera productions, as MixBox™ can handle 3 live 360 camera inputs out of the box. You can also use other hardware based 4K encoder appliances such as Elemental.

Live 360 Stitching Operation

The job of StitchBox™ is to take up to three 4k (or can also be HD) video outputs from a professional 360 camera like Mini EYE™ 3, and live stitch them into a single 4k 360, fully spherical, ‘equi-rectangular’ video. StitchBox™ takes unstitched video in, and sends stitched video out, in 0.5 seconds, using industry standard 4k SDI connections. Using SDI means the ability to use an entire world of professional broadcast equipment – for live grading, wireless transmission, signal splits, converting to fiber optic cable for long cable runs, easy ISO recording (recording individual camera feeds), switching, mixing, and much more.

SDI on its own allows for significantly longer and more reliable cable runs than HDMI, up to 300 ft. at 4k with our 4K SDI cables, and longer with readily available repeaters. It’s also far more robust, offering ‘locking’ connections, which are critical for field use.

SDI is in wide use throughout the television and broadcast industry. You can readily convert 4K SDI to fiber optic cable, for cable runs up to 2000 feet and beyond, and SDI is readily compatible with pre-installed lines at broadcast facilities, arenas, theaters, studios and stadiums worldwide. It is for example how we produced Copa America for Fox Sports in live 360 at the Houston Stadium, tapping into the stadium fiber, and for Champions League football in Europe.