Wirecast is the Tool to get Your Live Streams Rolling!
Kevin P AcAuliffe from ProVideo Coalition recently wrote a fantastic review for Wirecast and it's latest update, Wirecast 14!
2020's been crazy. Covid is still a thing resulting in lots of people moving into the streaming business to keep themselves afloat. Wirecast has been one of the key - and easiest - ways to start! It's easy to bring in cameras. Audio mixer. Graphics. You name it. Kevin watches a church service in Toronto that's mixed with Wirecast.
Pricing
Wirecast comes in forms: Wirecast Studio, and Wirecast Pro. Kevin focused on the Studio version.
Pro is great for bringing in up to 7 guests remotely at a time via Rendezvous. It offers PTZ control, audio mixing, effects, instant relays for sports, and even virtual studios.
" To be honest, the biggest feature is the ISO records, but something that’s very important for me to point out about this is that the ISO feed records are for hard wired source feeds only, and doesn’t apply to Wirecast Rendezvous feeds," wrote Kevin. "If you’re looking at having more than two guests (standard with the Studio version), then definitely look at the Pro Version."
Luckily the price between Studio & Pro isn't significant so upgrading if you want isn't a huge ordeal. You can look at updates here!
For Macs & PC's
One thing I adore about Wirecast is it's ability to be used on both a PC and a Mac. Usually it is one or the other.
However, Keven points out "Wirecast is NOT supported on Apple Silicon based Macs, so if you just purchased one, you’ll have to wait a little bit before installing and running Wirecast, in a Telestream supported workflow."
What's Wirecast?
Wirecast is a production platform that lets you mix and create live streams. it can meet almost anyone's needs including multiple cameras, PTZ control, remote guests, audio effects, and more.
Churches have seen a big uptake in using Wirecast to stream their services. What's great is it can stream to any CDN be it YouTube, Facebook, or even RTMP feeds directly to whichever site you want. It also lets you take the output from just about anything ranging from iOS, NDI, IP, even other web streams. There's even chroma keying, stock media libraries, social media integration, and tons more features.
Wirecast 14
Keven drafted up some of the new features with Telestream's recent update.
- All new Chroma Key (with special guests Luma Key and Color Key)
- New options for more accurate keying, including spill suppression, edge coloring, and clipping ranges. Plus a Luma Key (useful if you have a logo with a white or black background you wish to remove), and Color key (useful for images (logos) that have non-black and non-white backgrounds).
- Better, more reliable incoming video source connections
- Improved reliability for Wirecast Go, Rendezvous and webstream sources, plus efficiency improvements with GPU decoding for NDI sources
- Text and font improvements
- Smoother text scrolling and a new font picker to select font variants
- More options when sources get disconnected
- When a source gets disconnected, you can now choose to replace it with transparency or a custom image
- Improved ability to size and scale sources
- We’ve added new options for sizing and scaling sources, making it easier to precisely size your videos and images on the canvas. Plus, incoming sources are now scaled automatically, and will maintain their size based on settings you choose.
- Latency and syncing improvements
- We’ve made improvements to – and we’ve also given you more control over – the way incoming audio and video are synced together, ensuring more accurate lip-sync.
- Updated technologies
- Updated to NDI 4.5, ported OpenGL to Metal on macOS, updated webstream plugin (libVLC), for improved connectivity and efficiency
- Better notifications and stats
- The status bar is now moved to the bottom of the screen, giving more space to show System CPU and App CPU, as well as other streaming stats.
Videoguys did a great webinar introducing Wirecast 14 here! Check it out!
Kevin notes that the biggest update is Wirecast Rendezvous and Wirecast Go. It is much more stable now than previous. For those looking to bring in remote guests, Rendezvous is essential and super easy to use. This update not gives us better options like picking graphics if a guest gets disconnected, so it can say what you want it to say,
Wirecast 14 even added a Luma Keyer to the mix when it comes to chroma keying. This has made life significantly easier for those standing in front of green screens to get a more natural key, and allows room for more customization.
Kevin writes, " I’m going to make myself sound super old, but I remember the days where we were keying our logos on a table with camera above it, and the fact that we don’t need to mess around, and can do quick keys on black and white logos is great. What’s important for the developers of Wirecast to keep in mind is that they need to treat Wirecast like it’s a production truck, and upgrade each of the features of the “truck” to match what we’d find out there on the big productions. I’m not saying go crazy, but if you’re going to add a Keyer, give me all the options of a keyers."
Room for Improvement
ISO;s are only available in Pro. Limiting the number of ISO's is one thing, but it would be great to have a couple for the Studio version as well. It could also be a great gateway into upgrading to Pro. It's also a bummer that you cannot record ISOs for guests coming in over Rendezvous (though I'm sure they're working on that).
In the End
If you are looking to stream your content out there without breaking the bank... Wirecast if for you. This is a user friendly program that can range from beginners all the way to the pros. Videoguys used Wirecast to stream their weekly show during the height of the epidemic. We cannot recommend this product enough!
Read the original article here!
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