Telestream Wirecast Gear 420 is Great for Houses of Worship
By Jamie G
Streaming wasn’t always required for houses of worship. It use to be a “nice to have feature” for churches, but now more than ever houses of worship are relying heavy on streaming for current congregation as well as potential new members. The statistics on how long potential visitors will watch services online before ever attending in person are astounding. With the high demand of streaming, the industry has produced many different solutions and methods for this must have service. The Telestream Wirecast Gear 420 is one of the turn key solutions that are not like the others.
Software
Wirecast is more than just a streaming software. Not only does it consume your video stream, but it can also handle camera switching, graphics, scoreboards, PTZ camera control, and much more. It also has great built-in features that allow for digital video effect (DVE) style effects that look amazing. Once you plan how you want to set up your shots and your inputs are in the proper locations the rest is a breeze.
The Wirecast Gear 420 can stream and/or record internally as well as consume SDI, NDI, and Wirecast Rendezvous inputs for remote conferencing. The Wirecast Rendezvous inputs might be an appealing option for multisite churches, opening up some flexibility for things like campus hosts in other locations or even the option of campus hosts interacting with campus hosts at other locations. When it comes to flexibility, NDI inputs are a game-changer. NDI, which means Network Device Interface, is a software developed by NewTek to enable video-compatible products to communicate, deliver, and receive broadcast-quality video in a high quality, low latency manner that is frame-accurate and suitable for switching in a live production environment. One option NDI offers is computer-based and virtual video inputs for things like Adobe products. This means your Premier or After Effects timeline can send full-resolution, real-time video with audio and transparency across the network. This saves valuable time by eliminating the need to render and upload. All you need is the free download from NewTek for Adobe Creative Cloud. Titler Live Complete by New Blue is also included with Wirecast Gear, which is a title and graphics package software. With Titler Live you can create great-looking, broadcast-quality graphics, overlays, titles, and scoreboards that load right into Wirecast.
This software can produce a polished looking show. And although these features might not be as useful for your typical service, the features are great for school ministries.
Hardware
The Wirecast Gear 420 is housed in a 2RU rockmount frame for easy rack mounting but it also has feet for those who prefer to set it on a table. Inside that frame, the Wirecast Gear is outfitted with hardware-accelerated encoding, Xeon server architecture, a dedicated NVIDIA QUADRO graphics card. All this means this piece of gear is no slouch in the hardware department. NVIDIA QUADRO is a video graphics powerhouse, well known in the video industry as a go-to for video processing. The 420 also has 1 TB of storage for recording, which is good for about 20 hours of HD video 1080 29.97fps encoded at H.264.
The Wirecast Gear 420 also has four NVENC x264 encoders. It can take in 5 HD-SDI inputs, and a baseband SDI output as well as four dedicated display port outputs. On the audio side, the Wirecast 420 has two XLR/TRS combo jacks, perfect for receiving audio from front of house. If you are considering the Wirecast Gear you should also consider XKeys controller. This is great for churches to use them as custom controllers for ProPresenter and intercom systems. The XKeys controller is very flexible and speeds up the workflow and makes the software function like a top-of-the-line production switcher.