It’s been interesting, even useful already. It also plays an voice watermark into the audio output.Įven with these limitations I’ve been able to put the software through its paces in the past couple of weeks. Without a paid license installed it watermarks it’s output periodically, as you can see in the screenshot above.

Telestream makes Wirecast available for download and allows it to be used on a trial basis for thirty days. They even have a nifty free Desktop Presenter app that lets any desktop become a video source, allowing easy desktop sharing into the Wirecast stream. It offers freedom from the tyranny of the webcam as the sole source of video. All of this provides flexibility in dealing with different sorts of input video. Wirecast also supports a variety of hardware input devices including USB webcams, IP-based cameras, capture cards from AVer Media, Black Magic Design, AJA Video, Matrox, etc. They cite support for use with Skype, Google Hangouts and GotoMeeting, the very three things that I’d like to use. The Wirecast v4.2 release is notable in that it includes a new feature called “Virtual camera output.” This virtual camera allows Wirecast to send its output to application software that would otherwise use a common webcam. It allows the user to switch and combine various video sources, creating a real-time stream for use with services like Livestream, UStream,, etc. Wirecast is prosumer software that’s basically software implementation of a television production switcher. Their Flip Factory is a benchmark application for video file conversion at TV stations. Telestream is a company with a long history in video compression for broadcast applications. So far these have proven unsatisfactory for my needs.Īt IBC 2012 Telestream announced v4.2 of it’s Wirecast software. While there are some similar apps for Windows, most notably Man圜am, these also tend to focus on things-you-can-do-with-webcams as opposed to practical-alternatives-to-webcams. Webcams suck, but that’s a topic for another day.įriend and VUC founder Randy Resnick is a Mac user and so makes use of CamTwist to process his webcam feed when he joins a Hangout. However, such consumer wares are invariably written around using consumer webcams as their sole available video source. I’ve long held that things like Skype, Google Hangouts ought to make this possible.

Finally, it should handle firewalls and NAT without flinching. It would be most ideal if it didn’t require an installed app to receive the stream. Since the far end is typically an ad hoc location what I really need is a way to use an uncompressed HD-SDI source, but deliver a decent quality, sensibly compressed stream to something handy at the far end. Well, it could be done, but for a hefty price. Of course it’s not practical to send the uncompressed stream wholly unaltered. There are times when I need to be able to stream this kind of video to a remote site. That’s 270 Mbps for SD and 1.459 Gbps for HD. By “production grade” I mean entirely uncompressed video. I work with equipment that outputs production grade video. I want to use a real, high-quality video source….preferably an HD-SDI video source.Ĭlearly I’ve got my own reasons for this sort of requirement. However, I don’t want to use a webcam as the video source. For quite some time I’ve been looking for a way to leverage things like Skype video calling, Google Hangouts or Citrix GotoMeeting with HD Faces.

Wirecast pro 4.2