Liquid Cinema showed off some pretty impressive tools at NAB 2017, including mixing fixed frame and 360 content, forced perspective at cuts from scene to scene, and gaze-controlled graphics. We sat down with Thomas Wallner, founder of DEEP Inc., which is company behind the software and player tool for 360 videos, to talk about these interesting new features and what’s to come down the road.

Liquid Cinema’s features for better 360 storytelling

At NAB, we got to see a cool new tool from Liquid Cinema in action, which combines traditional fixed frame video with 360 content all in one timeline. This gives users the best of both worlds: the ability to direct a story and use close-up shots, as well as the ability for them to place people within a 360 environment where it works best.

It is seriously cool, but you sort of need to see it to fully understand (so, watch the video above!). Liquid Cinema accepts 360 mono, 360 stereo, fixed frame 2D and 3D and panoramic stills, all in one timeline.

Another key feature is forced perspective, which gives a bit of power back to creators to guide the story. Essentially, the tool lets you choose what people will first see at the cut.

“Your audience looks around and in the next scene they miss an important action because they are facing the wrong way,” Liquid Cinema said on its website. “[Forced perspective] ensures that your viewer will never miss an important piece of action ever again.”

It also offers gaze-controlled interactive graphics and other content, 3D binaural audio rendering and advanced heatmap analytics.

Publishing content with Liquid Cinema

In addition to its drag-and-drop authoring tools for publishing across platforms, users can also customize graphics for each platform individually to make sure they are sized and aligned appropriately and legible across platforms.

Unique thumbnails and descriptions across unlimited languages and geo-blocking according to platform, language and territory are also available within its authoring tool

Although Liquid Cinema works with any content delivery network, it also integrates with Vimeo Pro accounts. It’s supported on Android, iOS, Gear VR, Daydream, Web, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, with Apply TV4 coming soon.

The future of Liquid Cinema

In 2017, Liquid Cinema plans to add multibranching narrative, customizable user interfaces, live stream support, synced group viewing, 3D objects and web based CMS features.

Free trials of Liquid Cinema Beta are currently here.

Upon launch, the authoring tool, demo and WebGL players, and iOS and Android trial SDKs will be available for free. White label apps for all platforms mentioned above cost $15K each and SDKs for both iOS and Android are available for $10k each.

Learn more about Liquid Cinema on its website.