Sea Life Sydney Aquarium has teamed up with Panasonic to live stream its sea creatures via Facebook for viewers to experience marine life in high definition at home while the aquarium is temporarily closed.
Sea Life is using the Panasonic X2000 video camera to create a virtual aquarium for its audience of more than 127,000 viewers, who can watch animals get fed, spontaneous moments such as a dugong getting a belly rub, listen to expert aquarists, and have questions answered live on video.
Panasonic’s X2000 video camera is a compact plug and play solution that can connect to Wi-Fi and directly live stream content online in HD quality, without the need for extra equipment. Other features include 4K recording, high resolution audio, wide-angle and zoom lens, and precision face detection.
Sea Life Sydney Aquarium general manager, Richard Dilly said the live stream gives people a closer experience than ever before, while providing families with resources, materials and fun topics to talk about.
“Working with Panasonic, we are able to bring the vibrant underwater world to life on screens big and small around Australia. We are thrilled that our viewers can dive into our world and enjoy uninterrupted, professional quality live streams at the click of a button.”
Sea Life Sydney Aquarium animal training and guest interaction supervisor, Emma Malik said, “Lighting and poor sound quality are two big issues we have when filming in the aquarium. Having a professional set up like Panasonic’s X2000 has meant we are able to produce better quality live streams then just using our mobile phones.”
Following the success of the live streams, Sea Life has launched Tank TV – a 24-hour live stream using Panasonic’s AW-UE4 pan-tilt-zoom camera which can be moved to showcase different areas of the aquarium.
Panasonic senior product marketing manager for imaging, Scott Mellish expanded on the growing live streaming trend: “We’re delighted to partner with Sea Life to deliver a solution that not only meets the challenges of changing times, but can also offer new value and grow an audience.
“Live streaming technology today can provide superior quality visual and audio experiences as well as being highly flexible for a number of business applications – from education and training sessions of all kinds to taking immersive museum and exhibition experiences into the office or home.”
Panasonic worked remotely with Sea Life during installation to host video training and provide tips and tricks for camera use and was on call for any tech questions.