Review: Telestream Wirecast Gear
By Jim Bask
From StreamingMedia.com by Jan Ozer
Successfully using all of the desktop mixing features in Telestream Wirecast features requires a powerful, finely tuned computer. Telestream recently released its own series of bundled systems, Wirecast Gear. In this review, we put a test system through its paces.
Telestream Wirecast is a highly featured and well respected desktop video mixer with one traditional Achilles Heel: CPU utilization is generally higher than competitive products on similarly configured computers. Though Telestream has narrowed the gap in recent Wirecast releases, successfully using all Wirecast features requires a powerful, finely tuned computer. To help Wirecast users acquire such a system, Telestream recently released its own bundled systems under the brand name Wirecast Gear (Figure 1, right). In this review, we put a test system through its paces.
Gearing Up
By way of background, there are three Gear versions: 110 ($4,995), 210 ($5,995), and 220 ($7,995), which vary by capture card and software offering. I tested the 210 version, which included a 4-port Magewell HD-SDI ProCapture board, 250GB system drive, a 500 GB SSD drive, and the software listed in Figure 2 (below)…[continue reading]