RED Digital Cinema President Jarred Land today shared their collaboration with Facebook, the new Manifold 360 degree camera.
Last May, Facebook and RED announced they were working together to build the world’s first end-to-end solution for 3D and 360 degrees video capture. The tech behind this camera is astonishing, elevating virtual-reality image capture to an exciting new level.
Utilising the same 8K Helium sensor that lives in their current range of DSMC2 cameras, the Manifold utilises sixteen of them, shooting up to an incredible 60FPS simultaneously. Holy data! I know how much our RED Helium cranks and sixteen of them is going to produce some extraordinary volumes of RAW image information. Adaptable storage solutions are what I’m interested to learn more about as the Manifold comes closer and closer to commercial availability.
Pricing information is not yet available, but the Manifold will certainly be for the professional market. With VR technology rapidly evolving, including the excellent stand-alone Oculus becoming a great tool for unique story-telling, we are starting to VR move further away from fringe technology to a medium that is much more mainstream.
From their press release: “Manifold will help filmmakers and storytellers craft next-generation stories unlike anything else out there. Our work with RED thus far represents a giant leap forward for immersive cinema and we can’t wait to see what the future holds. Stay tuned for updates on our progress, including pricing, availability, and more.”
https://www.facebook.com/Facebook360/videos/370097893531240/
SENSORS
16 RED(R) Helium 8K(R) Sensors arranged to allow full 360 6DoF capture
Record raw from 16 cameras running 8k @60 fps simultaneously
OPTICS
Custom Schneider 8mm, F4.0, 180 degree fish eye lenses
I/O CONNECTIONS
Single SMPTE 304M cable for power, control and data
Camera Control Unit and storage device may be up to 100 meters from Camera Head
5, 12g SDI outputs for monitoring or third party stitch processing
Multiple third party storage device choices providing 1 hour or more record time
ACCESSORIES
Front of lens ND filters available
Quick release handles for maneuvering and setup
UI/UX
Web app based control interface for flexibility of user interface device choice
SDK provided for post processing
You can read more about this marvel from Facebook’s announcement post.
