Telestream Announces Wirecast Version 8 with New Rendezvous Feature for Multi-Site Production
By Jim Bask
Telestream Announces Wirecast Version 8 with New Rendezvous Feature for Multi-Site Production
Offering powerful new peer-to-peer contribution, social media engagement features, iOS app and audio tools for live content creators
Nevada City, California, September 6, 2017 – Telestream® (stand 7.B26), a leading provider of digital media tools and workflow solutions, today announced version 8 of its award-winning Wirecast live streaming and production software. Wirecast 8 includes many powerful new capabilities, most notably Wirecast Rendezvous, a peer-to-peer remote conferencing and multi-site production feature that supports multiple simultaneous remote streams from any Internet-connected computer or smart device. Telestream also announced a new version of its flagship turnkey hardware system, Wirecast Gear 230, a fully-configured, portable live streaming production system that can create a professional production with only minutes of setup time.
Wirecast provides content creators with intuitive, powerful production capabilities, GPU-accelerated encoding, and a streamlined user interface that enables users to effortlessly create and stream high-quality live broadcasts from their computers to dozens of popular destinations such as Facebook Live, Youtube Live, Periscope, Twitter and others.
The new Rendezvous feature functions like a videoconferencing system within Wirecast allowing users to bring in live video feeds or interviews from anyone, on any smart device, from any location, and broadcast them live. Rendezvous enables Wirecast Pro users to interview multiple people simultaneously and invited guests can join by simply clicking a link provided by the Wirecast operator. A built-in tally light system tells remote participants when they are on camera in the broadcast production. Once guests have joined the Rendezvous session, they can easily be added individually to any shot or shots in the Wirecast production, or be combined into a single shot. Remote guests can share their video camera, microphones and screens with the host.
“The Rendezvous dashboard makes it easy to conduct panel interviews, talk shows, and video conferencing, and utilize remote screen sharing, with just a few clicks,” said Tom Prehn, Senior Product Manager at Telestream. “What used to be a challenging, complex process involving 3rd party video conferencing platforms, complex audio and video routing, screen or baseband capture, can be accomplished natively within Wirecast in moments.”
Rendezvous pairs perfectly with Wirecast’s free iOS camera and RTMP streaming app, Wirecast Go, enabling smooth remote production and contributions from Apple mobile devices.
New audio features in Wirecast 8 Pro include the ability to mix up to eight independent audio tracks per broadcast and output them to independent destinations making multi-language productions easy. Multi-channel audio capture allows Wirecast to ingest up to 16 channels of audio per source. Users can set up specific shots to contain any combination of input channels, and take advantage of Wirecast 8’s greatly expanded stereo down-mixing capabilities, removing the need to pre-mix audio input sources.
“Wirecast 8 is poised to change the way people create content and open up new capabilities not widely available in the live streaming space,” said Andrew Haley, Product & Live Streaming Evangelist at Telestream. “Wirecast 8 brings more professional features to the market than any previous version, yet continues to be easy and intuitive to use. Our social media integration and engagement features are excellent, and continue to lead the pack.”
To engage in real-time conversations and feedback with an online audience, Wirecast 8 can display live Facebook comments on screen using NewblueFX’s Live Titler Express (Wirecast 8 Studio) or Present (Wirecast Pro), which are bundled free with every copy of Wirecast 8. Live Titler Express and Present can also be remotely controlled on a separate computer system, feeding curated comments or titles into Wirecast by a second operator for a truly professional collaborative workflow. Twitter and YouTube comment aggregation and curation is also available by upgrading to Live Titler Social or Complete.
Introducing Wirecast Gear 230
Wirecast Gear is Telestream’s turnkey, fully configured, portable live streaming production system. Wirecast Gear 230 comes pre-loaded with Wirecast Pro software, NewBlueFX’s Live Titler Complete software, and now includes SDI output capability for local, baseband video output. With Wirecast Gear, there’s no need to build a hardware system to support Wirecast Pro. Users can simply plug in the power, Internet, and a camera or two, and be streaming in minutes.
Additional highlighted features in Wirecast 8 include:
- Major performance enhancements and a redesigned render engine make it easier to edit, composite and mix multiple graphic elements to create and stream professional quality content to any destination
- Multi-view support for monitoring up to 17 live sources independently on external monitors
- More accurate color-space conversion for truer colors, and improved alpha and gamma levels
- Improved quality and efficiency for x264 encoding uses fewer system resources and produces better quality streams
- New native clocks and timers allow users to add countdown clocks, stopwatches, world clocks, and time and date stamps to their streams
- Support for WASAPI, ASIO and industry-standard audio interfaces allowing users to connect more professional audio devices and gear to Wirecast
- IP-based workflows through NDI for IP-based workgroups and “cable-less” production. Wirecast enables production across LAN workstations through NDI so users can dedicate video, audio, graphics, scoreboards, and social media tasks to multiple operators, allowing them to achieve production values beyond what a single operator can manage.