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View Poll Results: Vidblaster Vs. Wirecast

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  • Vidblaster

    22 34.92%
  • Wirecast

    39 61.90%
  • Other

    2 3.17%
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Thread: Vidblaster Vs Wirecast

  1. #71
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    Brian, so where have I said that any of this is a negative? If you don't like the product, don't buy or use it. It is as simple as that.

    My intention with my comments is to lower the personal nature of the debate and stick to more objective and observable fact. As I said above all of the tools are fine. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. I use all of them for different purposes and love that fact that they will all inter-operate. I have had excellent support on each forum and have had excellent support from each company./ Let us get the tenor of the discussion away from the abusive and destructive personal rants about individuals and instead concentrate on improving our production values in the product we are all producing. The switcher software we use, whilst important, is in reality only one small part of that puzzle.

    CseeMan. Your explanation on the background of Wirecast was interesting. I hadn't realized that WC had been around as long as it has. It also supported my comment that Telestream provides a much larger team for the development of the product, and for those who will quickly chime in that there are only two developers, don't underestimate the graphic designers, testers, support people etc that the broader Telestream supplies. That is why they are more able to work with external companies to develop interfaces and functionallity than a single person team.

    Quick restatement about streaming...VB and vMIx use FMLE as the default encoder. You can stream to multiple CDN's using FMLE and you can stream at multiple bitrates. FMLE can achieve the same result as the WC encoder, but it does it differently. Both VB and vMix can use other encoders...WC for example or FFMEG....or hardware encoders. Please let us stop confusing the encoding question with the switcher.

    Backup systems. In WC/VB/vMix you are able to have a second copy of the software installed on a backup machine. In all cases, only one copy may be operated at any one time.

    Streaming settings. Yes VB has restrictions on the upload stream if you are using the inbuilt interface to FMLE, but you can input directly to FMLE and bypass this restriction on all versions of VB.

    Recording and streaming at different resolutions. You can do this with all three products. As I said before there are different ways of achieving this result.

    Yes, VB and vMIx are resticted to windowsOS's, but you can run them on Macs using a Windows install on that hardware. I have also been able to run them, and WC, in virtual machines on WindowsOS.

    Recording Codecs. What most miss in the discussion about codecs is that they, in the main, have to be licenced, and therefore add to the cost of the product. Also as the codecs are updated, so there is an increased resource load on the development teams to test and modify their code to support the new codecs. Each of the companies makes a commercial decision about the codecs that they will bundle and support into their product.

    Your point about CPU use is valid. WC and vMix take a lot of advantage of the GPU, whilst VB primarily targets the CPU. The VB chromakey module uses both CPU and GPU resources.
    Last edited by AndrewSeabrook; 09-24-2013 at 03:47 PM.

  2. #72
    IAIB Pro Broadcaster thetechbuzz's Avatar
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    I agree with what you said, just one small correction, Wirecast will allow 2 computers to operate off 1 serial at the same time. But other then that, agree 100 percent
    Last edited by thetechbuzz; 09-24-2013 at 03:55 PM.
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  3. #73
    Senior Member cseeman's Avatar
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    Andrew, I'm not sure if or why you want to limit discussion to switchers when, in Wirecast's case, it includes an encoder as a key feature.

    I'm willing to be educated but Adobe FMLE, at least through the GUI, has a destination and backup destination URL server points. Are there more I'm not seeing? Wirecast is not limited to two.
    Adobe FMLE can use VP6 and MainConcept H.264. Wirecast can use VP6, MainConcept H.264, x264 (which is better quality efficiency than MainConcept), WMV (on Windows), Quicktime. Yes there's license fees involved and they are factored into the cost of the product and that's one reason we compare cost and features (including the encoder).
    Adobe FMLE allows up to three bit rates. Wirecast can use any number of bit rates even using different codecs going to different servers.
    Adobe FMLE does support multibitrate Dynamic Streaming whereas Wirecast doesn't yet sync the keyframes to do that.
    So while the switchers can stream to external encoders both software and hardware, Wirecast has a much more flexible built in encoder than others dependent on Adobe FMLE.
    Wirecast does have a built in DSS for Quicktime streaming although the demand for that is relatively small these days.

    Wirecast's encoder is more flexible than Adobe FMLE. Of course one can use Wirecast's encoder with other programs including VidBlaster (and some have done that) but that certainly speaks to the importance of developing a good encoder. Given that, for VB to use Wirecast's encoder it's an additional purchase of course. For Wirecast to use Adobe FMLE is no additional cost.

    I'm honestly not sure why VB would limit bit rate to 1mbps in all but Broadcast if it's so easy to work around (and free). I'm open to hearing an explanation.
    Granted Wirecast is also pursuing its encoder as a desirable feature even if one isn't using the switcher whereas VidBlaster is not. I do think that's worthy of comparison though.

    Yes Telestream has greatly expanded support for the original Varasoft Wirecast team which is why I suggest that Mike V and CombiTech consider looking for partner. Some might consider having a QA team and a Customer Support team important features.

    After all this forum thread is "VidBlaster vs Wirecast" so we are participating to make comparisons.

  4. #74
    Junior Member JackWarner's Avatar
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    Andrew - Can you link to a recording of your show? i would really like to see the results you get out of VB. I will put money on the fact that there are loads of dropped frames in your recording.

  5. #75
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    Quote Originally Posted by AndrewSeabrook View Post
    Recording Codecs. What most miss in the discussion about codecs is that they, in the main, have to be licenced, and therefore add to the cost of the product. Also as the codecs are updated, so there is an increased resource load on the development teams to test and modify their code to support the new codecs. Each of the companies makes a commercial decision about the codecs that they will bundle and support into their product.

    Your point about CPU use is valid. WC and vMix take a lot of advantage of the GPU, whilst VB primarily targets the CPU. The VB chromakey module uses both CPU and GPU resources.
    The statement on codecs is not necessarily true. In Wirecast's case, it is able to access any Quicktime codec installed on the system and write a file to that codec in real time. Telestream does not have to pay any money to license these codecs as they are available system wide. So the argument that codecs must be licensed and tested is really non sensical in the case of Wirecast, as the user can use any codec they wish (and the developer of the codec will have tested it in another QT app where it will work the same). On the Mac version of Wirecast users can get Apple's ProRes codec for free - http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1396

    As for the comment about GPU use, I think the "takes a lot of advantage of the GPU" is kind of disingenuous. Both of them exclusively process the images on the GPU, as there is no other way to do it. Wirecast is an OpenGL app and VMix is either OpenGL or DirectX. If you watched Tim Jenison's interview with Leo Laporte you'd also note that the TriCaster uses OpenGL for processing. From years of using these products, I can comfortably say that this is the only way that a computer based switcher can work. VMix Wirecast seem able to output pretty solid frame rate video, stack layer after layer of video all in real time . The CPU should only really be used to handle the encoding, playback of media, audio mixing etc.

    Joe

  6. #76
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    Cseeman...not trying to limit discussion but want people to understand that VB, and vMix are not encoders. WC is.

    Joe, even Open-Source codecs have to be licenced and supported. There is a cost to all of that. Using the GPU is not the only way to manipulate images, however it may be the best way...no argument there,

    Glad that the discussion seems to be moving further away from personality!

  7. #77
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    Jack...and what will that show really? That my cameras are outputting at the wrong settings? That my capture cards and their drivers are dodgy, that the recording tool that I use has issues? By the way I record on a separate device to lower the system requirements on my switching machine....irrespective of the switching software. The point being that frames drops can be generated in a number of places in the chain and why they is generated are dependent on a number of factors. The switching software being only one of these. That is why NewTek has designed the Tricaster in the way it did, matching dedicated hardware and software to optimise performance of both.

    Using an audio analogy. If I hear clipping on my audio does that automatically mean that it is my microphone at fault? My mixer? My recording device? My Audio streamer? My CDN? My audio client? Or is it a combination of all of those and how I have configured and calibrated them to work together?
    Last edited by AndrewSeabrook; 09-24-2013 at 07:00 PM.

  8. #78
    Senior Member cseeman's Avatar
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    My concern about depending on Adobe FMLE is that version 3 came out in Jan 2009 and 3.2 was late Dec 2010. It's now approaching Oct 2013 and no updates. On the Mac side it's a problem since FMLE is still Quicktime based whereas Apple as moved from QTKit to AVFoundation CoreMediaIO. Basically FMLE is nearly dead on Mac and while that might not impact Windows users directly we're approaching 3 years without an update. It's conceivable that it's EOL. That would mean Switchers without Encoders may need to start developing Encoders. Of course maybe we'll see a 3.5 or 4.0 soon... but 3 years is a long time between updates.

  9. #79
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    I share the concern about FMLE, particularly as HTML5 becomes more important on the web. All vendors will need to respond to these changes. I don't know that it means that the necessarily need to develop bespoke encoders, but certainly there needs to be the ability to take advantage of external encoders whether they be software or hardware based.

  10. #80
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    I love the discussion, lets keep it going.. but lets remember to be respectful of everyone's opinion

    With that said I have used both Vidblaster and Wirecast for an extended amount of time. I started using Vidblaster in 2009 and I was generally happy with it until 2012 when I went to HD. The modular interface makes Vidblaster very easy to learn and use. Wirecast was a little intimidating to me. in 2012 we started to use Wirecast as our encoder due Vidblaster's limitations as far as an encoding a live stream goes (By limitations I mean not having the ability to add custom settings for Bitrate)

    When we went to Wirecast we were shocked at how little CPU usage it uses when encoding to multiple CDNs. We went from having to use 4 different computers to just one encoding box.

    Early 2013 we started playing around with Wirecast as a video recorder rather than using Vidblaster. At first we did this to free up some CPU usage on our Vidblaster machine but after a few weeks we realized that Wirecast is a far better system to record our shows. At this point I was still hanging onto Vidblaster due to loyalty and the financial investment that I had made into the software. The more I read and researched the more I had realized we needed to move on the bigger and better things.

    There were a number of issues that I'm not going to go into right now but the two biggest ones were dropped frames and video tearing. We can argue that the issue is caused by hardware / drivers but I do not think that is the case. When we moved over to Wirecast The problems all went away

    When It was announced that Vidblaster 3 would be released I was excited to hear about all the “ HD optimization” that was incorporated in the new Vidblaster. Along with better HD support Vidblaster had now re-written many of the modules to better optimize cpu usage. Sounds great right ? Well it was not. I bought my copy from Tom Sinclair in June of 2013 and started using it. Boy was I wrong about the software. Many of the key features like a playlist and different video recording options were removed from the latest version and I still had many of the frame rate issues and tearing. It was then that I realized it was time to move on.

    I installed Wirecast with the help of the IAIB community. Nick Craig, Jim Castro, Steve Heywood, Joe De Max, and Sunkast made sure everything that I needed was setup and spent hours teaching me how to use the software. I immediately noticed a quality difference. My frame rate issue was gone, no video tearing and I was able to build about 65 shots in Wirecast with my CPU being under 30 percent This was a huge improvement from my previous setup. Also key features like desktop presenter, and the ability to create different video effects were huge improvements to my video production.

    Looking back I'm a little disappointed in myself for not giving Wirecast an opportunity early on. I spent endless hours trying to fix something that couldn't be fix, and spent thousands of dollars upgrading something I no longer use. I recently did the math and it was shocking. I have spent over 3000 dollars for Vidblaster over the last 4 years and spent nearly 4,000 dollars upgrading and adding computers to our workflow for a total of 7,000 dollars.

    In my humble opinion I think its fair to say Wirecast is the superior software based solution for Internet Broadcasting at this time. It outperforms Vidblaster in every possible feature. I know that there is still an argument for using Vidblaster in the sporting world but when it comes to Internet Broadcasting I have yet to see someone use Vidblaster at 720p and not have dropped frames and quality issues.

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