Results of the project and potential impacts:
- The main impact of Immersify will be to facilitate the adoption of the new generation of VR and immersive media by the media industry by providing tools (video compression and media playback), creative content development tools and guidelines for content creation, delivery and playback.
- The development of innovative solutions that will have an impact across the media value chain including: production companies, creative studios and content exhibitors
- Tools that allow to combine ultra-high quality video with interactive elements for creating more interactive and personalized experiences.
Progress beyond the state-of-the-art
- HEVC decoder and video render for 16K at 60 fps, also for 360° content.
- HEVC encoder for high-quality immersive content (8K and beyond)
with minimal compression losses,
- Live 8K streaming for the European industry to advance towards a future deployment of new immersive formats for live events, including 8K broadcasting and ILE. During the project, the 8K encoding, streaming, and playback technologies were tested and validated with several live demonstrations.
- Immersive media visualisation: support of playback up to 16Kx8K/60 fps on a single workstation as well as providing multi-machine synchronization methods. This brought us close to the final goal of development of compact rendering solutions for heterogeneous immersive spaces.
- Ambisonics: an end-to-end workflow has been developed, from production to playback, based on Ambisonics of up to 7th order, on heterogeneous loudspeaker layouts with user interaction.
Exploitation and use
The consortium partners are exploiting the current results of the project (performance optimized HEVC decoder and video renderer, enhanced HEVC encoder, new immersive content) making impacts in different industry areas including: museums and art festivals, 8K broadcast, 360° video, and large screen visualization.
Spin Digital is launching new versions of its commercial video solutions (Spin Player, Spin Enc, Spin SDK) including the enhancements being developed in the project. Spin Digital is actively promoting the new tools through demos at international trade-fairs, and by establishing partnerships with key industry stakeholders.
Ars Electronica and PSNC are using the new SDK to enhance their playback systems and the new encoder to produce high quality immersive content. Several demonstrations were performed at some of the key dissemination events including: NAB, IBC, InterBEE, Festival de Cannes, Ars Electronica Festival, etc. At some of these events the consortium has presented unique demonstrations such as the first 16K video playback or HOA.
Socio-economic impact and wider societal implications
Apart from the commercial exploitation, Immersify also expects to make a social impact on the audiences of the film festivals, museum, and science centers. The Deep Space installation at Ars Electronica and the dome installation at the Visualization Center C attract hundreds of thousands of visitors per year, who enjoy scientific, cultural, and artistics experiences. With the enhancements developed in this project, the user experience is becoming richer: higher quality content and more user-content interactivity.
