As part of the EU FP7 ICoSOLE Project, Bitmovin accepted the invitation from VRT Research & Innovation to attend two live concerts of a very particular kind. In the Marconi Studios, named after Guglielmo Marconi, a pioneer of long-distance radio transmission, the two up-and-coming young bands, JFJ and Amongster, performed in front of about 100 enthusiastic fans.
So far so good. One might think a live studio recording is common in the music business. But the two approximately one hour concerts were anything but “business as usual”. A hint to what was going to happen was given by kindly asking the attendees to show up with their smartphones fully charged.
Before the bands appeared on stage, the audience was advised to make as many short videos – called Moments – as possible, with their own smartphones or tablets. The content captured , which was directly uploaded via a web app, was fed onto two big screens alongside the stage, which showed a (nearly) live stream of incoming Moments in a two-by-two matrix.
Not only UGC (User Generated Content) was produced, also a rich setup of professional equipment, including multi-channel audio capture devices, a wide variety of microphones, 360° cameras (which produced 32.4 million pixels, 25 times a second) and much more, recorded the event in an immersive way.
| But hold on. If the recordings were made by the audience, professional sound engineers and cameramen, what was Bitmovin doing there? The answer is simple: Enjoying the performance! And besides that, we took the opportunity to generate and stream videos as well. And what would be a better device for this purpose than our Google Glass? Strolling around among the audience wearing the Glass was not only a great experience and attracted a lot of attention, the content generated gives an immersive impression which almost feels like being there live. |  |
And so a live concert turned into an interactive experience for the interested men and women who had the possibility to be part of the event in a whole new way!
All the Best,
a Bitmover called Reinhard.
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