Is it possible to zoom in when watching a stream from Theta?

Yes, I think the Z1 is the stronger option here. I plan to buy a tripod too and stick the camera in the middle of my 3D + Robo Lab for streaming and recording, so stability is not an issue.

I remain grateful to you and Craig for your vast contribution to the discussion!

Cheers,

-h.

Heikki Hietala

Lehtori /Senior lecturer
Digitaaliset palvelut / Digital Services
Haaga-Helia AMK / UAS
www.hh3dlab.fi
www.sabulo.com
Instagram: @isohoo3d

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Was the sample video on YouTube made with the HDR Wireless Live Streaming Plug-in? Is this the archive the live stream on YouTube? Or, is it the file that was saved inside the camera with your plug-in?

BTW, I just figured out that if I have the video in full screen, I can use the scroll wheel on my desktop computer to zoom. you can click on the pause button on the gif below if it is distracting.

zoom

hi, @craig ,
this video was recorded using HDR Wireless Live Streaming plugin to the local storage of the camera directly, using H.264 encoding and in HDR mode, 19GB Z1 was used. Video bitrate was set quite low, to 12mbps. Afterward it was uploaded to YouTube, spatial metadata was inserted only, no postprocessing on video.

Yes, zoom works like that with wheels but on mobile with 2 fingers you can zoom too.

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Was the metadata injected with this tool?

Or, is there an easier way to inject the metadata?

If people upload to YouTube, I do not think there is any advantage to using higher than 12Mbps bitrate. I believe YouTube is cutting down the bitrate on their servers anyway. You can download the video from YouTube using youtube-dl and then inspect the video file on your local computer. In your experience, does greater than 12Mbps bitrate increase the quality if the video is then viewed on YouTube?

I think if video is uploaded in h.265 encoding, it looks better afterwards in YouTube. I think live streaming is where YouTube is optimizing the most, so highest is the loss in quality too during live streams and
same at archived live streams. Iā€™m doing an experiment now. I record a h.265 short video in Budapest city park recently using h.265 and in dual fisheye mode, bitrate set to 30mbpsā€¦ I will stitch it using MistikaVR and will try also to stabilize there and upload to YouTube to see. Also I will share the file in Drive and share with you to see how will it look like.

Iā€™m not sure which injector was used by pokepe, who recorded in Taiwanā€¦

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I think other people have an interest in recording 3hr+ 4K videos. Does it require a 3hr mobile data connection to FlowTours after the initial configuration?

No, just when starting it pulls config from my website.when it records only even wifi is turned off by plugin.

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You should promote this feature.

What do you mean ā€œsome audioā€? Can the plug-in add the audio track to the video file from the microphones? Is the audio in the example added for some type of effect?

Why would H.265 be better? I can understand that the file size would be smaller. Do you mean that since the bitrate is set to 12mbps, there would be less quality reduction with H.265 for the lossy compression.

When I tried HDR and save-to-camera, I had thermal shutdown. I would like to try this again.

Wow, I am way out of my depth already in this discussion, but I am convinced the Theta Z1 is the device for me.

Thank you both for this!

~WRD0001.jpg

I finally got to the same conclusion, @HeikkiH ! For me live streaming easily from a small device was a must. 2-3 years back, I tested all possible devices, but quality was so poor. Only Insta360 pro quality was acceptible for me, but itā€™s too big sized and costs 4 times more than Z1. I was planning to build a platform, didnā€™t know that I need to build a device tooā€¦ :slight_smile:

And I investigated a lot, tested, Z1 had the best possible hardware and static images looked fantastic! Live streaming and video did notā€¦ I spent 1 full year development effort last 2.5 years to get here. :slight_smile: After I spent 6 months effort to adjust original wireless live streaming plugin which code was open source, I was tuning it. Originally it was working only for ~15 minutes in a warm room and it shut down. Also at that time it could stream in 2k only! :frowning: and FPS was unstable too (less than 15FPS)
After 6 months effort, I got it to run in 4k, also in HDR mode and FPS I made it up to 20FPSā€¦ OPeration time was 30-40 minutes in a warm room. Clearly last 2 years Ricoh also spent some time on their own live streaming plugin, so now it can stream also in 4k, but only with ~12 FPS, which is hard to call even videoā€¦ OPeration time was increased thanks to firmware upgrades for both plugins, but my works longer now. Because I rebuilt it, I dropped 5-6 months of effort I was looking into lot of different streaming libraries, tried to optimize and we got here now, again 6-7 months of effort. 24-25FPS, both h.265 and h.264 encoding, HDR mode, also playing with some stabilization tests (Worldlock)ā€¦ Clearly I reused from earlier code as much as possible, so those first 6 months of effort wasnt for nothing. An average gross salary in Europe for a software architect/engineer is 4000-8000 EUR/month, but this clearly requires some attitude and dedicated works also some special debugging skillsā€¦

Now there are other devices available, but I still think z1 is the best in price/quality/weightā€¦ Qoocam Enterprise (~2000EUR) is also a good device for live streaming, I own it too, but Iā€™m afraid to keep it running longer as it becomes soo hot. I using it to test 8k live streaming in h.265. Also it has inbuilt fan, which is extra noisy. Of course it has 1 advantage that it has external microphone plugs too. There are several reported issues with it, I feel like Iā€™m luck that my still worksā€¦

Clearly Z1 would be perfect if Bluetooth adapter/microphone would work. I tried, I was able to make it programmatically connect, I was able to listen to sounds of Z1 device, BUT microphone wasnā€™t working for me. I think Ricoh could make it work by a firmware upgrade.

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@craig ,
feel free to try anytime, but make sure that you set it on flow.tours to ā€œRecordā€ only and not ā€œRecord&Streamā€. Also in h.265 some black hole may appear at the top, some resolution issue may be there, itā€™s on my radar to check.

Yes, in h.265 12mbps, size would remain about the same, but quality would be much better compared to h.264ā€¦ Also like h.265 is more efficient and like less cpu power is needed actually, strange. Also with 25FPS it was recording fine for me.

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@HeikkiH ,
btw. robotics is one of my goals too. Iā€™m pushing low latency streaming and itā€™s on my radar to make Z1 stream with WebRTC natively. My plugin was tested in a really high end, low latency system too and were able to reproduce 500-700ms latency end to end between UK and Hungary. So in local network, using WebRTC I think it could rock. I also adjust my plugin so that users could remotely turn on or off their live streams. So in theory it would be also used for surveillance. could stream to YouTube personal account too easily this way.

Thanks for this tip. The last time I tried record and stream, the camera suffered thermal shutdown.

Iā€™ll try the H.265 when it is available.

Is this with the FlowTours system? You should promote it. That would make event interaction with chat much better than YouTube or Facebook.

Did you try the Bluetooth microphone with the X from a plugin?

No, that was on another system for now internal test only. My target is a bit different, quality is most important and want to reduce latency but with the same highest possible qualityā€¦
At youtube the latency is usually 25-30 seconds during my tests. On my platform Iā€™m at 10 seconds latency, but I was able to reduce to 2-3 seconds, but requires some tweaking as itā€™s not stable yet. Clearly I want to aim lot of viewers and interactivity is a must. Not necessary audioā€¦

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Hi all,

I have managed a live stream from Theta Z1 via OBS Studio and our Haaga-Helia 3D + Robo Lab YouTube account. I am thrilled with the possibilities this will open up as for my remote lectures.

My next question is, can one use a wireless mic connected to the OBS Studio while streaming? My 3D printers make a godawful noise when they run, so Iā€™d benefit from a mic, but will that introduce a delay, or be otherwise incompatible with the system?

hi, @HeikkiH ,
you didnā€™t try yet my plugin, that will provide better quality image and work wirelessly, itā€™s free and online, you can try and use it any time, to stream to any location, like YouTube directly.

At the moment directly with Z1, wireless microphone is not workingā€¦ Not sure why, it has a Bluetooth inbuilt, but no one was able to make it work so far with an external headset or microphone, no official support for it. Itā€™s on my radar to invest a bit more time on it to make it work through Bluetoothā€¦

In theory via OBS Studio, you should be able to connect a Bluetooth headset to your Windows and use it as an audio source in OBS Studio and mix it into the stream. Here is one of the video tutorials showing the process. OBS STUDIO : WIRELESS HEADSET SETUP FOR YOUR LIVESTREAMS (TUTORIAL) - YouTube
You select Z1 for video, but you can add another audio. You may have to finetune some advanced settings for delay sync between audio and video if itā€™s noticeable at live stream.

Reg

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RICOH did a modification to the firmware for the X. However, I donā€™t know if this was done for the Z1 as well. Iā€™ll ask some people I know at RICOH about this for the Z1.

@craig ,
I spent some time and I was able to connect to Bluetooth , I was able to hear Z1 sounds by headset, but I couldnā€™t make the microphone workā€¦ :frowning: But Iā€™m 95% sure Ricoh could help on this. Please ask them about a potential solution! Thanks!