The META One - Glorious Visual Quality
Made for VR Creators
by VR Creators
The Story
We’ve shot hundreds of VR films, all over the world, for brands that range from F1 to the Red Cross, Google to Facebook, Audi to the BBC. We were constantly frustrated by the lack of sensible features and quality in 360 cameras.
The Meta One was the first of our cameras, we wanted the best possible sensors aligned with the best possible lenses. What you can see here are Entaniya 250s, yes, that's 250 degrees, that means that you get a huge overlap between the lenses.
Also, these lenses are hand finished, the picture with them just looks stunning. But, with that quality comes a cost, they are very big and very heavy. Which is partly why we went on to build the Meta Two.
The Meta One is brilliant for live streaming, due to the huge overlap on the lenses and the low light sensitivity.
Scroll down to learn about the features...
Features
The less lenses the better when it comes to stitching 360 footage and you can’t do much better than two lenses!
This also means that you can get incredibly close to your subject on either lens.
Our unique internal architecture allows us to have the lenses and sensors at as close as possible to their perfect ‘nodal point’ - basically this makes stitching a hell of a lot easier! You'll be surprised at how close you can stitch on the sides. We regularly use this camera on drones and remote dollies.
This is the only 360 camera on the market to record footage in ProRes HQ. That’s important, not just in pixel quality but in colour detail. You can get that cinematic quality from the grade.
The ProRes options are HQ, 422 and LT. You can also shoot in high bitrate h265.
You can live stream from the camera via ethernet or HDMI (with 3rd party software). Get in touch to hear more about this workflow and how the cameras are being used in this way at the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK.
We have a Meta Controller App for PC and Mac. The Controller gives you granular control over the camera, from choosing time-lapse settings, picture profiles, stitch previews, full shutter, WB and ISO controls along with a whole host of other settings and features.
We show you battery voltage, camera temperature (not that that should ever be an issue!) and quick short cuts to the key features you will want to adjust quickly.
There are a huge range of settings you can shoot with, for static positions we would usually go for 30FPS, ProResHQ. For moving shots we would switch to 60FPS, ProResLT or H265.
You can also record in glorious 120 frames per second, high bitrate H265 but with a hole at the top and bottom of the equirectangular - this may be fine for static camera positions as the holes are easily patched.
360 cameras suffer from small sensors and therefore poor quality in low light, not ours! We fitted two whopping Sony IMX299 4k sensors to our rig, meaning great detail and a high noise floor. It’s just how it should be with any camera, let alone a 360 one.
Head to our footage page and have a look at some examples.
We hate small internal batteries that don’t last so we built the camera to work with V-Lock batteries - the industry standard for pro shooters. Simply plug in to our solid LEMO socket and get rolling.
The camera has two HDMI sockets, for uncompressed live 4k DCI output in beautiful 10bit 4:2:2 at up to 60fps during recording. Two USB C connectors for storage extension, a gigabit port for wired camera control and live streaming in 10bit h265 at up to 200Mbps per second.
Having to ‘jerry rig’ a router to a 360 camera has long been a pain point for us, so we put one inside the camera. You have remote operation and preview up to 20m away. If you‘re more comfortable just wired, you can do that too, through ethernet.
High quality sensors need high quality glass and this is the best you can get, each one of these hand crafted lenses sourced from Entaniya in Japan. 250 degrees of wonderful immersiveness per sensor.
What this means in practicality is that you let in a lot of light, shoot on lower ISO and have fantastic sharpness all through the depth of field.
Also, 250 degrees means a large field of view (FOV), a huge FOV in fact, so there is a massive overlap between the lenses. This not only means people can lean in to the 'stitch lines' and still stitch but that optical flow will work better and the lens can be used in much tighter situations than you may expect with a camera of this size.
Other Features
The Meta can accept four channels of audio, meaning you can record from ambisonic microphones, in sync, directly to the cards.
Through our simple, intuitive, app you can control everything from exposure through shutter speed, white-balance and more.
Our camera won’t over-heat, unless you put it in an oven of course, but we’ve got close to that and still running, still looking great! The full aluminium chassis dissipates heat.
Both sensors are completely syncronised, meaning action/motion shots will always seamlessly stitch.
With 15 stops of real dynamic range, you can preserve detail in both shadows and highlights in all but the most challenging situations.
Working closely with the ultimate stitching program, Mistika VR, Footage can be stitched in no time at all, allowing you to focus on creative.
No Hyperbole
The META Camera is 5.5k. We don’t need to sell crazy resolutions that we know won’t even playback on any computer or headset. Rather we have optimised the camera to be the best possible per pixel quality on all screens and HMDs.
Our 5.5k camera looks better than any competitors higher res footage on headsets, online or on mobile. Even if you up res it to 8k it looks better than native 8k competitors.
Footage
Everything on this page is shot on our camera. We’re tired of taking leaps of faith and looking at examples from sun drenched locations that would suit even an action cam. These are real world examples, download the footage, have a stitch, have a play.
Also, please suggest to us anything you would like us to capture to prove the capability of the camera.
Here's a project we shot for Barbour, launching their Autumn, Winter 2021 range. It's highly challenging conditions with the huge dynamic range of the camera needed to capture both the interior and exterior light at once. Also, you'll see the ability of the camera to be graded heavily and for the high end fashion industry. All shot on Log and at 10 bit ProRes.
The above footage is all shot with low-noise mode, at between 2,500 and 10,000 ISO. Some H265 and some ProResHQ. You can download sample footage and the ProRes stitched video below. Remember to work in 'high bitrate' mode, this is 10 bit!
Gallery
Purchase
The META Cameras are custom built. If you’re interested in owning or renting part of the VR industry’s best kept secret then fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch.