• OZO Live brings new, live virtual experiences to consumer audiences

• OZO Player SDK enables effortless creation and delivery of new VR experiences to multiple platforms

8 September, 2016

International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), Amsterdam - Nokia today announced OZO Live and the OZO Player SDK will be available starting this October. As part of the OZO VR ecosystem, both new offerings help professional content creators deliver increasingly immersive VR experiences. OZO Live provides broadcast quality live 3D 360 VR video while OZO Player SDK will make it easy for content providers to distribute content across multiple VR display platforms.

Nokia will be showcasing OZO Live and the OZO Player SDK at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) from Sept. 9-14 in Amsterdam. Additionally, Nokia will be sharing the latest VR experiences enabled by OZO from leading industry partners including Deltatre, Elemental, EVS, The Foundry, Happy Finish, Immersiv, Motion Impossible, NeuLion, Netco and VIZRT.

OZO Live: Transporting Audiences from the Couch to the Court

Announced in April 2016, OZO Live is a unique, real-time broadcast solution that can deliver VR experiences to audiences worldwide with the potential to put people courtside with their favorite team, backstage with their favorite musician or on the front line in a breaking news story. The solution has already been used by select partners to stream several high-profile live events including P!nk's live performance from the red carpet premiere of "Alice Through the Looking Glass."

Nokia's recent partnership with Deltatre saw the live broadcast of a major European football game.

"The true power of virtual reality becomes apparent when you transport audiences from their sofa to the touchline with their favorite sports team to live the experience with immersive video and audio as though they were part of the crowd," said Gilles Mas, International Football Managing Director at Deltatre. "Deltatre and Nokia are commonly investigating and developing Live VR production efficient workflows, and OZO has proved itself an incredibly effective solution for capturing and delivering live events in VR. We consider this to be the future of sports broadcasting."

OZO Player SDK: Enabling Effortless Creation and Delivery of VR

OZO Player SDK enables professionals to publish and distribute VR content through their own apps and across multiple platforms and app stores. This software development kit provides a single, unified interface for high-quality 3D 360 video and audio playback across all major VR platforms including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and GearVR. In addition to supporting playback of OZO-created content, the player also allows for standard VR video and audio formats, removing barriers to the effortless creation and delivery of great VR experiences to a wide audience.

Immersiv, a company that designs and develops multi-platformVR applications, recently partnered with Nokia to create a content sharing app using the OZO Player SDK.

"At Immersiv, we push the limits of high quality VR experiences to bring fans into some of the most unique and immersive experiences we can possibly create," said Stéphane Guerin, CTO, Immersiv. "The OZO Player SDK gives us the perfect combination of tools and ease-of-use to support our multi-platform approach to delivering stunning VR content."

To further extend the reach of OZO Live and OZO Player SDK, Nokia recently partnered with NeuLion, a company specializing in the broadcasting and distribution of live and on-demand digital video. The companies will collaborate to deliver a professional solution utilizing NeuLion's digital platform, the OZO VR camera and the OZO Player SDK.

"We created OZO to solve the technical problems associated with virtual reality so that content creators could focus their time and energy on imagination, storytelling, and immersing their audiences in this engaging new medium," said Paul Melin, Vice President, Digital Media and Technology Licensing at Nokia Technologies. "With the additions of OZO Live and OZO Player SDK, OZO is the only solution that can simultaneously capture and broadcast 3D 360 video and 3D audio, making it easy to publish VR content to multiple platforms and removing barriers to delivering rich, immersive VR experiences to a wider audience."

Throughout IBC, Nokia will be hosting partners, demos and immersive VR experiences in the Nokia Theater in Hall 8, Suite 25, as well as in the IBC Future Zone.

About OZO

OZO is a first-of-its-kind professional VR tool that integrates eight cameras, all of which export a single file, thus eliminating the need for complicated rigs, wires, long setup times, and synching and swapping of separate memory cards. Designed to remove technical barriers so content creators can focus on being creative, OZO requires just one simple output cable and one single file to store all video and audio data, all in perfect sync. The OZO Software suite, included with the camera purchase, is a suite of professional VR tools which make it simpler than ever for creators to produce seamless, immersive content by reducing the complexity of 3D 360 stitching, post-production time and cost.