Telestream Wirecast Version 7 Offers Affordable Live Streaming with Powerful New Production Capabilities
By Jim Bask
Sneak Peek of new features including ISO Recording and Replay, Streamlined User Interface, GPU-Accelerated Encoding, and more to be shown on PTZ Optics and Magewell booths at InfoComm; Magewell booth N1850 PTZ Optics Booth N2133 June 8-10, 2016 Las Vegas Convention Center
(Nevada City, California–June 7, 2016) Telestream®, the leading provider of digital media tools and workflow solutions, today announced Version 7 of Wirecast, the leading live streaming and production software. Wirecast 7, which will be available later this month, adds new powerful production capabilities, GPU-accelerated encoding, and a streamlined user interface that allows users to effortlessly create and stream high-quality live broadcasts from their computers to dozens of popular destinations such as Facebook Live and YouTube, as well as to custom streaming servers, with just a few clicks.
Wirecast 7 allows event producers to create the highest quality live-streamed productions, with multi-camera switching, graphics, titles, and live encoding. Producers often want to re-edit live shows to produce highlight reels or replays. With the new ISO recording feature, Wirecast Pro can save all original “clean” source camera media allowing an editor to easily re-purpose content, free of any overlay graphics from the original broadcast.
The new User Interface in Wirecast 7 enables quicker and more flexible access to shot editing features and enhances on-the-fly editing. With the Shot Editor panel, users have more control over every aspect of a broadcast, including the time-saving in-shot source toggles that enable users to turn video and audio layers on and off within each shot for dynamic editing of complex composite shots. Wirecast 7.0 adds more options for how text can be displayed on screen. Text can be entered live, via a file or from an RSS feed enabling a different user to prepare text that will be automatically picked up in the broadcast. A new audio mixer controls every source from one central location, and an enhanced “mix minus” feature selectively mutes any source, such as the user’s own voice, while otherwise monitoring the full stream audio output. A Global Hotkey Management system speeds up any repetitive task by allowing users to create their own hotkeys.
“Much more than a facelift and some great new features, Wirecast 7 also takes advantage of a new performance architecture that improves CPU utilization across the board, accelerates stream encoding by making use of GPU hardware, while also letting users closely monitor the health of their streams with a new graphical diagnostics view,” said Tom Prehn, Senior Product Manager at Telestream. “With the release of Version 7, our goal is to empower users to do more live than ever before, to allow them to set a new bar in creating/directing a live streamed event, and we feel we’ve done precisely that.”
For use cases where Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote or Skype windows need to be shared, the new Screen Capture feature allows any window or application to be easily added to the broadcast area as a source.
New Features in Wirecast Version 7:
Better, faster performance
- GPU-Accelerated encoding for hardware encoding performance and less CPU usage
- Improved CPU utilization for smoother, faster streams
- Graphical Output Statistics to see the health of the system (CPU/Memory usage) and the output stream (framerate, bitrate, and more)
More powerful, streamlined production capabilities
- High resolution ISO recording & replay in Wirecast Pro for preserving individual (isolated) sources
- Updated, streamlined User Interface with dynamic editing for streamlined access and more control
- Scroll or display text from a file, an RSS feed or simply typed live
- Audio Mixer for greater control over all audio sources
- Audio Monitor/mix minus for removing audio from monitoring
- Global Hotkey Manager to create hotkeys for any repetitive features
- Color Correction for fine-tune control over the brightness, contrast, gamma, hue and saturation of any source
- Video Delay adjustment for better syncing
- Solid color background source for use as a background, or in lower thirds
- Screen Capture to bring in any region from the computer screen
- System Audio capture to pull in audio from any application running on the host computer
Wirecast 7 will be available at the end of June on the Telestream store and through Telestream’s network of resellers. It will be unveiled to the public for the first time at InfoComm 16 at Magewell Booth N1850 and at the PTZ Optics Booth N2133.
Wirecast Studio is priced at $495 and Wirecast Pro, priced at $995, adds support for more advanced production features and additional input sources. Upgrades from previous versions of Wirecast will start at $179.
Customers who buy Wirecast between now and the release of Version 7 will receive the upgrade to Wirecast 7 free.
