Streaming 4k video wirelessly from the theta V, I see the video pulsing and displaying heavy compression artifacts every 3-4 seconds. Looks like this might coincide with the I frame interval.
Secondly, I typically get 20 minutes of streaming after a full charge … but with a fan blowing into the camera or left outdoors in chilly weather, I can typically stream for longer.
Can some folks from the group confirm these observations, and any that might be willing to share some tried and tested approaches to get the device to live stream for longer (must be wireless) ?
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Prasad,
I have done less work streaming wirelessly, so I don’t have a real response there.
However, overheating while live streaming over USB can be an issue. I’ve used fans underneath the laptop I was working with (live streaming to a laptop running a Unity program, developed mostly by this community, and outputting to an HTC Vive headset) and I was able to run the demo for 8+ hours in a warm tech event environment. The USB also added (some) recharging so the camera batteries lasted that long, too.
Here’s some older information on overheating and using regular fans: HowTo: RICOH THETA V 4K Live Streaming With "UVC 4K" Driver For Windows 10
Jesse
How are you streaming the video? I found that using the API’s camera.getLivePreview produced variable results regarding lag and artifacts.
But the video will always appear to be compressed/artifacted, even at 4K. Remember, the 4K video is actually in equirectangular format, like this.
Unless your video looks distorted like this, you aren’t viewing the “full” 4K image. You are only viewing a portion of that image that corresponds to your viewpoint, and that will be at a lower resolution and be re-scaled to fit your screen.
We have adapted the wireless streaming plugin to stream 4k equirectangular stitched output from the camera over RTMP (H.264 video + AAC audio).
The artifacts I noticed were pulsing artifacts at I frame interval and the other issue I saw was with fps … the camera live preview had difficulty keeping up to 30 fps. VLC reported plenty of frame drops.
Finally, the audio was ahead for live 4k output mode. Switching to 2k modes resulted in lower delay through the pipeline and synced audio.
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