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Nokia OZO is a VR camera for professionals

Today Nokia enters a new market by announcing the Nokia OZO, a VR camera designed for professionals from the ground up. But what is it that makes it different?
By
July 30, 2015

Nokia may not be making its own smartphones anymore, but they are ensuring their future in the tech industry in multiple ways. We first heard about their newest venture last week, and today the company enters a new market by announcing the Nokia OZO, a VR camera specifically designed for professionals. Of course, this camera can create video for headsets like Google Cardboard and the Oculus Rift.

While it may seem odd to see Nokia making a virtual reality camera, their eccentric gadget looks promising. This spherical camera holds 8 shutter sensors and 8 microphones. The camera is also special in that it has sensors pointing upwards and downwards, unlike some other 360-degree cameras, which only capture horizontally. This will give videos a much more immersive nature, with both video and audio being completely multi-directional.

The Finnish company also makes sure to lure possible customers by offering some enticing software features. For starters, the camera allows for real-time viewing, as well as quickly rendered low-resolution footage (for testing). The OZO also manages to discard the need for pre-assembling your 360-degree content, which can be a convoluted process.

These software and hardware improvements will make it simpler for content creators to produce VR videos for our head-mounted displays. VR production company Jaunt even committed to support OZO by using the camera and supporting OZO content through its post-production software.

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We can say virtual reality is a bit immature, at least in terms of consumer products and readily available content. The concept needs to be more polished, and I can honestly say the OZO is looking to be the most elaborated VR camera I have seen. It is well designed, simplifies workflow and should output “professional” quality footage.

Details such as specs and price are still kept under the veils, but Nokia tells us we should expect shipments to come in Q4 2015. We are pretty sure it won’t exactly be cheap, though! It is a professional tool, after all. Are any of you guys looking to take advantage of a Nokia OZO camera?

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