Jabra PanaCast: Three optics for 4K video conferencing at 180°

Real estate costs. Companies to reduce management costs in recent years have proved increasingly attentive to space optimization. Today it almost no longer makes sense to have large 20/30-seat meeting rooms, perhaps used a few times during the year, or even used only for small-scale meetings.

The way of working has changed, now based more on the work of small groups, not necessarily present physically in the same place, with meetings that increasingly become virtual, exploiting the potential of the technologies that fall under the Unified Communications.

What hits this introductory paragraph with a brand like Jabra? Considering that the brand, part of the Danish GN group, wanted to push the accelerator of its penetration of the corporate communications market by adding to its audio products, for which it is known worldwide, also a videoconference solution dedicated to the Huddle Room.

With this term, small meeting rooms are designated, which today are the scene of most meetings of small work groups within companies. They are small rooms, which generally do not exceed 7 seats and 6 square meters; often they see a table leaning against a wall where a large screen makes the collaborators present and around the table the chairs for the participants.

Jabra with its Panacast solution wants to optimize the use of the space of small meeting rooms, thanks to the 180° technology that allows to see perfectly even the people at the corners of the table, without the need to squeeze into the visual field of the typical solutions with optics from 120° of field angle.

To do this, Jabra has patented a triple-optic solution, with 13-megapixel sensors equipped with an image fusion system that allows a panoramic 180° field angle video output, with 4K resolution at 30 frames per second.

The Jabra PanaCast Vision Processor is the piece of hardware that has the task of merging the three portions of image without stitching, an operation that from a first contact with the device seems to succeed very well.

The facial recognition then allows the system to automatically select the frame by choosing between the images arriving from the front room only if the meeting is restricted to one or two people or add the portion of the video of the second and third optics based on the occupation of the room.

The solution is USB plug&play and compatible with the main operating systems: Windows, Apple Mac, Chrome OS and Linux / Ubuntu.

Jabra PanaCast is a child product of the acquisition of the Cupertino startup Altia Systems, completed by the GN group last February. The acquisition, worth around 125 million dollars, has allowed us to integrate a product that is already ready for the market (already called PanaCast) into the Jabra ecosystem, with some adjustments on the aesthetic and ergonomic front. Among other features, Jabra PanaCast is certified for use with the Microsoft Teams collaboration system.

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