Enriching 360 media with 3D storytelling and personalization elements

Media technologies are broadly booming presently, creating an evolving landscape. Two media markets that can be singled out are the global Internet Protocol Television (IPTV/Internet TV), which produces “Over-the-top” (OTT) content (audio, video and other types of media over the internet) and the emerging Virtual Reality (VR) market. Amidst these rapidly growing market trends and emerging media, the numerous developments with respect to varying content types, their creation, retrieval and interactions, as well as the pervasiveness of mobile devices, offer unique and unexplored opportunities in terms of designing new experiences for the audiences.

Hyper 360’s main objective, is to introduce a complete solution for the capture, production, enhancement, delivery and consumption of an innovative free viewpoint video (FVV) media format to the OTT media sectors, through careful validation and large demonstrations. Envisioning increasingly immersive experiences, the convergence of omnidirectional (360o) and 3D content will extend current short productions of 360o videos with novel and powerful storytelling opportunities.

Furthermore, leveraging on the inherent to the selected format’s capabilities, the broadband delivered content will be offered with additional audio visual functionalities, bringing together more types of digital content, and adapted to the viewer’s preferences offering unique experiences upon content consumption. The end-goal of Hyper360 is to develop an enriched 360o media production toolset capable of delivering compelling personalized and interactive viewing experiences. This toolset will enable content distributors to deliver these media through broadband (OTT) to a variety of platforms.

To this intend, existing work and technologies among the consortium members (360o video – DRK/FOKUS, personalization engine - FOKUS/CERTH, 3D capture - CERTH) will be adapted and extended by their respective IP owners while being evaluated for integration (ENG), with expertise in the fields of image processing (FOKUS/CERTH) and video quality analysis (JRS) utilized to design and create the required technological components to complete the proposed production solution, namely the 360o/3D fusion and emplacement technology (CERTH) and the online produced content quality analysis (JRS).