Vidblaster Vs Wirecast

[Spino]

It happened one more time: I wrote a message in Vidblaster forum answering a Tom Sinclair post. I wrote in a very kind way. Tom wrote why he prefers the Vidblaster forum and I just wrote that I prefer Wirecast explaining my reasons and opinions. Result? Topic closed by Mike Versteeg (the owner of Combitech/Vidblaster). Well, this is one between other thousand of reason, why I like Wirecast.

[William Thomas]

Mike V. is a Dick####,

Mike would be better off hiring someone to handle the forum and the marketing and stay out of dealing with people. I once told him that as i know he has raised a teenager he should be able to deal with people better than he does. I don't go there anymore. I get my answers here from Tom. Tom is much nicer and gives me information I can handle.

Wirecast was beyond my budget at the time. I could get home version of VB for 195.00. Decision was made completely on money.

[Spino]

Mike V. is a Dick####,

Mike would be better off hiring someone to handle the forum and the marketing and stay out of dealing with people. I once told him that as i know he has raised a teenager he should be able to deal with people better than he does. I don't go there anymore. I get my answers here from Tom. Tom is much nicer and gives me information I can handle.

Wirecast was beyond my budget at the time. I could get home version of VB for 195.00. Decision was made completely on money.

No William, I don't agree with insults. I have good reasons to prefer Wirecast (and the behaviour of Mike is just one) but we must have a good mood everytime. I know sometime it is very hard but my opinion is that we must control ourselves, we don't have to go on same plane.
I wrote I think that the problem is Combitech=one man and I read a kind answer by another user who said that it could be a right way. Well, I respect other opinions even when I don't agree and I would be happy to discuss this aspect in that forum. Ok, I can't do that there.

[William Thomas]

Sorry Spino but i was not asking for you to agree.

It is one man's opinion and it's mine. I really don't appreciate being scolded but of course that is your opinion of which you are entitled, and you can control yourself if you want. Obviously VB is a better Software but Mike is the problem. I will bet Mike V has sold more wirecast than anyone else.

[Spino]

Sorry Spino but i was not asking for you to agree.

It is one man's opinion and it's mine. I really don't appreciate being scolded but of course that is your opinion of which you are entitled, and you can control yourself if you want. Obviously VB is a better Software but Mike is the problem. I will bet Mike V has sold more wirecast than anyone else.

Ok William, we have different opinions about our behaviour and I respect your even if I don't agree. Now I'm verifying that in his forum, Mike is offending me and I can't answer because I'm not a licensed user.

[TomSinclair]

Readers of this thread might be interested in my post in a related but separate thread. I will not repost here, but you can read it here.

[Spino]

I think this is the right place to write why, in my opinion, Wirecast is much better than Vidblaster. I write my opinions here and, as soon as, the new Wirecast version with Virtual camera is available (I’ve good reasons to think this happens very soon) I make a video that I’ll post on Youtube and Vimeo. You’ll excuse me for my bad English but I hope and I’m sure you understand.
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Before all, the question is: “Why people need Wirecast, Vidblaster or other software like those?” The simple answer is “Because they need to replay, with a quite low budget, a TV control room”.
In a professional TV control room, the heart of the system is the switcher and all the cameras, the video players, the video libraries, the graphics, etc…. are connected to it. The real problem in the professional TV is the synchronizing of all those signals and this the reason why a genlock or what we call a black color is used (we are used to synchronize two semifields of video signal but I don’t go ahead on technical problems because I could go on a complicated way). Luckily both Wirecast, Vidblaster and the appropriate hardware can do this operation so this isn’t a real problem.
Basically both these software can switch between cameras, videos, graphic files, they can overlay graphic (Vidblaster with some limit I explain afterwards), they can manage audio sources, etc… and at the end of this chain they can stream in Internet, can send to an external system and/or record video files.
I think that the big difference between those software is the way they can do that and the effects they have and analyzing this aspect I’ve no doubt, Wirecast can do that much much better. Let me go in details:
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VIDBLASTER
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This a software written by Mike Versteeg who is the owner of Combitech (a company with just one employer: Mike Versteeg himself). The architecture of the software is based on a modular approach, you can choose which module you need in your interface (program of course, cameras, videoplayers, videoeffects, streaming, recording, etc…) and you can load in that module the cameras or the files you need. At a first look this can appear an easy way to switch between all your devices but I think that it’s also its limit, you haven’t the flexibility that Wirecast can offer, with Vidblaster you have just the possibility to switch with just two transitions (cut and dissolve), you can resize the cameras just in a 2D world and you can make just a simple picture in picture, you can’t overlay a video with alpha channel (you can use a chromakey function but it isn’t flexible) and the video effects are limited to what is offered by the effect module and you can’t manage the shot in any way. Furthermore I see that the interface is becoming confused (why two camera modules? Why three video replay modules?). Ok, Vidblaster has a video replay and a playlist function but how many users really need a video replay? Probably just the sport producers and about the playlist, Wirecast can do that with an external software, anyway to be honest these two functions are not present in Wirecast but I don’t see anything else that Wirecast can’t do.
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WIRECAST
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This software is made by Telestream, a big company who has many other hardware and software products. The architecture of the software is based on a layer approach (something close to Photoshop) and at a first look this can appear more complicated than Vidblaster interface but it can give you the complete freedom to build your shots as you want. You have five main layers and in each main layer you can build your shot working on more layers. You can resize and move your elements in 3D world and you can use all your creativity to show what you want in the way you want. Furthermore you have the possibility to work with virtual sets (I think that this is good even if Telestream can improve this). In other words with Vidblaster you can’t do this live:
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http://www.maxsalino.it/index.php?op...nica&Itemid=57
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or this:
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http://www.maxsalino.it/index.php?op...nica&Itemid=57
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Just a couple of examples I made in a couple of minutes at a low resolution.
Another great feature of Wirecast is Desktop Presenter, with this third part you can not only capture portions of screen (Vidblaster can do this) but you can capture any remote desktop connected via LAN, you have just to write the correct IP and you have the video and the audio (delay included for the sync) in your system.
In Wirecast you have an audio mixer too (not present in Vidblaster).
Finally the CPU is much less stressed with Wirecast, Vidblaster requires a lot of CPU.
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STORE
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Wirecast has two versions: Studio and Pro for Windows and Mac (€395 and €795) The difference is that in Pro version you have virtualsets , audio mixer and graphic for sport score
Vidblaster has four versions: Home, Pro, Studio and Broadcast (€154, €392, €791 and €1582) The difference is the number of modules you can load.
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SUPPORT
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Both these products have a forum but in Wirecast there is practically just one moderator (CraigS) very friendly and when the problem is hard to solve, he gives an address of the support company who responds in just a couple of days. Furthermore there are some “Wirecast Insiders” that test new versions of the product before it is on the market.
In Vidblaster there are some good people who can help but the owner (Mike) is very rude and he doesn’t accept any criticism (I was banned because I wrote that in my opinion Wirecast is better than Vidblaster).
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There is much more to say and to see (as I said I’ll publish a video on Youtube and on Vimeo) but I don’t want be too long here and I’m not Mike Versteeg so I’m glad to discuss about these software here even if other opinions are different than mine.

[cseeman]

Nice overview Spino.

There are some third party Free playlist software for Wirecast
ShotKicker v2 (shot sequencer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3cfy12Zwvw
might be easier to see
https://vimeo.com/21720344
He also developed
AutoMate (scheduler)
which has a different approach.
He doesn't have a video demo but he did give this talk about AutoMate.
Audio is very hard to hear but go to 5 minutes in to see the interface.
https://vimeo.com/29456667

CamTwist on Mac has a good playlist function and Wirecast sees CamTwist just as it does Desktop Presenter. That means you can also use CamTwist's other features in Wirecast such as its Clock function.

[Spino]

Wirecast 4.2 with Virtual Video Device is released. Now Wirecast is really great and the audio problem I talked about here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wclo5_r0LAs&feature=plcp is now overcome.