Social Animal SA9 360 Camera Rig Review

Social Animal's SA9 camera rig may look complicated, but revolutionizes the world of film by recording a 360 degree view all the way around. Kevin Pereira and Candace Bailey take a look at the device and how it works to create some of the most innovative videos around!

What You Need to Know

• The rig uses the Silicon Imaging 2K mini-camera
• Each one weighs about 1 lb.
• They record in 1080p (1920 x 1080) at 30 fps, or at 2k resolution (2048 x 1080) at 25 fps
• There's nine of them, and they're all film quality
• They cost around $22,500 a piece
• They all point up into these mirrors, so there's no gaps in what all the cameras see
• The mirrors are also what's called "first surface," so there's no ghosting
• Rather than record straight to a hard drive, each camera records to its own dedicated MacBook Pro
• They're just normal Core 2 Duos with 4 GB of RAM, but they each have a 250 GB solid state drive, which means they're really fast, and the whole video village can get moved around with no adverse effects
• They each cost $4,300 a piece
• All you have to do to get all nine cameras to shoot at the same time is hit the record button
• There's a little sync box at the top of the rig that syncs up the record signal and makes all cameras go at the same time
• The footage looks a lot like The Brady Bunch title screen
• Each monitor shows each camera's angle in real time
• The footage is stitched together in Adobe After Effects
• It can then be output as a QuickTime movie with practically any codec, or even a Flash video that you can interact with
• G4tv.com will be using it on the convention floor during E3, and you can go to g4tv.com/aots360 right now to try it out

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Click here to see the Social Animal SA9 rig in action!