The META Two - Versatile and Powerful
Made for VR Creators
by VR Creators
The Story
We used the Meta One on a lot of shoots and it quickly became obvious it needed a partner in crime. The lenses on the Meta One make it 6kg in weight, not ideal on drones, cables or dollies. Also, the lens arrangement is great for most situations but not if you are in really cramped interiors like cars.
Finally there is cost to consider, those sexy lenses on the Meta One come at a price... All this pointed us towards the Meta Two. There were other advances we wanted to make too of course - the Meta Two has 5Ghz Wi-Fi alongside 2.4Ghz so you have more powerful camera control, the parallax is also tiny, stitching the 'Two' is a dream in Mistika.
Have a look at the features in more detail below...
Features
As with the Meta One, 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.
On the Meta Two the two lenses are literally back to back, this is the optimal position for two lens stitching, just look at Insta's One X or Ricoh's Theta and think about how nicely those stitch. Crucially now you can stitch in closer environments, however, there is less overlap, so you need to know what you are doing!
As with the Meta One, this is the only 360 camera on the market to record footage in ProRes 422 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, ProRes 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.
Features
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.
The Meta Two has dual band Wi-Fi, both 2.4 and 5Ghz, allowing for more versatile choice of connection in crowded areas.
We love these iZugar pancake lenses on the Meta Two, they are 200 degrees, light, small and help get that parallax right down. With these lenses the Meta Two is just over 2Kg, significantly down on its big brother the Meta One's 6kg.
Having such small lenses means you can place the sensors back to back and have the lenses facing outwards, perfectly opposite to each other, this means an easier stitch and less post production.
Also, the lenses have aperture control, so you can manually change them from between f2.8 and f11 on the new slider feature at the top of the camera.
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.
We shot this one at 120FPS at Goodwood Festival of speed, it's a great example of the sharpness, colours, dynamic range and full set of options you can bring to bear with the Meta Two.
Shot with only candlelight and in challenging conditions, here you can see how the camera deals with noise. Shot in low-noise mode and in H265, we've chopped off the top and tail for you to download below. All 10 bit and graded to Rec709 above.
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.