OZO Live launches with live VR broadcasting from the Austin City Limits Music Festival

30 September 2016

Sunnyvale, CA - Nokia today announced that OZO Live, which enables premium live broadcasting of 3D 360 VR video and audio experiences with the OZO camera, is now available across the US, Canada, EU, China, Macau, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. To foster the adoption of live VR, for a limited time Nokia is offering existing and new OZO camera customers a free one-year license to OZO Live.¹

OZO Live is a software solution that runs on reference hardware and enables the OZO camera to broadcast live VR experiences at scale. With high-quality real-time 3D stitching and delivery of premium 3D 360 video and audio experiences, OZO Live brings people courtside with their favorite team, backstage with their favorite musician or on the front line in a breaking news story - all with unprecedented efficiency and quality.

To kick off the global availability of OZO Live, the solution will be showcased this weekend at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, September 30 to October 2, to broadcast one of the world's largest live VR productions to date. The professional production will use six OZO cameras to broadcast a fully-immersive, live 3D 360 VR experience from the concert stage, which will feature headliners such as Mumford and Sons, Nathaniel Rateliff, Brett Dennen, City and Colour and Honne. The immersive VR experience is exclusively available through the Samsung VR app.

"ACL Fest is an Austin original with great artists and loyal fans," said Daniel Gibbs, Video Director for the Austin City Limits Music Festival. "VR is quickly become the most immersive way to experience the performances and relying on OZO and OZO Live to capture and deliver a first-hand VR experience to fans worldwide is the next best thing to being on stage with your favorite artist."

First announced earlier this year, OZO Live has already been used by select partners to stream high-profile, professional events including P!nk's live performance from the red carpet premiere of "Alice Through the Looking Glass", the Pope's mass during World Youth Day and a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Berlin last month.

"OZO has quickly become the preferred choice of professional VR content creators because it's easy to use and seamlessly fits into professional workflows," said Paul Melin, vice president, digital media and technology licensing at Nokia Technologies. "OZO Live extends that capability by allowing professional content creators to broadcast live VR from events like the Austin City Limits Music Festival, giving audiences a virtual front-row seat right from their own living rooms."

The OZO Live one-year commercial license is available for purchase now in select global markets for $9,000 USD /€8,000. For a limited time through the end of 2016, Nokia is enabling the VR market by offering a free 12-month license for all existing and new OZO camera customers.

¹ For more information on OZO Live, please visit https://ozo.nokia.com/nokia-ozo-live/

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.